Notes of Peace

By Anjana Rajan, " Notes of peace" - The Hindu - Chennai, India
Sunday, April 20, 2008

Across man-made borders, three singers from Pakistan bring messages of a higher truth

T.S. Eliot may have had his metaphysical reasons for calling April the cruellest month, but for Delhi’s April, the epithet is far more obviously deserved — the month when winter can be certified as over, and the sun regains its tyranny.

Hardly the best time to hold an open-air festival of music. But when the Bhakti Utsav, organised by the Government of NCT and Seher, spread its balm over the city’s green Nehru Park, even the sun decided to relent.

As it played hide and seek with the clouds, the city got momentary relief from the heat, even as the singers of the Bhakti Utsav offered release for the soul.
Epitomising the power of music to heal wounds new and old was the contingent from Pakistan.

Akhtar Sharif Hussain, Shafi Mohammad Faqir and Javed Bashir, who each led a musical troupe at the festival, are at different points on the age spectrum. Practising varying genres of music, they have much in common.

Not least among their similarities is the abiding belief that the Sufi concept of brotherhood and tolerance is the need of the hour, and music a prime vehicle to take it forward.

But these ideas get repeated as consistently as the violence across the world that never seems to abate. Those who agree, agree. Those who don’t, continue the spiral of hatred. Does the concept need repetition?

Sufi poetry set to music is one of the best expressions to popularise this idea. Akhtar Hussain, who with his brother Akhtar Sharif Sabir belongs to the Chishti Sufi brotherhood and traces his lineage back to Khwaja Barakat Ali, adheres to the traditional Doaba style of qawwali singing.

Drawing eager crowds in Pakistan and other countries, he does not feel the need to change his music to suit modern tastes, though he has nothing against those who do.

Trained under his father Ustad Mohammad Sharif Khan and later under Ustads Bakshi and Salamat, he shares the tradition with the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.

“I can’t put into words the way our compositions are appreciated at gatherings across the world. Last June we were in Paris and they asked us to sing authentic qawwali. We sang in Urdu, Persian, Punjabi, Braj.”

Javed Bashir, who sings both classical and popular, differs in his approach. Adapting one’s music is essential today, he feels.

“Because 90 per cent of the people don’t want to sit down and hear bhakti sangeet. Rock music (and Pop) on the other hand is something everyone listens to. Lots of people today haven’t even heard of the writings of Bulle Shah and other Sufi poets. So I think it’s very important to do this fusion. If Rabbi Shergill had sat down and sung with just his harmonium, perhaps not as many people would have listened to him.”

Bashir, who is also part of the popular Mekaal Hasan Band, feels ultimately the lyrics are important.

Shafi Mohammad Faqir, who belongs to the Manganhaar tradition of singers from the Thar desert, points out that all classical music stems from folk anyway.

“The mother of music is folk,” he says, his quiet voice belying his singing power. There is no denying the rousing popularity of the Manganhaar singers. The Manganhaars are the same as the Rajasthani Manganiyar community, and Shafi has relations on both sides of the border, performing intermittently with his Indian Manganiyar counterparts.

“It is the artistes and sportspersons, the fankaar, who are the real ambassadors of a country,” says Shafi. “Lata Mangeshkar has as many fans in Pakistan as in India. It is the same with Shoaib Akhtar.”

Shafi, who runs the Alap Academy of Music, extends his precepts of brotherhood to the technique of music. “Music is no one’s virasat (family inheritance),” he says. Youngsters from within and outside his community are trained in Manganiyar singing at Alap.

While these musicians have travelled the world with their notes of peace, India holds a special charm. “This is my 14th trip to India,” says Bashir, who has worked with A.R. Rahman and recently sang the soundtrack of “Khuda Ke Liye”. “I love the audience here,” he adds.

Yasser Nomann, coordinating for the Pakistani artistes on their visit, corroborates the view. Convenor, The Folklore Society of Pakistan, he recounts, “We have many artistes who say, ‘What is the use of performing in the rest of the world if we don’t perform in India’.”

Agreeing, Ustad Akhtar Hussain feels, “Everyone here is in sync with sur.” Yet the ustad, whose family settled in village Arup after Partition when he was a year old, is on his maiden visit to India.

But the man-made borders between India and Pakistan seem to hold little significance for these messengers of a greater truth. Money, fame, material comforts disappear in an ecstatic blur when they hit the right notes, and they draw the audience along with them. “That which you feel is real. What you see is disposable,” explains Shafi.

No wonder he looks at the practical bloopers of Partition with detached amusement. “My birthplace is split in two,” he chuckles. “The village is on the Pakistan side, and the railway station is in India.”

And the heart? Its flight is unbounded. “Man ka panchhi udta rehta hai.”

[Picture: Qawwali Singer Akhtar Hussain].