DIARYOFAWICKED

Music album review

Review of Ruskh’s album Sawaal (Published in Herald-October 2006 issue.)

By Salman Siddiqui

Rating: ****

The Karachi-based band Rushk almost faded away after the low-key release of their debut album titled 'Sawaal' a few years back. This year, however, has brought them a better future. With the June release and relaunch of the same album under a different record label, BMN Records, Lady Luck seems to be smiling upon them. Meanwhile, also to the band’s credit are two controversial videos. One of these – “Behti Naar”, directed by Saquib Malik – was pulled off the air by a local music television channel, reportedly under pressure from 'higher authorities', for its alleged provocative content.

      The creation of a dynamic duo, Uns Mufi and Ziyyad Gulzaar, the redone Sawaal album, features an intelligently layered set of 14 pop rock numbers. Pink Floyd's intellectual rock influences, bass grooves reminiscent of Opeth's Damnation album, and the feel of the early 90's Pakistani band Milestones are evident throughout. This is not surprising given that the guitarist Gulzaar belonged to the original Milestones line-up, which included Ali Tim, Candy, and Alan Smith. It is unfortunate that Milestones never made it big commercially and disbanded after their second album, yet one of the results has been the inimitable Sawaal.

      This album revolves around a person's inner conflicts with himself and the attempt to come to grip with the harsh realities of life; each track raising questions that are largely unanswerable. Vocalist Nazia Zuberi, whose mellow voice does an excellent job of conveying the concept of the album, sings all the tracks. To the band’s credit, none of the artists attempt to show-off their range to the listener, preferring to let the concept speak for itself. The album benefits from the lack of imposing guitar solos or overdone effects.   

      Sawaal kicks off progressive rock style, accompanied by sounds of chilly winds whistling as a door is opened and slammed shut, eerie footsteps and a flare being lit. This mood in the first track ‘Khuahish’ immediately morphs into a groovy bass and synthesized beats, with lyrics about what one desires in life and why.

       In the aural backdrop of a thunderstorm, the highlight of the album, ‘Behti Naar’, starts with a simple rhythm guitar riff, and has the best bass line the album has to offer. Upon gelling with a lead part synthesized on a keyboard, the audience is compelled to listen to it again and again. This neatly arranged composition deals with the self-probing questions along the lines of 'who am I?', in which the chorus verses wonder whether knowing the answer would matter at all.

‘Khoj’, another promising track, sparks interest when it starts with a number being dialed on a rotary dial telephone and a funky bass line. Sounds from a beehive introduce the track ‘Qaeed’, with Zuberi singing in low octaves about how to set free the character trapped inside one's own body. An elevator bell signals the beginning of ‘Rahen’, the first track on which Ali Haider performs as a guest vocalist with Zuberi, yet this is somehow the one forgettable number. 'Adhoora', the other track featuring Haider, has a greater rock feel to it and is superbly executed with tension inducing electric guitars following the sound of someone escaping gunshots. A dial-up internet link connects one to 'Abhi Yahan', a collage of programmed beats, a mean bass and synthesizer riffs. Bheegi Chandani begins with the eerie sound of night crickets, and Zuberi’s reverberating vocals on this slow number showcase ‘the longing for love’ message of the song. ‘Fareb’ is yet another gem in the album, which has a mesmerizing bridge part on bass and guitars.   

      In short, Sawaal is a must have album for all Pakistani music fans. It is arguably the most unique combination of melancholic yet rocky melodies that are currently on offer in the market from our local pop music industry.

Botal Gali

Botal Gali-Review (Herald Magazine-October 2006 issue)

By Salman Siddiqui

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Starring: Shahzad Nawaz, Aijaz Aslam, Akhtar Qayum, Anjum Shezad, Rashid Farouqi, Khalid Ahmed, Faisal Qureshi, Sohail Hashmi, Sonia Rahman, Raju Jamil, Shehryar Zaidi, Humayoun Saeed, Adnan Jilani, Adnan Siddiqui, Sonya Khan, and others. 

At a time when the quality of Pakistani cinema appears to be declining, Botal Gali, a two-hour, 45-minutes long feature film, has rekindled hopes in the power of our own local productions. With this bold comment on the hypocrisy of Pakistani society, Shahzad Nawaz-who wrote, produced, directed and even acted in the film-has made a comeback after Daira, an adaptation of Mohsin Hamid’s popular novel Moth Smoke.

      Screened recently at a premier show in Karachi, Botal Gali takes inspiration from Dante’s epic poem Inferno, creating a fictitious brand of liquor titled Dante’s Vodka around which a weave of plots interconnect. In the original Italian masterpiece,  Dante, accompanied by his guide, the Latin poet Virgil, begins his journey by passing through the Gate of Hell, over which is inscribed  ‘Abandon all hope, ye who enter here’. Botal Gali starts with Zameer(Anjum), guiding the troubled soul of Babu (Akhtar), through the streets of Karachi in search for empty wine bottles. (By the way Botal Gali actually exists near downtown Karachi, where all types of empty bottles are sold and bought.)

      For three decades after Partition, alcohol was freely available in the land of the pure, with the swinging 60s and 70s known for the swanky night clubs, and Go-Go Bars. That lasted till April 18, 1977, when the then prime minister, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, under pressure from the right winger Pakistan National Alliance(PNA)-an alliance of nine religious parties, announced an immediate ban on the sale of alcohol. Needless to say, the wine glasses never went empty even after that order. To date, the (black) market for foreign and local labels thrives, with bootleggers making sure no one is ever left wanting for such forbidden pleasures in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

      Shahid(Nawaz) and Zahid (Aslam) are two such Karachiite bootleggers in the movie, which is set in the year 2005. The tension between the two principal characters intensifies as alcohol supplies are disrupted due to tight security in the metropolis. The film shows how the raiders themselves keep the supply chain alive, with corrupt police officials selling confiscated bottles of Dante’s vodka to the bootleggers. The liquor then finds its way to the elite circles of the city that include everyone from advertising big wigs, television station owners, and aspiring actresses to philandering husbands and suicidal lovers. Dante's vodka is found everywhere, from charity balls to private parties and mujras. In a fashion similar to the Inferno’s Circles of Hell, where each stage allegorically represents different levels of sins for sinners, Nawaz too portrays the emptiness and self-deception of each sphere of Pakistani society as the movie plot progresses. Yet he also keeps the debate open, and doesn’t attempt to target specific individuals. Particularly interesting are the discussions on local drinking culture between the liberal Bazmi (Ahmed) and Sikendar (Zaidi), and the radically inclined Naushad (Jamil). With eerie music and Babu’s haunting presence looming in the background, the fates of all characters become tragically entangled, leading to a climactic and uncanny end. 

      Will Nawaz's effort be able to gain classic like status comparable to Sarmad Sehbai’s 1991 film ‘Fankaar Gali’, which was based on the lives of Karachi’s performing artists, or  Faryal Gauhar ‘s1996 film Tibbi Gali that touched upon the taboo topic of Lahore’s infamous Shahi Mohallah? That remains to be seen. At the moment the film still awaits approval from Pakistan’s Censor Board. Meanwhile, screenings in India, the US and other countries abroad have already been scheduled for November or December. Local television and DVD releases are to take place around the same time. 

       The film lacks any conventional masala numbers, which may prevent it from achieving widespread commercial success. Nevertheless, Botal Gali must certainly be applauded for the original storyline, slick editing, excellent production quality and overall presentation. It is a commendable all-round effort by Nawaz, and it's encouraging to learn that the 38-year old is already in the process of making two more feature length films, one titled ‘52’, and the other a sequel called ‘Daira II-seven years later’.

Supreme Court ban silences Pakistani bloggers

Supreme Court ban silences Pakistani bloggers
by Salman Siddiqui

(Appeared in Herald magazine April issue)

Here's the unedited version:

"On 27th February, Pakistan’s Telecommunication Authority (PTA) issued instructions to all Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the country to block 12 websites that contained material that was termed blasphemous. Ten of the sites showed the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), while one had lampooned Jesus and the other satirized both religious figures. However, following this action millions of websites other than the original 12 were blocked in the process.
This was caused mainly due to the blocking of one particular site address in the PTA list that was hosted on a popular server owned by Google called BlogSpot on which millions of people from around the world including Pakistan maintain weblogs or blogs. Instead of banning just that one particular address hosted on BlogSpot, Pakistan’s Internet Exchange (PIE), a subsidiary of Pakistan Telecommunications Limited, which filters 90 percent of the country’s Internet traffic, blocked all sites that ended with ‘blogspot.com’ in the site address.
With ISPs not divulging any information to confused bloggers in the days following the ban, speculations on the timing of this action, which was taken just a week before President Bush’s visit to Pakistan, was rife especially as many blogs contained anti-Musharraf views with some covering sensitive issues such as the Balochistan insurgency. An example of one such site is the Free Baloch blog, which is openly critical of government policies.
On March 2, it became clear that the issue behind the ban was the row over the Danish cartoons. The Supreme Court, in response to two petitions filed against the accessibility of the blasphemous cartoons on the Internet by Dr Imran Uppal and seeking registration of cases under blasphemy law by Maulvi Iqbal Haider, directed the government to block websites that contained sacrilegious cartoons. The federal government, Ministry of Telecommunication, PTA, PEMRA, Yahoo Inc. USA, and the websites themselves were cited as respondents in the petition.
Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudry is reported to have observed in the preliminary hearing, “We will not accept any excuse or any technical objection on this issue as it concerns sentiments of the entire Muslim Ummah”. In the next hearing on 13th March, PTA informed the court that the list of 12 sites provided by the petitioners had been blocked throughout Pakistan. On 20th March, Maulvi Haider’s counsel also asked the court to prosecute PTA for criminal negligence since the websites remained available in Pakistan for seven months and called for registration of cases under Section 295-C of the Pakistan Penal Code according to which the death sentence can be awarded to those using derogatory remarks against the holy Prophet (PBUH) by words, writing or any imputation.
Despite the ban, the 12 websites and any others ending in blogspot.com can still be viewed in Pakistan even now, since the technical nature of the Internet is such that one can use a number of tools such as proxy servers to circumvent the ban. Also, apart from those 12, there are millions of other websites that contain similar if not more offensive material that remain openly accessible; this makes the ban look ironic since sites such as the Church of Satan website which enlists devil worshippers online continues to be accessible to Pakistani netizens.
The truth is that one can’t ban all such sites because once one starts doing that, firstly the Internet speed of the entire country slows down since each website browsed by everyone at any part of the country at any time would first have to pass through a filtering process. Secondly one might ban a million website on one given day but the very next day the same or millions more new websites carrying similar offensive material might crop up and huge resources, not to forget huge funds, would have to be allocated to constantly monitor and update the blocked sites databases. Thirdly, millions of other harmless sites, such as in the current case of BlogSpot, get unnecessarily banned as a result in the process.
The fact is that moral policing, at least in the online world, doesn’t work. Ever since the Internet was launched in the country, the government tried its best to block pornographic material available online and still maintains a database running into thousands to block such sites at PIE’s end, but even now pictures from Amazing Hotties Club and the likes remain just a click away for anyone’s viewing. Unfortunately, as absurd as it may sound, the only way to ensure complete blockage of any such objectionable material online is to ban the Internet from the country altogether. But is that the right solution in the interest of the people of Pakistan? The court case continues and shall rule over that. "