Sufi's choice: World Performing Arts Festival in Pakistan

"Sufi's choice"

In Pakistan, one festival is defying Islamic hardliners - but delighting the president. By Robin Denselow

Friday December 2, 2005 from The Guardian

Ten o'clock on a cold Monday night in the Pakistani city of Lahore, and there are strange scenes outside the Alhamra Cultural Complex. Men are dressed as horses, others are inside giant puppet-like structures, all are shuffling into position alongside a red carpet. Around them dozens of armed police and special forces are keeping the crowds at bay and checking there are no cameras. The president, General Pervez Musharraf, is going to a concert.

This, in itself, is a cultural and even political event in Pakistan, a country where dance was officially banned for many years and the opposition coalition, the MMA, is dominated by extremist clerics who would like the same to happen to music. But the president has asked to come along to the final show of the grandly titled World Performing Arts Festival, just one night after hearing many of the same performers at a private show arranged for him in the grand and unlikely setting of the Punjabi Governor's colonial-era residence.

Inside the open-air amphitheatre, the president's party sit on red chairs in front of the stage, while those who have managed to negotiate the heavy security are perched on chilly concrete steps behind them. They are here for a strangely mixed show. There are local pop stars, and a series of collaborations between western bands and musicians from the mystical Sufi movement - one brand of Islam that actively encourages music, and approves of musical collaborations that help promote the lyrics of Sufi poets.

Thus Norwegian trio Fryd are joined by the famed Sufi percussionist Gonga Sain, who is deaf and mute but whirls like a dervish as he leads his group of hand-held dhol drummers. Then there's a Czech rock band backing Sain Zahoor, who spent his life singing in shrines, and there's an excellent French Celtic-jazz outfit, Pain d'Epices, teamed up with another powerful Sufi singer, Sher Miandad. He's an exponent of qawwali, the Islamic equivalent of rousing, improvised Gospel music, and is the first cousin of Pakistan's greatest musical hero, the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. It was Nusrat who brought qawwali to the western pop charts, thanks to his collaboration with Massive Attack on Mustt Mustt, and Sher is as adventurous as his cousin. Singing to the president the previous night, he had included a song by the 18th-century Sufi poet Bhullay Shah, in which he attacked the mullahs. Musharraf replied that he should sing it to the MMA.

Festival president Faizaan Peerzada runs an event that aims to transform Pakistani life. By promoting Sufi music he hopes to "counter the extremism of the mullahs who use the mosques to spread ill-will against the west. In the mosques they talk about hell, and scare people, but Sufism is about divine love. Sufism can be used against the mullah culture. The fundamentalists created a hardline Islam, but we want to promote the softer side."

For Lahore, the 10-day festival was a huge, at times startling cultural event. The music ranged from pop to classical but the finest show was the pure Sufi night. There are, says Faizaan, two sets of Islamic institutions in Pakistan. Alongside the mosques, there are shrines to Sufi saints and poets, and from this network has emerged one of the festival's musical stars, and potentially a new world music celebrity.

Sain Zahoor is in his late 60s, has no record deal and has spent much of his life singing, and living, in shrines across the country. Yet word-of-mouth recommendation alone has secured him a nomination for 2006's BBC World Music awards, and he could play a pivotal role in the promotion of new Sufi music. Earlier this week, after rehearsing for his appearance before Musharraf, Zahoor paid his regular visit to Lahore's Mian Mir shrine, where he gave a brief, compelling solo performance. As ever, he wore a black turban, strings of beads and necklaces, and was carrying his three-stringed ektara. He stamped his feet, beating out a driving, almost bluesy riff, and added a passionate vocal workout on one of Bhullay Shah's songs. "It's about spiritual love that makes you dance", explained one of the watching devotees.

Zahoor has had a remarkable history. Born in a small village in the Punjab, he had a recurring dream of a grave, a shrine "and a beckoning hand". On the advice of a Sufi, he set off, aged 13, to look for that shrine. "My parents didn't stop me - they were fed up with the dreams!" he says. He searched for nine years, living in shrines, singing and performing where he was given food, until he found the place of his dreams at Uch Sharif in Pakistan's southern Sindh province.

He still can't read or write, and his move to the international music circuit came after he started singing in the food tent at a Lahore festival, five years ago. In 2001 it was decided to try him out on stage, and he has since been invited to perform in Norway, Japan and Britain.

He had no objection to singing with the Czech band at the festival's finale "because the Sufi poetry had not been changed". And how does he feel about the mullahs? "I get pleasure from rock music. No one should be stopped from singing."

There may be plans to encourage Sufi music and philosophy in the fight against the mullahs (there is talk of a possible new Council for the Promotion of Sufism, with the president as patron), but Faizaan and his family are clearly determined that Pakistan needs even wider change, and that the arts should play a major role.

So was there ever any censorship at the festival? Faizaan admitted that he had just made cuts to an explicitly sexual routine by a German dancer, "but I need to break traditions and we've got to challenge peoples' minds".

It could be a slow process, and he agrees that "when we leave this building nothing much will happen here for another year". But for 10 days, at least, the festival has provided a vision of a very different Pakistan, and the government has taken note.

· The World Music Award winners will be announced on Radio 3's World Routes programme on February 25