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society industry Floating
ideas Singing
their own songs
society Acts of violence Lynching of two boys in Sialkot in the presence of police officials has sent shock waves across the country By Aoun Sahi Horrid video footage of the lynching of two young brothers -- Hafiz Mughees, 15, and Hafiz Muneeb, 19 -- by the residents of Buttar village of the Sialkot district has left the country numb with shock. Sadly, it's neither an isolated incident nor the first of its kind. The culprits allege the two brothers were dacoits; that
they killed a local boy Bilal and injured two other people on August 15 while
looting. The family of the victims on the other hand asserts the boys went to
Buttar to play cricket that morning. Presently, the facts of the incident are rather murky. What is clear and outrightly condemnable is the level of barbarity involved. It reflects growing intolerance in our society -- as the reactions coming from different parts of the society are equally intolerant. Most people are demanding capital punishment for the culprits -- instant justice for they distrust the police and the justice systems. What made this event more outrageous was the presence of police high officials at the crime scene. Though the investigations are underway, it is quite clear that police was involved in this barbaric case at some level. Once both brothers were termed as dacoits by the villagers, police became part of the process of making their punishment exemplary for others. Shams Ali, one of the accused involved in the killing of two brothers claimed that he carried out the murders at the behest of District Police Officer (DPO) Sialkot Waqar Chauhan, who was present at the occasion. "Go ahead and kill both of them. Police will claim the responsibility of the death of two brothers and declare it a result of an encounter", he quoted the DPO as saying while talking to Geo. He also claimed that his 12-year-old nephew also sustained injuries as a result of firing between the two parties. The family of victims holds the police responsible for their death. "People started torturing my nephews at 6:45am on August 15 and they died around 8am. But police registered the FIR at 7:05am the same day which states residents of Buttar village captured two dacoits while looting and killed them," said Muhammad Zarar Butt, parental uncle of Mughees and Muneeb. He said the family has strong evidences that police officials not only provoked the mob to kill them but also facilitated them to do so. It may surprise people unfamiliar with the police system in the Gujranwala division. But the fact is that the police there has been playing as judge and executioner for long -- under the leadership of Zulfiqar Cheema, ex-head of Gujranwala division police. Sialkot fell under his jurisdiction too. Soon after the incident, Cheema was removed from his office on August 23, 2010. Punjab government officials, including Punjab Law Minister
Rana Sanaullah have held Cheema's style of policing responsible for the
incident. Seemingly, the Punjab government has been trying to alienate itself
from the event by blaming Cheema, who actually enjoyed their blessings till
August 5, 2010 -- the day the PML-N candidate lost the by-elections in
Gujranwala. Reportedly, Cheema refused to become a part of the rigging plan
initiated by Rana Sanaullah, incharge of the by-election campaign in NA-100,
Gujranwala. "PML-N supporters abducted ten presiding officers carrying
the election results. In an effort to recover the officers, Cheema exchanged
hot words with PML-N leader Rana Sanaullah," says a reliable source.
This however, has been denied by Pervez Rashid, Punjab government
spokesperson. A high level official of the Punjab government told TNS on condition of anonymity that the provincial government had been trying to remove Cheema from his post for the last seven to eight months. "They were not able to do so because of the clout Cheema somehow enjoyed in the media. He was using the political powers of his PML-N MNA brother too." Pervez Rashid admits that for long, under the watchful eye of Cheema, 'alleged criminals' have been killed in police encounters and their dead bodies paraded through the streets of the cities. Loudspeakers have been used by police officials to warn criminals of dire consequences. Typically, police officials, including DPO, have taken oath on the holy Quran to safeguard peoples' lives and property, and to not take bribes. Police officials have been participating in speech contests on honesty and how to improve the image of police. According to details, Cheema introduced refresher courses for police officials; where psychologists and religious scholars delivered lectures to the participants. Some police officers known for their honesty were asked to lecture their colleagues. To inspire the police officials, noted religious scholars like Maulana Tariq Jamil narrated stories of simple living of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). "These efforts proved fruitful. The entire staff of police stations and police officers took oath on the Holy Quran publicly, that they would neither demand nor accept bribes in future," close circles of Zulfiqar Cheema tell TNS. A police officer in Sialkot district told TNS on condition of anonymity that working under DIG Cheema was not easy. "Politicians pressurised us to follow their dictates; while Cheema Sahib wanted us to listen to nobody and only work according to rules and regulations." He admited that police was being motivated to do justice on the spot by Cheema. "He always used to assert "make the criminals examples for others"." He added: "Cheema was a big fish. One of his brothers is MNA of PML-N while the other is an influential government official. But for us it had become difficult to work the way he desired." He admitted taking oath on holy Quran to not take bribe but most police officials instead accepted gifts. "So, we were getting 'gifts' and not 'bribes'." Pervez Rashid said: "Kidnapping for ransom was very common in Gujranwala in 2008. Then Cheema was posted there. He busted some prominent gangs involved and built his reputation among the high ranking government officials. But he was never encouraged to deliver justice on the spot." He added, "Even today the media is pressurising the government to transfer him." Gujranwala model of policing became a talk of the town. Even Chief Minister Punjab Mian Shahbaz Sharif praised it. Police officials from different districts were sent to Gujranwala to get inspiration. "Even National Institute of Public Administration (NIPA) sent many officials to study our model of policing," said one source close to Zulfiqar Cheema. Mian Shahbaz Sharif also asked Inspector General of Punjab to replicate the 'Gujranwala model' of policing in the rest of the province. The Punjab government, reportedly, recommended the federal government to award him Sitar-e-Imtiaz for "maintaining law and order" but the latter granted him Tamgha-i-Imtiaz on August 14 this year. He was in fact translating the speedy and instant justice philosophy of Shahbaz Sharif in letter and spirit. Senior lawyer and human rights activist Hina Jillani believed Cheema's style of policing is responsible for the brutal act of public lynching of two brothers in Sialkot. "His role as leader and mentor is important. But we must also remember that he was working their on the instructions of highups. They were honouring him with medals and urging other districts to follow his model. The highups are equally responsible for the incident." For her, it is immaterial if the two brothers were dacoits. What alarms her is the promotion of mob justice in the society. "Even after this incident we hear voices demanding instant justice -- they want the culprits to be hanged at the same spot as soon as possible. We need to promote rule of law in our society." She admitted that some civil society organisations in Gujranwala endorse his style of policing. "It's a real shame that our society not only accepts and tolerates such acts. The duty of rights organisations is not correction but to create awareness on such issues. I admit that in the past we did not follow up such acts properly. I don't know what happened to the people who burnt two alleged dacoits in Karachi. But, now, we will try to follow up of such acts of violence."
Anything but music In our euphoric embrace of free downloads and digital music, we may have lost depth and warmth By Farrukh Qureshi Antonio Stradivari was an Italian craftsman who perfected the art of violin-making. Out of the total 1116 violins he made in his life, an estimated 540 have survived until today. Despite the tremendous technological advancements now, nobody has succeeded in making a violin that sounds like the Stradvarius violin. The highest price of a Stradivarius violin was over US $ 3.5 million, as per the official record; private sales have exceeded this price. It is said "Music speaks what cannot be
expressed." Musical instruments were invented, mastered and played
together, and man found solace, inspiration and outlet for emotions in them.
Melodious sounds of instruments playing alone or in harmony with vocals made
us sway, dream and escape to romantic heavens. How joyful this human
experiment was. But in our euphoric embrace of free downloads and digital music, laid hidden a price. We gained convenience, low cost and product functionality with bells and whistles but lost depth, warmth and timbre in music. Free downloads, USBs, hard drives, ipods and cell phones all sing - but originality, presence and the soul remain a mystery. It is anything but music. With piracy in vogue, music disembodied for compression and lost data packets on the membrane of internet, how can one experience the evocative power of music? The sound of a Stradvarius violin remains a mirage. At the Hong Kong Audio Visual Show 2010 (held from August 6-8, 2010), around 10,000 hi-fi products from all over the world were at display on a floor area of 100,000 square feet. Organised at the Convention and Exhibition Centre on the bank of Victoria harbour, the place was audiophiles' heaven. It was a place for all pockets and priorities but with a single target - of delivering music with its soul and pride, as close as possible to live. Right from where I started my visit were shops selling vinyl records and CDs. The records were all newly pressed with new and old tracks and had attracted equal number of buyers as those of CDs. As I moved to serious music systems, most of the demonstrations were given on turntables as playback source and none of that included a vintage gear. Well-reputed brands in hi-fi world like Clear Audio from Germany, Audiomeca from France, Pro-Ject from UK, Bergmann from Denmark and Thorens from Switzerland had presented their turntables which are the marvels of today's technology at its pinnacle. Technology and pursuit of pure sound have no contradiction, instead they are in unison. The issue is how we use technology in listening to music. My youngest son, aged 12, listens to my collection on my stereo system and after a while or latest by the next day the same tracks I hear on his cell phone. I once asked him to play it loud on his cell so that I could hear as well and I was sad to think that when he grows up he wouldn't know how a flute sounds, what are the reverberations of a metal plate when a stick leaves the drum-set and what lies in the resonance of a piano note when a finger presses the key? When I asked him whether he could differentiate between the sounds on my stereo system and his cell phone, his reply was in affirmation, but that was only because he had an opportunity to compare. The problem is that non-audio grade product manufacturers, free download sources on the internet and internet service providers (ISPs) all encourage this kind of soulless, temporally frozen music for their vested interests. In my college days all music shops at Fortress Stadium, Lahore recorded cassettes from vinyl records pressed with original sound tracks but nowadays CDs are burnt from free downloads and that too on ordinary CD-writers which are not meant for audio grade burning. Once I asked the living ghazal legend of subcontinent, Ghulam Ali Khan, while he was coming to Lahore after his successful tour of India, where could I buy an original CD of his ghazals in Pakistan. The question precipitated a lull. When I put the same question to the pioneer of pop singing Zohaib Hassan, he said he would send me one. That's it! These are tough times for avid music lovers in Pakistan and to some extent everywhere. A vinyl record still offers the supreme sound quality. I'm not being nostalgic; the fact is vinyl records are making a steady comeback. Many hi-fi manufacturers in US and Europe have started manufacturing or perfecting turntables again because they have realised what was missing in terms of tenors and texture in today's music replay. The hi-fi companies that have stepped into digital arena follow the professional standards of music replay. They try hard not to sacrifice music's originality when it comes to digital replay but their products are expensive and still way behind a vinyl machine. At the Hong Kong AV show, I asked A. J Van Den Hul, President and CEO of Van Den Hul hi-fi cable manufacturing company, Netherlands, how did he view the music on a chip, downloaded from internet? His reply soothed me like a cool breeze from whispering pines, "What they have done with food, they are doing with music." Like in fast processed food, we don't know what we are missing in the case of pirated music. What a comprehensive explanation in not so many words on the malady afflicting the world of music.
In this hour of grief, artists face this question -- how to resolve the catastrophe artistically By Quddus Mirza "And, behold, I. even I. do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and everything that is in the earth shall die." (17: 2 Genesis) The omnipresent television, constantly flashing calamity
after calamity, has had an enormous effect on our viewing public. Every
incident and accident has been reduced to a spectacle. Hence, the crowd that
rushes to view flooded waters on a river bridge has something in common --
the pleasure of seeing -- with the group of people who watched and witnessed
the public killings of two boys in Sialkot. Probably one impact of television
is treating the world as a large screen on which events unfold and rotate in
the form of visuals; no matter how cruel or dangerous, they are at a safe
distance and so cannot disturb or harm the person who is looking at them. The current devastation caused by floods may have led to a similar impact, even though the initial reporting of floods, with crying women, complaining men, and children clutching to food was indeed heart-rending. All of this did make the people aware of the level of misery and devastation. But the repetitive coverage, scripted tone and hints of personal glorification of the anchorpersons may have exhausted an ordinary viewer. While conscious of his civic duty to know the situation of flood victims, he is compelled to change the channel to watch something new -- something less predictable and pretentious. The transformation of a national disaster into a 'live-drama' apart, one cannot deny that death, displacement and destruction of that scale are unprecedented in the history of this region. Hence, even if they occasionally prefer to enjoy some old Indian song or a classic American movie instead of latest news on flood, majority of people feel compelled to help their fellow citizens in this state of emergency. Donations of food items, clothes and other necessities are pouring in and some are proudly displayed at various collection centres. In this hour of nationwide grief, artists face a basic question: What to do? How to contribute in reducing the pain of people across the country? Being a sensitive part of society, they assume a duty to be in the forefront of relief works. Writers, journalists, performing artists have been active in collecting funds for the displaced population (funds that can supposedly minimise the influence and penetration of "fundamentalists" in flood-hit areas!), but visual artists still have to make their move as a collective body. Artists Association of Punjab is having an exhibition for flood victims; an organisation RetroArts has announced a similar kind of event, Sanjh, at the Alhamra Art Gallery. Koel Gallery in Karachi arranged the auction of artworks on August, 17-19, 2010, to raise funds. There will be other such exhibitions and auctions and the amount collected will used to rehabilitate the flood-affected people. Apart from these exhibitions and auctions, there are solo shows planned by individual artists. Our painters, sculptors, miniaturists and other artists, besides holding shows, can donate money to the flood fund. With the grace of God and the hard work of galleries, our artists are now earning well and can afford to part with some hard cash to help others. With all these acts and plans of humanitarian nature that take place in the outside world, there is something that unfolds internally within the artist -- relating to his choice of subjects and formal concerns. Confronted with the images of dying people, ruined families, razed villages, drowned crops and floating carcasses of animals, one may get inspired and start making works based upon this catastrophe -- in order to register one's reaction to reality. Yet it is highly unlikely that a work of any merit may emerge out of this urge. The nature of art demands that a situation must be observed and felt strongly, but the more time spent in contemplation, more are the possibilities for creating a work of lasting impact and wider meaning. However, there are a number of examples from art history that refute this thesis, like Guernica (1937) by Pablo Picasso and Execution of Maximilian (1967-69) by Edouard Manet. Both the works were painted after hearing the news of bombardment of a village in Spain (Guernica) and killing of Mexican emperor (Execution of Maximilian). Yet both have an element of distance that is created through time or space. Even though the sources of these works were actual news items, both were created out of imagination (Picasso's work) or with the help of contradictory information and a few pictures coming from a faraway continent (Manet's painting). The two works may deal with events of their times, but through a long process of transformation, these have been converted into metaphors with a broader context. In that sense, it would be interesting to paint the deluge in a way that it not only refers to the present but to the past and the future as well (since a work of art is supposed to transcend the boundaries of Time). A difficult task, but not impossible, as one has observed it in the work of celebrated artists Raheel Akbar Javed, especially in his semi abstract, The Deluge, painted after the flood of 1970s. In this acrylic on canvas, house-like forms are surrounded by swirls of colours, which could be read as flood or a composition with floating forms in various hues. Probably such interpretations and works were only possible in an age that was before the flood of information and media around us, unlike today.
One often hears of musical minds in the past well-known for their compositional qualities as well as the skill to express them with full facility By Sarwat Ali There have been many music composers who have also sung their own compositions. In our times, many famous compositions of two of the
greatest vocalists Mehdi Hasan and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan have not been
attributed to any music director. In ghazal and qawwali singing, the composer
is usually made to sit on the backburner as the vocalist is given all the
importance. It is not even considered worthy to name the composer on the
label or in the announcement when a famous vocalist does the rendition. This
probably is based on the assumption that these compositions either have been
handed down from generation to generation or have been composed by the
vocalists themselves. As others do not come forward to claim ownership or
intellectual property rights, this assumption usually holds. Unfortunately
this omission was also fortified by the policy of radio. No announcement
about the composer was made before or after a ghazal/geet broadcast as the
listeners were made to believe that the vocalists had made these composition
themselves. This may not be true for radio or indeed television as both had
in-house composers who made compositions but were not considered important
enough to be mentioned. These compositions were owned by the radio on the
whole or by a certain station at the institutional level while the credit was
not given to the individual where it was actually due. Traditionally the role of the composer and the vocalist was unified -- one often hears of musical minds in the past well-known for their compositional qualities as well as the skill to express them with full facility. Tansen composed himself and then showed to the patron and the initiated audience his brilliance in exposition. But there have been others who have also had a brilliant music mind but probably were not that good in executing that. There have been others as well; some were brilliant composers being instrumentalists and were not known as brilliant vocalists. Nemat Khan Sadarang, to whom so many of the kheyal bandishes are attributed to, actually was a beenkar but as the legend goes was forced to go into exile where he started to compose music for other singers. These compositions are now considered essential repertoire of kheyal singing in the history of our music. This assessment criteria may have been the continuation of music making tradition where the bandish or composition was placed within the tonal structure of the raag and considered secondary in comparison to the expansion of the raag. This unity was probably challenged during the heydays of the Parsi theatre when the composer got separated from the performer on stage. The composers were usually very skilled in music but did not have the gall to appear before an audience. Their acting and singing abilities in public were rather limited which gave rise to the bifurcation between the composer and the vocalist. Many of the theatre company composers were the first composers of the talkies and in most cases they also sang. Since, in the later films, it was not essential for the singer to be seen on screen due to the playback technology, they could lend their voice as playback singers with its growing specialisation. It is said that Master Ghulam Haider has sung himself and also with Shamshad Begum in films -- the same Master Ghulam Haider who was responsible for introducing two of the greatest vocalists in films -- Noor Jehan and Lata Mangeshkar. Another composer who lent his voice to the films occasionally was C Ramchandra who was also known as Chitalkar. He also sang for the films but rarely. At times, it appears these composers sang occasionally in the same manner as some of the famous directors made appearances in their films. These appearances were rather limited, probably restricted to one but meant to affix a signature on their own production or work. The most noteworthy composer to have sung for the films was S.D. Burman. He used to sing for the radio but occasionally sang for the films his own compositions. His son R.D. Burman too was known to have lent his voice to his own compositions. Hemant Kumar was a composer-vocalist in the proper sense of the word. He was also a vocalist who had specialised in Tagoregiti or Rabindro Sangeet but then he started to compose for the films and continued to sing himself as well. He sang for other composers, too, and some of his well-known numbers are the composition of other composers. Another vocalist who was a composer of note was Pankaj Mallick. He too sang and composed music for a number of films and some of his compositions are remembered well and became very popular with time. Anil Biswas who was the leading composer in the 1940s and 1950s of the talkies, too, was a very good vocalist and some of his recordings are also available in the archives. His sister Parul Ghosh too, was a vocalist and was the wife of Panna Lal Ghosh, one of the leading bansuri players of his times who started to play the bansuri as a solo instrument and was called the greatest bansuri nawaz since Lord Krishan. Many other instrumentalists have been composers like Ali Akbar Khan, Ravi Shanker, Allah Rakha and Timir Baran and Nazar Hussain. Some of the composers were actually vocalists, classical vocalists, but had become composers -- the two most important names that come to mind readily were Feroz Nizami and Pandit Amarnath. Feroz Nizami's many kheyal renditions are available in the radio archives while Pandit Amarnath, too, sang and composed for the films. The two brothers Huslal and Bhagat Ram who were well-known in the 1940s and 1950s probably became more famous than him as composers. In the early days, Rafiq Ghaznavi, too, was a composer and vocalist -- actually he wore a third hat as he also acted in films. Rafiq Ghaznavi started his career from the silent films but as soon as talkies started being made he was chosen to play the lead. After Brave Heart in 1931, the silent debut film, he was selected to play the hero in the first talkie made in Lahore by the indomitable A. R.Kardar. In Heer Ranjha made in 1932, he played the lead opposite Anwari, composed the music and then also sang the songs.
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