In the world of music
A construct of modernity, World Music is the encounter with and interpretation of the world unleashed by globalisation
By Sarwat Ali
World Music is what we encounter everywhere in the world. World Music can be folk music, art music, or popular music; its practitioners may be amateur or professional. It may be sacred, secular, or commercial; its performers may emphasise authenticity, while at the same time relying heavily on mediation to disseminate it to as many markets as possible. The consumers may use it as they please; they may celebrate it as their own or revel in its strangeness. The old definitions and distinctions don't hold anymore; world music can be Western or non-Western, acoustic or electronically mixed. The world of world music has no boundaries, therefore access to world music is open to all. There's ample justification to call just about anything world music.

Age and beauty
Dear all,
The latest film witten by Hanif Kureshi has just been released in the UK. Venus has a geriatric Peter O'Toole in the lead role as an old actor who falls in love with a much younger woman. I'm not sure if this would qualify as romance in the traditional sense but it is a love story and O'Toole's performance has made him a strong contender for the best actor Oscar this year.

To Mukhtaran Mai, every time a girl is violated to settle honour scores, she dies a little. "Something inside me snuffs out," she says over the phone. The most recent case of a gang rape of a 16-year old girl from Habib Labano village, in Ubaro, 530 kms from the southern port city of Karachi, forces her to relive her own nightmare.

"Her wounds have not healed yet. How can they when violence against women seems to be on the rise?" says her long-time friend and spokesperson Naseem Bibi from Meerwala, a farming village in Southern Punjab. "Every time she hears another such incident, she stops eating, becomes very quiet and withdraws."

And yet refuses to cower down to pressure to end her campaign. Instead she wants her perpetrators to be hanged. "I've spoken to the young girl's family and pleaded with them not to compromise, which I know they must have been pressured into. If they give in my fight will be an exercise in futility," she speaks of her concern.

In June 2002, Mai was publicly raped on the orders of the Meerwala council as punishment for her brother who allegedly had illicit sexual relations with a woman from a rival tribe, the Mastoi.

After the gruesome punishment was carried out, Mai, then 30 years old, was made to walk home semi-naked as crowds looked on to complete her public humiliation.

Today, five years later, having gained an iconic stature for her incredible courage for fighting her case publicly, justice has eluded her and the perpetrators, though arrested, have not been meted out the punishment they deserve.

This time the victim is a 16-year old girl Nasima who was kidnapped by 11 men, raped, suffered serious injuries and later forced to walk home naked on January 27. She was raped to avenge the shame her cousin had brought on the accused by eloping with their female relative.

"Nasima was sitting on a charpai (rope-twined bed), in their one-room shack," says former nazima of Khairpur, Nafisa Shah, also a renowned journalist, who went to meet her immediately. "Her mother was at her side. The girl kept weeping and saying she wanted justice, so did the mother. They complained that there was no medical help. She also complained of a backache. The father said that the police was harassing him."

The village women told Shah that the men kidnapped the teenager, took her to their house where they raped her, then stripped her and threw her out of their house. "It was in this state that the villagers found her."

The father filed a report the same day at the local police station after the medical examination proved she had been violated. So far six men have been arrested.

According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, a woman is raped every two hours and gang-raped every eight hours in Pakistan. And this, say rights groups, is probably just an under-estimation as many rapes are still not reported.

"I think the state should take the responsibility of protecting its citizens more seriously," says Anis Haroon, director of Aurat Foundation, a leading women's group. She says there has been a marked increase of incidents of violence against women.

According to monthly reports published by the foundation, last month alone, in the province of Sindh, 38 women were murdered out of which 17 were killed in honour crimes. The report further states that 12 women were living in shelters out of fear for their lives from their families. Around 26 women had been arrested on various allegations, in place of their male relatives whom the police had failed to arrest. Despite a law banning jirgas (village councils),15 such tribal meetings were held on women-related issues with four women, including young girls, handed over as compensation to settle conflicts.

"And when such incidents are picked up by the international media, like Mai's case, our government feels chastened," retorts an agitated Anis Haroon,

But not just the government, Haroon holds the people equally responsible for this apathy. "There never is a strong reaction from the people anymore. Even civil society is unable to galvanize public opinion against social evils. Nothing seems shocking enough for us," she laments.

Lack of the writ of law, is cited as a prime reason for the rise in crimes committed against women, says rights activists. "The feudals, also the violators in a majority of cases, do not fear conviction as they wield enough power to get away, literally, with murder," she says.

This is perhaps the first case which has caught so much media attention after the Women's Protection Bill was adopted in November 2006.

Looking at statistics compiled by Aurat Foundation alone, it is apparent the bill has failed to 'protect' the women from horrifying crimes. What is to be seen now is how the new law will provide them retribution in the form of speedy justice.

Since the bill was passed after much wrangling and saw many amendments, with the government employing backdoor methods to appease the coalition of six religious parties to agree on, it has not only been deemed questionable, but many sensitised activists find it extremely confounding.

Yet, the bill has brought some degree of relief and Danish Zuberi, a lawyer and rights activist, welcomes the reformed bill, saying: "There is no doubt that it is a much improved version of the one from which it was amended."

Under the new bill, the charge of rape will be tried under the Pakistan Penal Code, based on civil law and not Sharia. There is no need for women to produce four witnesses and if they fail to prove the charge, will not be automatically be tried for adultery.

The punishment for the latter under the earlier Hudood Ordinances was lashing and stoning.

"Now more cases will be reported as the fear of failure to prove the charge is not there," Haroon hopes.

However, getting a bill is only one step; it is the enforcement that is the real litmus test.

"As in Mai's case, the botched up or delayed police investigations, corruption, coercion, intimidation of witnesses and investigating police officers, political and social pressures often lead to a miscarriage of justice and render a good law ineffective, and thus delay in speedy justice" says Zuberi.

Haroon, however, feels along with the judicial and police reforms that are paramount to strengthening the enforcement of the women law, the services of thousands of women councillors spread to even the remotest of areas in Pakistan can be used to provide support to victims of violence. "The government talks of crisis centres and it's a very good idea but how many can they come up with? In the absence of such centres and given the culture at our police station which is extremely unfriendly towards women, if these women councillors are trained it can be good network to deal with such cases."

Shah, no stranger to such atrocious crimes, knows the mindset of the people all too well. "In Sindh the government has strengthened tribal and feudal elite and made law enforcement agencies subservient to them. There is little mechanism to enforce laws and protect women," she explains.

"The mediation systems have become so strong, that families tend to compromise after all the fuss, eventually, because the state never follows up these cases to their logical end," she says further.

Iqbal Hussain is best known for the world of women he exposes; to me it is his landscapes that fascinate. Even at Cooco's, where Hussain's work is on permanent display, I am drawn towards the gentle paintings of boats alongside the Ravi; women somnolently looking down from the walls, or in postures of despair one can look at for a while. After that, I gaze at the landscapes, which are not what have made this artist one of the bigger names to emerge from Pakistan in recent times.

As a painter, Iqbal Hussain has attained international levels of recognition for his portraits of women who keep the business alive in Lahore's red light area. Many an international publication has interviewed him, and many a channel has made a documentary about his life and work. And Hussain remains true to himself. The guest of honour at his exhibition of paintings recently held at the National College of Arts was none other than his model who sat for several paintings. Chanda will likely have been a subject for general discourse, as the subject of many paintings, as the one who inaugurated the exhibition. And as simply, the paintings on display weren't given any arty, fancy names; they were, Saima, Two Sisters, Maha, Misty at Ravi, Misty Morning I etc. With classic gold frames to boot. The work is to speak for itself, without any trimmings.

The pale and washed out tones of the wintry landscapes are in contrast to the women, who are clad in deep or bright hues. The various painting of the Ravi also have another element of surprise -- this river, now a shadow of its former self, still has the power to enthrall; at least in Hussain's paintings it does. I am drawn in by the large and small paintings of the Ravi in incandescent shades of white, with sparse forms that do not crowd the open spaces. Dawn at Ravi, perhaps the one I liked most among all work on display was hazy, in muted gray tones, a couple of specks of figures somewhere in the mist, a tiny boat or two. You could feel the silence. There are a couple of rustic looking scenes as well; these are colourful: Sunset, Trees. The day that the exhibition was to open, several landscapes were sold already.

Of the paintings of women, some are practically classic portraits: Guddi is in red, standing in front of a black background, holding a solitary red flower. Girl In Yellow, which has a rose bush behind the girl. There are others in which the models sit unassumingly, staring back at the viewer. All these don't say much, or anything negative. And there are those that shock. Sacrifice, which has a woman in jeans, lying supine with a puppet-like expressionless face. Brothel -- stark, as the name, with two half-clad girls, one sitting on a table, reflected in a mirror, and another sitting on the floor. Deaf and Dumb tells a story: 'I am deaf and dumb, living with two sick babies in nearby brothel -- charges are Rs 100 only, you can ask for discount.' It doesn't get any uglier than this. Or does it? Yes, it does. This is just one of the stories of the lives of the women who inhabit the area.

(The exhibition will remain open till Monday February 12, 2007)

Almost a decade ago, a Pakistani painter was part of an international artists workshop in India. Proud of his conceptual work, he was doing text based painting during his days in the workshop near New Delhi. Drawing letters, words and sentences in his minimal canvases, he was trying to translate the visuals into readable substance.

The artist from Pakistan would have kept doing his usual paintings composed of English letters and phrases (printed on the surface with the rubber stamps), if a TV presenter had not met him one afternoon. On seeing his paintings filled with Roman alphabets, the interviewer -- quite innocently -- commented that everyone coming from Pakistan is churning out calligraphy. This statement felt like a heavy and painful burden to the artist, because with this all his presumed practice, of a conceptual artist dealing with the discourse, was lowered to the level of an ordinary calligrapher: A category he did not fancy to get identified with. Especially because in his country, the art of calligraphy was considered a form that flourished with state patronage in the period of (military) Islamisation; and due to excessive commercialisation this genre was not appreciated or adapted by many serious and professional artists.

One is not aware of what happened to that painter from Pakistan, but admittedly the television presenter's observation holds some truth. He indicated a fascination of our artists with the written word, whether in the shape of sacred message or letters with other, the secular, content. (However there may appear a distinction between the holy script and the other texts, but in its essence two are the same, since the act of writing has been regarded a sacred act in many societies throughout the history).

Actually it is not our one artist, who is fascinated with the text, but language by and large holds a great significance in our culture. Word dominates every sphere of life, including the realm of visual art. This can be observed in the way we as a community approach the works of art. That, instead of focusing on the visual aspects of an art piece, most of us seek to 'read' it like any other text. Often the visitors in an exhibition insist that the artist must 'explain' his/her creations. If this does not happen, still the viewers aim to decode the object on display, like a literary work or a poem, before they enjoy it.

This temperament has affected the attitude of our artists too. Besides the usual lot of calligraphic painters, a number of our artists are impressed by the power of words, in various ways. Their works have a narrative substance, so the images can be comprehended like a story or episode, with all the characters -- clearly denoted and carefully composed in some order. The narrative aspect is not popular with the painters only; it is also appreciated by the viewers, since it serves to decipher the meaning of an art work, without much efforts or complications.

The habit of reading a work of art is recalled again in a recent exhibition at Croweaters Gallery, Lahore. Curated by Atteqa Ali, 'Talespinning' deals with the storytelling in art, and includes Naiza Khan, Ayaz Jokhio, Alia Hasan Khan, Ahsan Jamal, Ayesha Jatoi and Shajia Azam. Some works, like the books by Shajia, latex paintings of Nazia and canvases of Ayaz consist of illegible letters, while other works (such as the post cards by Alia Hasan and miniatures of Ahsan) address the issue of narrative in an indirect form.

Apparently the show is an attempt to view works with images that include or suggest text'. Thus different artists employed separate strategies to fabricate narrative elements in their works, but the works selected for the exhibition do not offer a convincing scheme of display -- except the obvious connection of text and narrative substance.

Apart from several exhibits, with their immediate link of text and illustrative elements, in a number of pieces the language is treated in a different manner, especially in the work of Ayesha Jatoi and Ayaz Jokhio. Both of these artists not only utilize the words, but indicate the possibility and limitation of language.

Ayesha in her 'miniature like' works and pages collected in a book jacket, suggest a subversive use of language. Normally the words are preferred in order to communicate in a better and convenient way than any other mode of communication; but in her monochromatic surfaces the words appear as unreadable (due to the tiny size of the text and reverse writing). Her works, reminding the format of miniature, can be understood as a comment on the miniature painting, which from the period of Persian kings to the reign of Ustad Bashir Ahmed is relying on the narrative aspect of imagery. Ayesha seems to be moving away from this convention but interestingly by manipulating words, something that in its essence is a readable substance.

Ayaz Jokhio, another participant in the exhibition, also opts for a subversive course through his art. His surfaces reveal the back of photographs, with the printing marks of company, and dates, names and description of the picture on the other side. Thus a viewer has to guess about the imagery after reading the detail on the surface of his canvases. By doing this Ayaz introduces two twists. That the front of his paintings resembles the back of the photographs and his imagery comprises purely of words that signify people, places and events. Hence the world of images is substituted with words and what we read as the back of a picture, in actuality is the front of an art work. Through these conceptual devices and play on words and imagery, the work of Ayaz Jokhio ceases to be about the narrative elements only; rather it questions the relationship of word with the visual and place of these two in our life and culture.

Due to this dimension of his work, Ayaz appears to be dealing with the issues of perception in his art. A quality that distinguishes his art from the other works in the show; and makes the exhibition a worthy endeavour.

(The exhibition will remain open till February 15)

World Music is what we encounter everywhere in the world. World Music can be folk music, art music, or popular music; its practitioners may be amateur or professional. It may be sacred, secular, or commercial; its performers may emphasise authenticity, while at the same time relying heavily on mediation to disseminate it to as many markets as possible. The consumers may use it as they please; they may celebrate it as their own or revel in its strangeness. The old definitions and distinctions don't hold anymore; world music can be Western or non-Western, acoustic or electronically mixed. The world of world music has no boundaries, therefore access to world music is open to all. There's ample justification to call just about anything world music.

Traditional music had been classified and understood according to its form. Actually the forms had been placed in hierarchies and in the long history of our music the classical forms occupied the top end while the so called folk forms clustered round the low end. There is much in the history of music about the higher forms of music but next to nothing about the less formalistic forms -- they were not considered worthy of scholarship or research.

The purer the forms of music the more they were valued. Musicologists from various traditions bent over backwards to prove their respective traditions being the most pure, not polluted by other influences, and even if other influences were around they were either rejected or marginally assimilated within the overall grand tradition of music.

Indian musicology that evolved with the freedom movement in the subcontinent was based on the premise that the purity of the Indian tradition can be traced back to Vedic music in an unbroken chain. This tendency gathered momentum and the more orthodox musicologists now see the development of music in the second millennium either as a minor aberration or an influence that did not caste a decisive shadow on the development of music itself.

The interaction facilitated by the breakthrough in technology particularly the media have brought about a great deal of coming together and experimentation while the canons to judge this new emerging expression are still being evolved. These are either in the form of condemnation or approval depending on the stand that one takes on the whole issue of globalisation.

But this interaction is nothing new and it gathered some pace with colonisation. Then the effects of what happened in the mother country was felt and in many cases adapted quite creatively but in most cases the charge of imitation or merely following another musical tradition could not be discounted totally. The flow of musical ideas was more from the coloniser to the colonised, the traffic which now is on a two way street. The music of the erstwhile colonies too has impacted music in the mother countries.

For many, world music represents much that is right in the world, indeed, the very possibility that music and music-making bring people together. The sheer volume of world music -- on the radio, CDs, and the Internet, and in university classrooms and books with diverse readership -- has never been greater. When it comes to celebrating globalisation, world music is always within earshot.

There's also the darker side to world music. World music can raise fears that we are losing much that is close to home. Its homogenising effect threatens village practices as it privileges the spaces of the global village. Its dissemination across the global depends on the appropriation of transnational recording companies, whose primary interests are to exploit cultural resources. Fusion and border-crossing may enrich some world-music styles, but they impoverish others.

At the beginning of the 21st century, then, world music is not simply the music of an exotic 'other'. The encounters with the world have become quotidian, and music mediates those encounters, whether we perceive that or not. It is not simply a matter that television advertisement regularly draws on South Asian and West African drumming; it is not the weaving of world music tracks into film soundtracks; it is not only the fact that Protestant hymnals are increasingly multicultural or that the Catholic Mass is musically familiar to every ethnic community in the metropolis; nor is it that Sufism has become a world religion mediated by world music; it does not even stop with the legal case about musical ownership or the limits of downloading music from the Internet. It is, rather, the confluence of all these phenomena, which too must be understood as encounters that are imagined and mediated by the West. World music is an inescapable everyday experience, whether or not we understand what it means.

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan was one of the principal exponents of this phenomenon. The qawwali was seen as a very distinct form of musical expression and it was put through the wringer of musical processes that were not from this area or land with the result that this music internationally appealed more to an audience with a catholic taste.

He became a superstar almost worshipped in parts of the world as varied as Japan, Iceland and India. But his contribution is still a subject of debate especially in the sections of population that like to see a more direct connection between the motivation, the artistic form, place and manner of performance.

World music besides being eclectic also crosses the boundaries of forms and mediums. The rage these days is the music video that sees no essential difference between an aural and a visual form. It easily switches from one medium to another. Prior to the early 1980s all encompassing terms to describe the musics of the world were rare with preference given to regional categories or designation of the genres. During that decade the record industry toyed with few other names -- worldbeat, world fusion, ethnopop, tribal and new age. A construct of modernity, it is the encounter with and interpretation of the world unleashed by globalisation.

The latest film witten by Hanif Kureshi has just been released in the UK. Venus has a geriatric Peter O'Toole in the lead role as an old actor who falls in love with a much younger woman. I'm not sure if this would qualify as romance in the traditional sense but it is a love story and O'Toole's performance has made him a strong contender for the best actor Oscar this year.

A few years ago Kureshi wrote a film called The Mother which was about an older woman and a younger man, but somehow that was a lot more grim than this new one which has wit and humour, both of which the ebullient O'Toole is very good at.

I have developed quite a bit of respect for Hanif Kureshi and his work. When his My Beautiful Laundrette hit the screen back in the late eighties I was amused but a little disapproving. I thought everything was just done for sensationalist purposes rather than anything else, but I now recognise that the writer is a very good observer of human behaviour and social foible. I recently saw My Beautiful Laundrette on TV again, and thoroughly enjoyed it. The film may be set in the eighties but there are still many things about the social landscape it depicts that are essentially the same as today in Britain.

It's not just that Kureshi's depiction of Pakistani immigrants' disillusion with the realities of racism and life in Britain are very honest and accurate, the gay love story of the film was also way ahead of its time. I used to think that Kureshi would write simply to shock, but I have to say that the actual fact is that he writes with brutal honesty. He examines relationships with a disturbing lack of saccharine, and without preconceptions and moral judgement.

He has also, time and time again, examined his own troubled and intense relationship with his parents (especially his father) in his work. This is powerful, and it works because as a reader you understand that he is not trying to conceal anything from you, and somehow truth is very important to all art.

It is amazing how truly perceptive observation of human behaviour and relationships stands the test of time and does not date. I have just discovered that with, of all things, a Jane Austen novel. I found an old copy of her Mansfield Park for sale (at 20 pence) in my local library and I bought it, for despite my professions of having studied literature, I had never read this book. I was astounded by it! I was completely unprepared for it to be so gripping, a book I just wanted to keep on reading! It is about people and relationships and about economics and marriage and society. It is about sisters and flirting and exploiters and social class. The characters are amazingly drawn, sharp and well defined and excellently depicted.

I am really enjoying my discovery of this Austen novel, just as I am feeling quite appreciative of the work of Hanif Kureshi. What excellent observers of human behaviour and character they both are!

Must go back to Mansfield Park now, just a few chapters left...

Best Wishes