Can I have a Mc Sufi Burger please?

"I wrote this song in a spiritual sense. You know Sufi Sufi?"
My friend burst out laughing. He couldn't believe I had said that. Honestly, I couldn't either. It was a big deal that I did as I do consider myself very liberal and very spiritual, not by default but by virtue of journey. Therefore, I totally respect and subscribe to this strain of liberal faith and I believe in it and the peace and good will it brings.
Was I was mocking Sufism? I would never do that. I was mocking the pseudo Sufi zone that we have entered in the last five years or so. The Sufi-Sufi zone.
The Sufi-Sufi zone is an arid space. The earth's cracking and the sun's scorching. It hasn't rained in ages and it is unlikely to rain soon. There is one person in a black robe and maybe a red stole, hair fizzy and running wild with the aid of giant size fans. This person looks skywards or dances in circles with arms pointed towards the sky. There may be one or two other people in the frame (celebrity or non celebrity), contrast colour outfits, silver chokers and fizzy hair.
There are  thirty people from the production unit and a song playing to the next village. That's Sufi-Sufi.
And who qualifies to be a Sufi-Sufi artist?
Someone who has grown ones hair, wears a long robe (for the shoot) or a black kurta with stole, lets his/her unwashed hair down, moves his/her arms and neck in semi-trance gestures as he/she lip syncs his/her new song that has the influence from Punjab and Pakistan if not Persia and takes the whole image so seriously that he/she goes playing the role at music channel interviews, concerts, page three parties and even with people who have known him/her in his/her original version (which is far removed from anything S).

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and the likes of him (by that I mean the other original Sufi qawwals who subscribe to Sufism and not the self proclaimed Nusrats of India ;-) who took their music video role way too seriously) made popular a certain faith through their music. If I were to define being Sufi, it's the joy of being a liberal spiritualist. Someone who finds gods love in everything in life and for whom many such worldly lines blur out and finds expression in whatever he does ( not necessarily music, one could be passionately constructing bridges for all you know). It is a life of great and equal devotion to god and people lived with love and a feeling of equality and that message is translated through music. You want to meet a real Sufi, go to Bengal. Take a train to Bolpur, meet the Bauls.

Anyone can tell a true Sufi from a fake one. Nobody dare say a thing when it is a high profile Sufi event in question. I do not doubt or question the intent of the concept or the organizers. Where will they find real Sufis year after year? There is only one Abida Parveen and some other lesser known Sufi Qawwals and artists but they can't be singing the same songs year after year (which they do anyway). So, the noble organizers have no choice but to include the Sufi-Sufi brigade of artists as the show must go on.
But really? Shall we take a deep breath and think honestly, if it would be of greater service to Sufism if one stopped the promotion of fake Sufi's and their diluted interpretation of Sufi music on such platforms.

Please let us, for the sake of such beautiful faith not confuse rustic vocal qualities, high pitched texture in male or deep low end husky qualities in female vocalists with Sufism. It's not all that frivolous.

P.S. Please dont steal my idea of a McSufi Burger. It's a really bad idea.

8:49 AM - 3 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

MUSIC AND LYRICS: THE INDIAN VERSION
Category: Music

There is a song in Hindi about love, the moon and stars and a lover who makes you wait and feel completely miserable. Have you heard it?
Yes I know there are at least 100 songs with the same words and thought so which one am I talking about?
Well they are all more or less the same so there are no wrong answers.
There is a song about a sixteen year old virgin girl. There is a song about this full grown man who has fallen in love (or whatever the chemical equivalent is) and doesn't know what the hell has happened to him. He has symptoms such as loss of appetite and focus, amnesia and obsessive compulsive disorder (which is equal to love in popular cinematic language) and he doesn't know man!
There is this song about how eyes meet and first love happens.
There is this song about how we are so young, life is cool and we are the best.
There is a song about the 'barish ki boondey' evoking a thirst that god knows what can quench!( this one makes me feel really sick)
Yes, for each of the above, every Indian will think of a different song and chances are there will still be a few unpicked options.
I was born in the times of Ramanand Sagar. I grew up by a few inches watching the arrows coming from left of screen and the right of screen and blowing up in graphic fumes. Today, as I joke about our repeat songs, I figure we are like that.
We, the children of the Ramayana. We will watch the Ramleela, we will watch the never ending series on TV, we will hear the same story to sleep, watch movies if there are any made on the same, read comic strips and do it year after year and generation after generation and pretend that we are experiencing it for the first time. Its not a good thing or a bad thing.We like to know what we already know. We like stories whose endings we can tell. We have a film industry thriving for so long on this on attribute and it will live a million years, the same way.
So, what's the problem?
My generation of people, who listen to and love the thinking songs and completely adore their Bonos, Eminems and Dylans, also love their Bollywood. Come on, we do (secretly, but we do). We pretend to be looking elsewhere but our FM stations play these repeat songs on the same subjects with the same words almost in the same order and we love it. Same old brief, same old words, rearranged and set to new melodies, new production quality, and bingo!! We are surprised once again with a brand new I love you do you love me song or I cant live without you song!

 Do I have a problem with all this? No. I understand now, where it comes from and I may not subscribe to a huge portion of it. Also this is not the absolute truth. There is a lot of fresh thinking going on and I like a lot  of it.
I have no problem with the nasal guy who has reinvented his way into the heart of the Ramayana kids. I couldnt figure what it was that shot him to such popularity when I couldnt stand one song!
Its quite simple. He used the tried and tested big repeat formula of the industry and took it too a new level. Now he did nothing new, repeated the same old formula songs and repeated every single word over and over from the repeat sentence till such time that the words came spilling out of every open pore in our body.
He took us to a new threshold of familiarity and we couldnt figure why we either loved to love him or loved to hate him!

The thing is, everything that exists within culture has its place and validity. I can renounce television because I don't like Indian Idol and Ekta Kapoors Vision, but I cannot deny the validity of the sub culture they rule. I cannot deny the millions who love what they love.
Wishing away something you don't like doesn't make it unreal. I accept this reality as something that I am a part of and something that forms and reforms my thought, action and art. I have grown up over the last five years not just as an artist but in my beliefs as one.
It's sad but most people who have a voice, or think they have a voice which is meant to be heard, live with either all or some of the below mentioned notions. (so have I at some point)
-That if you are not a play back singer and a versatile one at that and have not sung for any Hindi film, you dont exist.
Therefore, you have to meet music directors and drop your demos where you'd sing difficult cover Bollywood songs and wait for them to call you.
-You must enter and win one of those Indian Idol type contests and fulfill the criteria set for the victor and also establish such a concept that 'you' are the best and only 'you' do it right.
-You have to be really skinny if not conventionally beautiful(applicable to women only), so the music company guys would like you and give you a music video break of love songs where you get to do three love songs, two sad songs, one peppy club mix and one remix of the cover song.
And if you are more traditionally trained, then be dressed in black and get loaded on a Sufi OK TATA truck on the Delhi-Jaipur highway with a camera crew and lip sync your way into history.

Now, in a country that's spilling with people, what happened to all the experiences?
Millions of voices and great ones at that and no body has something new to say?
Something personal, a piece of their life? Apart from a few rock bands that sing in English, why does no body want to talk about their life and their perspective?
Are we- the whole of India, still petrified, that our neighbours will find out!!
By perspective I dont mean washing dirty linen. I mean pure perspective. Things you see, things that see you, move you in life,your view and take on things from where you stand.
You are telling me that all one can see are bloody raindrops and moonlight beams! What a lie.

I love Gulzar.Yes, I love some of his moonbeam songs too, because his perspective is right. I love him because he is some kind of a prophet. A prophet is someone who takes you forward with his words. Someone who sees ahead and gives you words that shape your life. He wrote from where he stood, about the things he saw and the way he saw them.

To tell you the truth, it doesn't disturb me, this thing about people not voicing their thoughts. From time to time there will be people who will do that. This generation too will trigger forth its new thought.
People who see beyond and say new things.
Thankfully , I know this is true.
Who will listen? The same unpredictable Ramayana kids. If not all, at least a handful of them. Yes we don't know if they like it that way and there is only one way to find out.
With great hope and faith. 

3:42 AM - 2 Comments - 3 Kudos - Add Comment

THINGS ABOUT MUSIC
Category: Music

Starting today I begin posting my perspective on music.Indian music to be specific.  I open my mind to share the view that I have about this often too small to fit in and often too big to contain scene. The contradictions and the harmony of our sound and our existence within and without.
The first post will be up today. Do share your views with me.
Mahua 

1:31 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment