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Reclaiming the Pashtun love for music

You can’t bomb away culture: According to Zeb & Haniya, there is more to the North-West Frontier Province than suicide bombers.

In their grandmother’s house in Kohat in the North-West Frontier Province, recall Zeb and Haniya, there were always “lots of harmoniums and tablas lying around.” Their uncles, “all big strapping Pathan men,” sang “beautifully.” And their grandmother too wrote and sang in three languages — Pashto, Urdu and Punjabi.

So when Zebunissa Bangash and Haniya Aslam — known in Pakistan’s vibrant music world and to fans as Zeb & Haniya — release their debut album, Chup, next month, the Lahore-based cousins will not be breaking any family taboos. And, they quietly insist, no Pashtun taboos either.

“We are not fighting our culture to make music. When Pathan families get together, there’s lots of fun, lots of food, lots of meat, and lots of music. That has been fading away from our experience and other people’s perception of Pathan culture. It is something we want to reclaim,” said Zeb.

That could take some doing. Music has been a particular target of pro-Taliban militants in the NWFP who believe it is anti-Islam, and spreads vulgarity and obscenity in society. In 2002, when an alliance of six religious parties called the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal swept to power in the NWFP, music was an early casualty.

The provincial government banned singing and the playing music in public places, including in vehicles. It hounded out male and female singers and dancers from Peshawar’s famous music street, and shut down Nishtar Hall, the city’s most well-known auditorium. When militants bombed music shops, it did nothing to stop them.

With the advent of a new government of secular parties led by the Awami National Party in the NWFP after the February 18 elections, many believed that the space for militancy and extremists would begin to shrink. But that has not happened, and peace negotiations between the militants and the government have not improved the situation.

Nishtar Hall reopened in April. In May, a musical evening at a heritage home in Peshawar’s walled city attempted to reintroduce the audience to Pashto folk songs. But little else has changed. Earlier this month, extremists blew up dozens of music shops in the NWFP and the adjoining tribals areas, including six in Kohat, Zeb and Haniya’s hometown, after the shopkeepers ignored deadline given to them by the militants for closure.

“But the shops keep coming back, that should tell you something about the Pathan love for music. There was one shop close to my grandmother’s place. It got bombed and a few days later, it opened again. You can’t bomb away culture,” Zeb said, when The Hindu met the cousins at their Lahore home recently.

Zeb and Haniya sing mostly in Urdu. Nine out of 10 tracks in Chup are in that language, but one is an adaptation of a folk song in Dari and Pashto.

“Part of the reason we put it in there was to tell people that there are other experiences in the North-West Frontier Province. We grew up with this folk song. What’s going on in the NWFP, that’s to do with power and politics, it has very little to do with our culture and our experiences,” said Haniya.

Called Paimana Bitte, the folk song is about love and yearning. The duo have rearranged it to a lilting new melody, which Haniya described as “soulful, maybe more eastern.”

The two began singing together when they were just six, entertaining both family members and school mates with their double act. Both have some training — Zeb as a Hindustani classical vocalist, and Haniya as a guitarist. They started writing the songs featured in the album when they were studying in the United States.

Although at different colleges in Massachusetts, they got together often enough to work on their music. Their start in Pakistan came after an FM station played a song from their website. After returning home, Zeb and Haniya did several concerts and shows while holding serious other jobs. Haniya is visiting faculty at Lahore’s National College of Art, and will teach anthropology and a course in research methodology next year, while Zeb, who majored in economics at college, works in her brother’s retail business. The album offer came last year.

Pakistan has not lacked women singers, but Zeb and Haniya are the first vocalists to be writing their own songs and composing their own music. For Chup, Haniya also plays the rhythm guitar. They describe their music as a fusion of American folk, swing, jazz and blues, Bollywood, along with influences from Turkish and Lebanese music and the homegrown qawwali and ghazal, quite unlike what Pakistan has heard so far.

Just from their concerts and a few songs on their website, Zeb and Haniya’s fan following has grown over the last year or so, including in the NWFP, although the duo have never performed there.

“We are getting fan mail from people in Peshawar, Mardan, Swabi [cities in the NWFP],” said Haniya. “The silent majority are all [for retaining music as part of their culture].”

Already, Zeb and Haniya have turned into poster-girls for those in the NWFP who want to tell the world that there is more to the region than suicide bombers. They were recently invited to join the provincial chamber of commerce and industry, and have been approached by a newly set up Pashtun think-tank that, said Haniya, “wants a more progressive voice about the region to be heard.”

But as yet, they have no invitations to sing.

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