To start with, I am being provocative. It’s true that the music industry is struggling, and being a musician no longer carries the glamour it once used to. Yet bands are still around, they’re still playing gigs and even without any music channels or labels, still releasing songs and videos. But one has to see the Peshawar-based Khumariyaan play live anywhere in Pakistan get an idea of why I say that they are the last Pakistani music band.

I first heard them amongst a slightly formal crowd in Islamabad — long-haired students were rubbing figurative shoulders with wheelchair-bound grandmothers. Several big-name acts came and went to reactions ranging from polite applause to occasional bhangras. But it was when Khumariyaan came on that the crowd seemed to go back in time; the last I had seen such a reaction at a concert was as a pre-pubescent kid at a Hasan Jahangir concert during his Hawa Hawa glories.

Much like back then, what I saw in Islamabad was grown-ups in conservative clothes spring up to start dancing; grandfathers holding their granddaughters hands and whirling in circles; girls getting up to perform the Pashtun cultural dance called the attan; people expressing joy publically.

Over time, as both material and cultural violence has plagued their society, their music has assumed a greater role. It is both an articulation of grief and a revolt against repression; both a call to arms and a final prayer.

Even though Khumariyaan’s music has a very specific sense of location and identity, the lack of lyrics meant that this enthusiasm was not restricted to Pashtuns — the crowd was a sea of people abandoning all restraint. It was an exhilarating experience, one that carried an earnestness which kept making me think of the early days of Pakistani pop — when its novelty and vitality were unsullied by cynicism.

I interviewed them a year after the concert since then they had gone on one successful tour of the United States which saw them featured in the New York Times, and were now leaving again to perform at the critically-acclaimed South by Southwest Festival. Yet, despite their awareness at how rapidly their stars were turning, they retained the infectious earnestness that I had experienced so vividly in their first performance.

Sparlay Rawail, guitarist and long-haired communist, was the first to try and answer why Khumariyaan was resonating with people in this old-school, almost forgotten way. “I think we, quite by accident, hit upon this balance. I mean you can’t shock Pashtuns into like, a different music. Say you do Pashtu rap, so it’s a shock. Pashtu pop as well. But if you do an incremental sort of thing and you give this halka phulka touch of something familiar — I don’t know a lounge feel or trance feel or whatever, then it makes it a lot more accessible. That’s because the background music doesn’t overpower the rabab.”

He then details how it’s common for musicians invited to a gathering in a hujra to perform Pashtu folk epics for several hours without a break, using no equipment save for their lungs and a harmonium. The experience is a quintessential one in Pashtun culture, and in Sparlay’s view the lack of too much equipment and the immediacy of the performance in Khumariyaan’s concerts allow audiences to tap into that grander cultural connection.

There is also the more obvious reason of how vibrant their performances are. While Sparlay often gets up to formally perform the attan during a set, fellow guitarist Aamir Shafiq manages to be equally entertaining. I have rarely seen anyone have as much fun on a stage as he does, truly living up to the term ‘rock’ star.

But what makes Khumariyaan resonate so much is that musically, it’s the rabab (played by Farhan Bogra) and the zeel baghli (a percussion instrument similar to the djembe or thumkanari, played by Shiraz Khan) which are the real stars of their songs.

Rather than using them as party pieces added to give a perfunctory sense of fusion, these instruments dictate the melody and soul of each track. The guitars (and in studio recordings, the synths) only serve to create a canvas that the rabab and zeel baghli can be laid out on.

The mild-mannered Farhan Bogra, who serves as a sort of spiritual center of the band, approaches their music as a reformative cultural education. “Aik zamane se, Pashtun music purana ho chuka tha. Our elders felt that this music was bad; the youth felt it was outdated.” Around 10 years ago, while he was grappling with the idea of Pashtun folk music becoming irrelevant, he gifted a rubab to a friend. He then learnt that his friend’s father had disapproved of the present, and had replaced it with a guitar.

The incident struck a proverbial chord, and became the beginning of Farhan’s burning desire to revive local music by educating people of its majesty while simultaneously working to evolve new sounds for it. Eventually, Khumariyaan became the logical conclusion of that effort.

Over time, as both material and cultural violence has plagued their society, their music has assumed a greater role. It is both an articulation of grief and a revolt against repression; both a call to arms and a final prayer. But they don’t overstate their importance either.

Aamir explains that “the idea that you can bring change with one song is ridiculous. We are not seeking to remind people what happened, but helping them find solace, no matter how briefly. The people don’t want your songs, your money or your pity — they want justice, and you can’t give them that by saying ‘main ne yeh gana tayyar kia hai’. What you can do is to help them release the tension; reminding them that life goes on, that you have to move on.”

And perhaps, it is this concurrent fact of joyous music and a sense of redemptive purpose that gives Khumariyaan their old-fashioned appeal. Stripped of glamour or pretense, they are creating works of honesty, sincerity and beauty.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, May 24th, 2015

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