After the three-day long 16th Mystic Music Sufi Festival ended at Alhamra Cultural Complex last Sunday Mian Yousuf Salahuddin said such events need to be organised more frequently in the country so as to “help fight extremism” in Pakistan.
“Sufism and Sufi festivals need to be encouraged to promote moderation in the society, and the government should sponsor such events across the country at all levels,” he said.
This moderation and counter-terrorism is inherent to Sufi music and was palpable in the aura throughout the three-day festival.
The list of performers on show further stamped the musical narrative. The prominent among them were Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, Huaira Channa, Arif Lohar, Badar Qawal, Faiz Chisti, Muneer Chisti, Bushra Mrvi, Maham Sohail, Sheema Kirmani, Nighat Chaudhry, Ustad Rafaqat Ali Khan, Krishan Lal, Sain Zahoor, Sanam Marvi, Javeed Bashir, Sabir Sain, Gonga Sain, Methoo Sain, Taj Balidi, Pappu Sain, Nawab Khan, Shaukat Ali, Farid Ayaz Abu Muhammad and Nawab Akhtar Zahri.
Almost simultaneously in Karachi, on the final day of the Karachi Literary Festival Salman Ahmed was narrating the tale of how he and Junoon came up with the Sufi rock genre by merging the two. Salman Ahmed too, as he has done many times in the past, talked about the ‘soft power’ of the genre.
But it was at the Alhamra Cultural Complex where that power was in full show, with an ullustrious array of the genre’s practitioners at their mighty best over the weekend.
Day One itself was the coming together of absolute giants, with Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, Arif Lohar, Papu Saein and Sheema Kirmani headlining the event.
Lohar brought all his trademark energy, encapsulated in his chimta, with tub-thumping all-time hits Jugni, Kalma Parhea Tere Naa Da and Mohabbat Daey Waaday. The dhols that formed the spine of the performance, went full throttle when Papu Sain and team climbed aboard the stage.
The vanguard of the mysticism on display was always going to be Rahat Fateh Ali Khan who combined the new and the old, the ghazal and the qawali, with Tu Kuja Mann Kuja, Mere Rashk-e-Qamar, Tumhein Dil Lagi, Ali Da Malang, Gorakh Dhanda, Damma Damm Mast Qalandar.
While Rahat Fateh Ali Khan’s closing performance was understandably the highlight of the show in terms of response and the popularity that he garners, as far as the narrative of moderation is concerned there were two performers before him who particularly contributed on that front.
Theseen Sakina’s Dhoom Charakra and Dama Dam Mast Qalandar created the trance in the audience associated with the genre, with lyrics fittingly coming from Bulleh Shah, as the dhamaal erupted in the arena.
Before her it was classical dancer Sheema Kirmani who personified the Sufi trance in her own dhamaal, aptly gave steps to Ameer Khusro’s words from Aj Rang Hai Ri Maa and Kalam-e-Rabia Basri.
“I was honored to be part of the Mystic Sufi Music Festival in Lahore organized by the Rafi Peer Workshop. I presented the journey of the Sufis… I started with the great mystic Rabia Basri and then moved on to the Indian Subcontinent where the great musical genius Amir Khusrau created the first Qaul and then the Dhamaal as it is practiced in Pakistan,” she told Arab News after the performance.
It was almost exactly a year ago that Sheema Kirmani literally personified the counter-terror act of defiance when she performed the dhamaal at Lal Shahbaz Qalandar’s dargah in Sehwan after 85 people had been killed and over 300 injured in a suicide bomb explosion at the site.
In October last year, another attack targeting the Fateh Pur Shrine compound in Balochistan’s Jhal Magsi district killed 18 and injured 25.
A year before that, in November 2016, 52 people were killed and 100 injured at a bombing in the Shah Noorani shrine in Balochistan’s Khuzdar district, while the dhamaal was being performed – just like the Lal Shahbaaz blast. In June, 2016 Amjad Sabri was assassinated by gunmen in Karachi.
The deliberate targeting of these shrines is as much a corollary of the clash between hardline Islam and its more moderate Sufi interpretations, and the rituals exclusive to either, as it is a tussle between narrow violent-laden bigotry and a more pluralistic ideological lens.
And so, every act of dhamaal, whether at a shrine or at a Sufi festival is act that stares at the jihadist narrative in the eye, and repudiates it with every beat.
Therefore, as much as one much laud the Rafi Peer Theaters for keeping the defiance going and echoing year after year, all moderate voices in the country should come together and reverberate in the musical mysticism of moderation.
And of course when you have the Who’s Who of the musical genre being the vanguards of the resistance, there can hardly be a more melodious counter-terror narrative.
