Unequal music
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SINCE 2016, Hamid Rahmanian has presented Shadows of Fire: A Persian Epic to packed houses worldwide. Based on Ferdowsi’s 10th-century epic Shahnameh, this cinematic shadow play has been termed “fantastic” and “spectacular” by the likes of Francis Ford Coppola, director of The Godfather trilogy. This mammoth undertaking to introduce Persia’s historical and cultural significance to audiences brought up on post-revolution happenings in Iran appears to be funded mainly through the Iranian diaspora. The Ghaznavid emperor may have shortchanged Abul-Qasem Ferdowsi in receiving the promised riches in return for penning this longest of epic poems, but as predicted by the bard, his name lives forever through ‘The Book of Kings’.
If we were to do something similar, what would it be? We remain confused if our heritage dates back to the Mehrgarh and Indus civilisations or if it began in 711 CE at Debal. Regarding artistic and cultural contributions, besides Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, we have not enriched the world much lately. More importantly, who should be rebuilding our image and promoting us culturally? Those who have taken it upon themselves to delve into everything from tourism to producing anthems? They can only compose martial tunes to march us into oblivion. Cultural entities have subsumed themselves into the state propaganda machinery, and unlike the string quartets in Vikram Seth’s novel An Equal Music, they only stage reruns of stale plays by inserting ponay (quarter to) and sarhey (half-past) into titles.
It seems like another age when, barely out of slumber, hands did not reach for cellphones but fiddled with radio dials, searching for Radio Ceylon or Radio Kabul for that early morning fix of music ranging from ragas to bhajjans to bandari tunes. Radio Kabul’s greeting, ‘shunudgan-i-aziz’ (dear audience), was often the first sound to reverberate across the region — perhaps the second, after the Fajr call by the muezzin, who was equally soulful back in the day.
Before the disruptive cellphones, satellite-enabled 24/7 TV, internet, social media, and attendant fake news, there was Awaz De Kahan, a musical melody from Akashvani or All India Radio’s Urdu Service. In her 2015 paper, All India Radio’s Urdu Service and the Making and Unmaking of Borders, Isabel Huacuja Alonso of the University of Texas, Austin, holds that after the 1965 India-Pakistan war, prime minister Indira Gandhi inaugurated the Urdu service “in an effort to maintain some sort of contact with the Pakistani people”. She believes such initiatives challenged national projects and the making and unmaking of borders. By that same token, some believed it to be a propaganda gambit aimed at fomenting discontent.
It was another age when hands reached out for radio dials instead of cellphones.
On its part, Radio Pakistan aired Fauji Bhaiyon Ka Programme. This predecessor to the live audience call-in programmes consisted mainly of the presenter reading out letters from young soldiers asking for their favourite songs to be played. Radio Pakistan may have lost its sheen over the years, but the legacy of the programme endures.
Mrinal Pandey has written an excellent book, Sahela Re, on female singers of the pre-Partition subcontinent. The book covers courtesans, recording artists, mehfil singers, and classical legends like Roshan Ara Begum. Interweaving fiction with historical characters, the novel’s lament is that no matter how masterful Begum Akhtar and how popular Noor Jehan are, the male-dominated art and culture industry never bestowed honorifics like ‘ustad, ‘pandit’, ‘khan sahib’, or even ‘srimati’ on these female artists. Even self-assumed titles like ‘begum’ and ‘khanum’ cause scorn among the arbiters of prestige who insist that they are restricted to calling themselves ‘bais’ lest they forget their humble antecedents.
Mrinal, the first Indian woman to be the chief editor of a Hindi daily and also trained in Indian classical music, must be aware; but it just fell outside the scope of her book that Afghanistan, that we think of in the context of upheavals, and internecine wars, boasts the only female singer with the title of ‘ustad’. Farida Mahwash was famous during the 1960s and 1970s, owing mostly to her renditions of folklore music known locally as ‘teahouse music’. The Smithsonian Institute’s Folkways Recordings issued an album titled Teahouse Music of Afghanistan in 1977. People at the institute showed an uncanny prescience vis-à-vis the travails of Afghan women in the decades to come. It is surreal that this piece started with the early morning surfing of radio waves, and the first song in this album is by Ustad Farida Mahwash, and it goes, “Come to me in the morning.” Alas! It is not the longed-for morning, as Faiz lamented.
The writer is a poet. His latest publication is a collection of satire essays titled Rindana.
Published in Dawn, March 25th, 2025
