Challenging Orientalism Pt. 6

Playlist

Six international curators from the Norient community have researched contemporary music videos that re-imagine, parody, or deconstruct Orientalism. The final selection is presented in the virtual exhibition «DisOrient: Welcome to the Hall of Mirrors», which is part of the German festival Mannheimer Sommer. Here is the shortlist curated by anthropologist and musician Daniyal Ahmed, who focuses on Pakistan.

Some of the videos from Pakistan that resonate significantly or interestingly with the thematic concerns of this exhibition are slightly dated, most dating from the first decade of the 2000s, and in some cases even the late 1990s. I think the explanation for this is reflective of some historical particularities related to the way the dissemination of music and music videos have transformed in Pakistan.

Just at the start of the last decade (2010 onwards), due to copyright conflicts and monopolies, four of the major music channels in Pakistan, namely MTV Pakistan, Indus Music, Play TV, and AAG TV, closed down. Under normal circumstances, this gap could have been filled with YouTube, which was already popular, but in 2012, due to an anti-Islamic film on the website, Pakistan banned access to YouTube. This YouTube ban lasted until 2016! In 2014, the rapper and comedian Ali Gul Pir released a song titled «Kholo BC», which is a political satire and a taunt to those politicians vying for the ban to remain enforced. The song employs a layered wordplay between the English word «ban», the Urdu word chor (thief, referencing the politicians enforcing the ban), and perhaps the most popular cuss word in the country, bhenchod, sung as «Ban(chor)» to keep it clean. (Read Norient commentaries on this video here and here).

Music: Mughal-e-Funk
Video: Sadam Aqeel Khilji, Muhammad Umer Noor
Track: Akbar (Pakistan, 2020)

Lahore-based band Mughal-e-Funk’s instrumental track, named after the famous Mughal emperor, Akbar, is an audio-visual displacement in a multitude of ways. As the video begins, animated figures resembling Mughal miniature-style paintings, evoking 16^th to 18^th century Indian art forms, come to life. The Sitar hook that kicks off the song is soon followed by an unabashed drum roll that opens up the vortex to a funky Mughal adventure, symbolized by another Mughal miniature figure, except the emperor is donning shades and Mughal era gowns in the metallic hues of modern fabrics. The figures from these Mughal-era paintings are made luminescent and are superimposed on contemporary footage of architectural wonders of the Mughal Empire in Lahore. In the footage, we can see that the buildings are now in disrepair, but the ghosts of the ornately dressed figures from the past are grooving to the song and dancing around in them.

Just as the Sitar melodies are recontextualized to the funky downbeats, swinging basslines, and synthy chordal treatments in the instrumental interludes, the Mughal figures are recast in low-fi color schemes and trippy oscillations while fish keep swimming back to an historical place that only exists in the present imagination. The irony of the funky Mughals is compounded in the final scenes when the band’s performance footage appears across television sets in old shops, donkey carts, and huge screens in public gardens. The pervasive projection of the music all over the city and its public spaces can itself be read as a commentary on just how niche this sound actually is for the masses of Lahore.

Music: Peter Cat Recording
Video: Sachin Pillai, Suryakant Sawhney
Track: Floated By (India, 2019)

In this song, the cliché of the Indian wedding comes undone both sonically and visually. The song can be seen as a gripping depiction of the distance felt between modern, educated, middle, or upper middle class South Asian youth and the cultural traditions, rituals, and familial structures that their parents espouse. The song is an easy, smooth sailing, indie-jazz number in English – not necessarily something one would expect to come out of the Delhi of 2019. Its retro-jazz sonic signature, with big band orchestration and flavors reminiscent of the Canterbury scene but with laid back crooner vocals, deconstructs what a traditional Indian wedding should sound like.

Suryakant Sawhney, the band’s frontman, is pictured in a traditional white wedding sherwani suit with a sehra (the groom’s flower headdress). The bride too is dressed in a traditional red wedding dress and copious amounts of jewelry. Scenes of the groom driving to his wedding with his best mates (his bandmates here) are interspersed with unchoreographed family dancing, realistically depicting the quintessential «Big Fat Indian Wedding». The groom, the bride, and their friends are going through the motions of a traditional wedding while drowning out the sounds, rituals and traditions that are increasingly illegible to them, and instead replacing them with their own music.

Lyrically too the song conjures an idea of a cyclical floating through time, but with resistance to carve out a future that doesn’t crumble under the weight of tradition. Intoxicated, dancing to the moment, all the characters are embodying their jazz; itself a music about overcoming distances of class, time, and (musical) traditions.

Music: Biryani Brothers
Video: Tabish Habib
Track: Ikisvi Sadi (21^st Century) (Pakistan, 2018)

The female duo, Biryani Brothers, released their debut video for the song «Ikisvi Sadi», which means 21^st century. The video is potent with disjuncture across various themes and motifs. The visuals elicit a nostalgia for Pakistani television of the 1980s, always in counterpoint to the very contemporary synth-wave, retro-pop sound of the song. The 1980s were an incredibly interesting time in Pakistan, when the country was going through a period of de-modernization and self-Orientalization under the garb of «Islamization». The state was using law and policy, under the military dictatorship of General Zia, to force the society to adopt oriental notions of Islamic society, which were being pushed by the United States military to justify support for the war in Afghanistan. The period resulted in a host of anti-women laws and policies and a large-scale stifling, banning, and de-funding of the arts. Nevertheless, despite the myriad restrictions, this period is recalled as the «Golden Era» of Pakistani television.

The video draws on nostalgia for 1980s state television and imagery from the past to subvert gender roles. The video begins by showing the duo dressed as female newscasters, on whom dupattas (head scarfs) were forced by the military dictatorship. The rest of the scenes are deconstructions of old Pakistani TV ads with light-hearted gender jabs, for example, at the stupidity of the typical husband who whines about the tea his wife makes him, but when the wife puts biryani masala (spices for the country’s favorite rice dish) in it, he finds it to taste just fine. In the last scene too, the wife indulges in using the husband’s razor and then imitates the hyper masculine television ads for men’s razors – fist thumping, razor in hand.

The lyrics of the songs are an introspective meditation on the inner feelings of the Pakistani woman as she is thrust in to 21^st century modernity, holding back and not being able to say what she wants, finding that she can write more boldly than she can speak, and wondering if her saying anything will make any difference at all. The somber lyrical content and spacey soundscapes are a sharp relief to the seemingly casual and simply hilarious reversals in the video, which drives the underlying point home: these women know exactly what they are doing.

Music: Amrinder Gill feat. Fateh
Video: Sukh Sanghera
Track: Pendu (India 2014)

The word pendu is a popular slur in both Indian and Pakistani Punjab; it denotes that someone is from the pind (village). Calling someone pendu is a derisive adjective tantamount to calling them a village bumpkin uninitiated into cultured and urban life. In this song, Gill is challenging the equation of being White/westernized with being cultured and telling his White/westernized beloved that «You call me a pendu, and that isn’t right». Gill even says that true aish (luxury) is in his village. When a migrant arrives in the West, he loses not just his home but the social privilege he enjoyed back home. To reassert this privilege, the video replaces the big tractors that were status symbols in the village with big jeeps in the West. The choice of vehicle also evokes the lifestyle of an American hip hop star. This is also reflected in the song’s pop style electronic beats, mild autotune, and Punjabi rap that aspires to that type of global swag.

Gill is portraying a migrant who has successfully «made it» in the West, but has not forgotten his roots. The entire video, barring some flashback shots, is shot in Canada. But the lush greenscapes, tulip fields, the wooden cottages, and big farmhouses are all standing in for the sights of the Punjabi countryside, which is also evoked in the lyrics. It is as if the Western countryside is reimagined as the ideal Punjabi village. This is a disorienting move on many levels. It is a powerful juxtaposition and the theme comes full circle when the woman, dressed earlier in Western clothing, appears for the last scene in a traditional dress and Gill’s look exclaims the realization of the latent equivalence that was there all along.

Biography

Daniyal Ahmed is a musician and anthropologist from Pakistan. He teaches at the Habib University in Karachi. As a researcher, he has a wide range of interests in the sonic cultures of South Asia including music and migration, sound and subjectivity. He is also co-founder of Karachi Community Radio (KCR), through which he curates, hosts, and produces a variety of experimental audio-visual shows and broad-based artistic collaborations. As a multi-instrumentalist, he plays in a number of formations; including his own transnational music project, Taranum. Follow him on Instagram.

Links

Ali Haider Habib: «Pulling the Plug on Art» (Norient)

Manal Faheem Khan: «A Finger to the Establishment» (Norient)

Published on June 23, 2020

Last updated on August 21, 2020

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Challenging Orientalism Pt. 3

Playlist

by Neil van der Linden

Six international curators from the Norient community have researched contemporary music videos that re-imagine, parody, or deconstruct Orientalism. The final selection is presented in the virtual exhibition «DisOrient: Welcome to the Hall of Mirrors», which is part of the German festival Mannheimer Sommer. Here is the shortlist by curator Neil van der Linden, who predominantly focuses on videos from Saudi Arabia.

Music: Alaa Wardi
Video: Nina Najjar, Alaa Wardi
Track: Evolution of Arabic Music (Saudi Arabia, 2016)

«Evolution of Arabic Music» by Alaa Wardi is a mash-up of 42 Arabic songs from the 1930s to the 2010s, performed a cappella. Alaa Wardi (*1987) was born in Riyadh, and he is of Iranian origin. His signature output is YouTube videos in which he combines several video registrations of alter egos of himself singing a cappella or imitating instruments. They became a sensation, paying homage to and at the same time parodying popular Arabic, English, Bollywood, and K-pop songs, and even Shakira’s «Waka Waka», featuring Jeddah-born Korean-Vietnamese comedian Wonho Chung.

The video «No Woman, No Drive» (2013), styled after Bob Marley’s «No Woman, No Cry», was a satirical comment on the Saudi Arabian policy of banning women drivers. In 2019, Wardi released a video covering songs made famous by the Lebanese singer Fairuz. Failing to see the humor in the video, Fairuz threatened legal action if Wardi refused to take it down. This hasn’t prevented followers from copying the video and putting it online in their turn.

Music: Majed Alesa
Video: 8ies Studios
Track: Samry King (Saudi Arabia, 2015)

«Samry King», a videoclip produced by Majed Alesa, is a humorous paraphrase of a traditional Saudi Arabian song. But there is more to it than this. The samry genre hails from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. It is upbeat, danceable music meant to boost energy for those staying up during a traditional night gathering. «Samar» means staying up at night in social gatherings. It involves singing traditional poetry accompanied by drums, while two rows of men, swaying seated on their knees or dancing upright, are chanting and clapping to the rhythm. Here, you can find an example of traditional samry, and here you can find a more authentic performance of the same song that is being parodied in the «Samry King» clip.

The clip parodies ancient Saudi Arabian traditions and at the same time pays respect to them. The skillfully produced video may also be seen as a statement against the slick but also mass-produced clips coming from Cairo and Beirut, the legendary centers of the Arab media industry, that until recently dominated the Arab culture world. While perfecting their art and using a song that the music authorities in Cairo and Beirut previously considered «primitive», these ambitious Saudi Arabian youngsters seem to say: «Hey we’re here! We now not only have the financial resources, but we are also going to show you that we are not going to ignore our own culture». And they can do it in a funny way, taking themselves seriously by seemingly not taking themselves too seriously. Adding the word «King» to the track’s title, like in Burger King, probably hints at how the artists see themselves: poking fun at the idea of readying samry for contemporary mass consumption, and poking fun at the consumerism that has taken over so much of life in the Gulf states. It is also maybe a pun on the supposed alpha male-role that society assumes these young men should take on. (And perhaps there is also a slight allusion to the ruler of the Kingdom?)

The text is from a traditional poem by Soliman bin Shuraim and is in heavy local dialect from the Najd, the large central region of the Kingdom. Even many Saudi Arabians can hardly understand all of it. This is what Reem Omer El Badawi, born and raised in the KSA, and having worked there as visual artist and art practitioner, made of the text: «Generally, I can tell you the words are about greeting a lover that shows up after being absent, and scolding that lover for being away, that it’s not fair, speak up if you got anything to say, I would believe you, I already got what I deserved, say what’s in your heart, don’t be shy …». Another friend was able to translate a few lines as well: «Allah welcome thou who leaves and hastens his coming back. Who comes without slowing down. My heart wants him and I myself am like fire.»

Music: Majed Alesa
Video: 8ies Studios
Track: Hwages (Saudi Arabia, 2016)

This video shows three women in full niqab (female headwear that leaves only the eyes uncovered) entering a car, all three of them sitting in the back seat, with an obese boy behind the wheel. The title of the song translates to something like «worrying», «concerning ideas that come to your mind», «obsession», or «premonition». The clip is from 2016, when King Salman was in power for a year. Two years later, women would be allowed to drive themselves, but that was not the case yet at that time.

The clip comically commentates on the tendency of Saudi Arabian parents to pamper their children, especially sons, with excess amounts of sweets and soft drinks. The girls get out of the car on skateboards, and it turns out that under their niqabs they wear colorful dancing dresses. They participate in other sports as well and eventually go to visit a fairground. Remarkably, at 1:16 a cardboard portrait of Donald Trump appears, who had just been elected as president, in a sort of gallery (a shooting gallery?) with the text «House of Men» («men» written in Arabic according to local dialect).

The music by itself is a quite bland disco version of traditional Saudi Arabian dance music, with the girls’ voices accompanied by synthesizers. With their niqabs covering most of their heads, you never see their mouths singing. This helps circumvent the rule promoted in some circles that it is forbidden for men to watch women singing, based on the idea adhered to by some that seeing a woman moving her lips singing is the same as seeing her showing her genitals. Yes, that is what some fundamentalists say! In the clip it is obvious at the same time that the makers don’t support that idea.

Although Saudi Arabian people could see all the clips from anywhere in the world on TV, in the kingdom itself in 2016 the rules for what officially could be shown were still strict, and the clip seems to satirize this. After a slow section starting at 1:47 (something unusual in regular electro-disco), featuring a woman seemingly singing solo (but you can’t see her lips moving due to the face covering), several changes in rhythm and pace occur from 2:09 on. The video shows the girls ending up in a discotheque, still in full niqab, but dancing frantically in a way that at that time maybe was already quite daring.

Music and Video: UTURN Entertainment
Track: Al aghani al wataniat al saudiat abr al zaman | Anghany_lil watan (Nationalist Saudi Songs Through Time – We Sing for the Nation) (Saudi Arabia, 2015)

This is an interpretation of nationalistic Saudi Arabian songs from a few decades ago, and a parody on how Saudi Arabian, and in fact many videoclips from all over the Arab world, were made for years: low video and broadcasting quality and most being either straightforward semi-live (grainy) video-recordings in a studio, or portrayals of the performers playing with a romanticized landscape as backdrop. This was the situation until around 2000. Since then, gradually more and more Western clips were broadcasted, and also some more advanced Turkish clips, followed by Lebanese and Egyptian clips. While the whole Middle Eastern media industry gradually came into Gulf-based investors’ hands, the Gulf’s own music artists and video producers became more ambitious. This clip shows this evolution in a tongue-in-cheek way. And then, just like the previously discussed clips by Alaa Wardi and Majed Alesa («Samry King»), it is possible that the absence of women in many of the clips featuring male performers not only follows the rules, but also satirizes them.

This video is made by a production company named UTURN and – like it is the case with Majed Alesa – its production quality and approach suggest that the makers have a background within the world of commercial advertisement or broadcasting. UTURN’s YouTube channel suggests so too. All this demonstrates a full-blown thriving audiovisual industry in the making, enabled by the current circumstances, with some of the most creative participants taking matters into their own hands, navigating between traditional rules and new possibilities.

Music: MSYLMA
Video: Omar El Sadek
Track: Dhil un Taht Shajaret Al Zaqqum (Saudi Arabia, 2019)

The next clip takes things in a different direction. Asking around about the meaning of the name of the somewhat secretive artist, I was referred to Musaylimah, short for Musaylimah al-Kadhdhāb (Musaylimah the Arch-Liar died in 633). Musaylimah «was a preacher of Hanifism (…) and one of a series of people (including his future wife) who claimed prophethood in 7^th-century Arabia. He is considered by current Muslims to be a false prophet» (Wikipedia 2020a).

The matter gets even more intriguing if one realizes that, according to the Quran, zaqqum is a tree that «springs out of the bottom of Hell»: the «cursed tree» (Wikipedia 2020b). The Quran text says: «Surely the tree of the Zaqqum is the food of the sinful. Like dregs of oil it shall boil in (their) bellies, like the boiling of hot water» (Sura 44:43–46.). According to some Islamic scholars, the inhabitants of hell are forced to eat the tree’s fruits, which tears their bodies apart and releases bodily fluids as punishment. Others suggest that the tree is grown from the seeds of the evil deeds of the sinners. Therefore, the devilish fruits are the fruits of the bad actions committed over their lifetimes. The 12^th century poet and philosopher Ibn Arabi stated that the tree stands for the arrogant self. In different regions, the name zaqqum has been correlated to various species such as euphorbia abyssinica (Eastern Sudan), the principal euphorbia tree (Northeast Africa), balanites aegyptiaca, the Egyptian balsam tree (Jordan), and nerium oleander, one of the most poisonous commonly grown garden plants (Türkiye). In conclusion, the artist touches (I don’t know exactly how taboo these topics otherwise could be, but I would be inclined to say «dares» to touch) on some of the most essential and at the same time mystical parts of Islamic theology on the concept of hell, as part of a song. One might assume that the track and its album of the same name would have been banned in the KSA before 2019.

In international electronic music circles, the album was well-received. The Quietus described it as a «deliriously narcotic ear-worm that can’t be avoided» (Burnett 2019) and Moroccan-Israeli producer Avi Wiseman wrote in a Facebook comment: «Just finished listening, its unusual texture, with time-stretched feeling, makes me feel like I’m stepping on the same spot, not advancing anywhere. Like being stuck in concrete. Very fresh!».

Meanwhile, this emotional-techno-gloomy music and imagery finds its parallel in some of the contemporary Iranian electronic music, such as Mo Zareei, Ata Ebtekar, Siavash Amini, Sote, Rojin Sharafi, Sara Bigdeli Shamloo & Nima Aghiani, etc.

Extra: Two Songs Not Related to Saudi Arabia

Music: Flamingods
Video: Barbu.tv
Track: Rhama (UK/UAE, 2016)

The Flamingods were founded in the UK by Kamal Rasool, who is Bahraini and who for a while operated from Dubai, along with Charles Prest, who was then working in Dubai as well. The clip of this song from 2016 refers to a subculture practice that is popular among Pakistani laborers in Dubai, a certain kind of ritual wrestling called kushti. On YouTube, the band describes the video as follows: «The video shows the culture surrounding the wrestling, and the symbolism and ritual behind it; as well as flashes of everyday Pakistani life in Dubai» (Flamingods Music 2016).

Music: Homayoun Shajarian / Sohrab Pournazeri
Video: Alireza Latifian
Track: Arayesh Ghaliz (Iran 2014)

Homayoun Shajarian from Tehran is a star by his own right in Iran, but he is also the son of the venerated Mohammedreza Shajarian, the most renowned living singer of the Iranian classical tradition. Homayoun follows in the footsteps of his father, singing in the Iranian classical style, but he also takes other directions. His father sang in favor of the movement against the last Shah, but was soon silenced by the fundamentalists of the Islamic Revolution. Later, he was one of the first to start singing again, now regularly criticizing the Ayatollah leadership. Because of his popularity he was untouchable.

During this time, Homayoun came up in the music field. He excels in the classical Iranian music tradition, like his father, but for the Iranian audience he also sings crooner-like pop songs. And he also explored more experimental things. In this recording and clip from 2014, he sings a text by the Sufi poet and philosopher Rumi, who was born in Balkh, now part of Afghanistan, but then part of the Iranian empire. Rumi spent the last years of his life in Konya, Türkiye. So, three nations claim him. Iran not wholeheartedly though, as the official religious stance has a somewhat aloof relationship with Sufism. In a way, the choice for a Rumi text is somewhat political, about which the government can’t do much because of Rumi’s popularity and the unanimous high praise of the literary value of his poetry.

The clip is a brilliant animation of illustrations in the style of Persian miniatures mixed with elements of Hollywood animated acrobatics. The clip plays with the two-dimensionality or reversed vanishing points in most Persian miniatures, turning into an almost three-dimensionality perspective that begs for a 3D version to be released. Iranian graphic designers would be up to this task.

List of References

Burnett, Joseph. 2019. «MSYLMA». The Quietus. April 2. Accessed June 15, 2020. (http://www.thequietus.com/articles/26260-msylma-dhil-un-taht-shajarat-al-zaqum).

Flamingods Music. 2016. «Flamingods - Rhama [Official Music Video]». YouTube. April 7. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oofBlIkwK5w).

Wikipedia. 2020a. «Musaylimah». Wikipedia. Accessed June 15. Version from June 13, 12:44 (UTC). (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musaylimah).

Wikipedia. 2020b. «Zaqqum». Wikipedia. Accessed June 19. Version from June 8, 6:33 (UTC). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaqqum).

This playlist has been compiled in the context of «DisOrient: Welcome to the Hall of Mirrors». A virtual music video exhibition by Norient for Mannheimer Sommer (July 12–22, 2020). Because of the Corona pandemic, the festival took place as a virtual event. Thanks to Reem Omer El Badawi, Christophe Beaufays, Mahasen Al Mahasneh, and Mohammed Al Sudairi for helping to interpret the topics, and thanks to Reem Al Dabbagh for bringing to my attention the «Samry King» video song some years ago.