The day the music died, an epitaph was written not just of qawwal singer Amjad Sabri—the beloved of listeners across the subcontinent and the diaspora—but also of the soul of music. It revealed the fragility of Pakistan’s culturescape, sliding towards the abyss of barbarism, unable to protect its singers, artists and writers from the repercussions of imaginary acts of blasphemy.
Sabri’s murderers, the Taliban, who have adopted a joyless version of Islam, carry no music in their hearts or souls. Their tunes are the chatter of guns. Their lyrics are the death sentences read out to captives before their throats are cut in front of video cameras in shameful dingy rooms in some Peshawar slum. Their encores are explosions severing limbs and heads as drugged suicide bombers detonate their vests. The civilised world is hearing the orchestra of terrorism across the world, playing to the applause of darkness.
Today, the savagery transcends mere religious divides. A primitive war, between the philistines and civilisation, haunts the world, stark in its deadly simplicity. Follow the laws we give you, Allah ke bande or not. Obey or perish. Descend into the bottomless pit of despair and the loss of everything you cherish: love, art, music, dance, eclectic food and wine, theatre and cinema, and above all the freedom to be yourself. This is what the Islamists and hate-spewing mullahs espouse, whether it be in the killing fields of Iraq and Syria, the small town streets of Bangladesh or in the opulent palaces of the sheiks who finance global terror.
The cornerstone of every civilisation is the individual’s right to be himself or herself. In that sense, Sabri’s murder has made him immortal, but it was a price too high for enlightened societies to pay. The currency of terror is the blood of innocents.
The Islamic State massacred the Yazidis, who refused to convert to Sunni Islam. It wanted to annihilate the community in the manner the Cathars were wiped out by the Roman Catholic Church and the Inquisition. The history of Christianity is written in blood. Catholic kings burned thousands at the stake; witches were drowned in Britain, Europe and America. Savonarola, the reformist ‘knight of Christ’, was put to death in Renaissance Florence in 1498 for calling for ecclesiastical reform. For centuries, the church persecuted Jews and minorities, massacred women and children in pogroms like on Bartholomew’s Day in 1572 when French mobs murdered Protestants. The Inquisition killed hundreds in Goa. The church remained silent when Jews were being sent to gas chambers and the music of Jewish composers, Jewish art, sportsmen and businesses were either banned, persecuted or looted by the Nazis.
The church manufactured enemies for centuries, driven by the greed for money and possessions. Eventually, capitalism, which created wealth, rose. Its blowback was material disillusionment, which also weakened the church. The cult of the Taliban and IS seeks to fill the gap. Their vision is as bleak and regimented as Christian society’s during medieval times. The world doesn’t need another retro redux noir. To prevent this, the voices of Sabri and others, both known and unknown, who have been murdered by philistines, have to stay eternal. The music, simply, cannot die.
ravi@newindianexpress.com