Straight
Talk
The
Hypnotic Voice of
Abida Parveen
Nadia
Barb
Migraines
can be such an anti-social ailment. If it was not bad enough
that I was driving back from the usual school run on a Friday
afternoon in traffic hell, I was doing it with a head about
to explode. To add to that, I had booked tickets for the Abida
Parveen concert that evening for my mother, my aunts and myself
and it looked as if I was not going to have the pleasure of
an evening with Ms. Parveen. I arrived home and made the announcement
that it was going to be impossible for me to be able to attend
the function. We were supposed to leave at a quarter past
six and I sat forlornly watching the clock ticking away and
the rest of the group getting dressed to leave. At ten past
six I realised that I could actually move my head without
feeling like there was an earthquake around me and showing
last minute bravado, took a hasty decision to accompany the
others. I think I gave superman a run for his money no I did
not rush into the nearest phone booth as bespectacled Clark
Kent and reappear as hair slicked back underwear clad superman!
I was referring to the speed at which I transformed from languishing
invalid to concert going enthusiast.
For
once we arrived at the venue, in this case the Barbican Centre,
with adequate time to spare and as luck would have it, being
a deshi concert we were told that it was going to
start a little later than scheduled. So we sat and waited
and finally were informed that we could take our seats. When
we were seated inside the auditorium and the lights dimmed,
I got my first glimpse of the queen of Qawali in
person. She looked exactly as I had seen her on television.
Clad in a black shalwar kurta and cotton "chador"
(shawl), she greeted the audience with an easy grace and modesty
and sat down to start her performance. From the moment she
began to sing till the end of her renditions, all I can say
is that the rest of the auditorium disappeared and I was left
sitting in a world of my own enveloped in the mesmeric and
incredibly powerful voice of Abida Parveen. If music is a
form of worship then for a while the entire hall full of people
was privy to an uplifting and intense spiritual experience.
Her music was not just exquisite to the ears, but also food
for the soul.
For almost
over a decade the beautiful voice of Abida Parveen has swept
audiences into a trance with her scintillating and rhythmic
renderings of mystic poetry of the Sufi poets. Curious to
find out a little more about this woman with such an astounding
voice, I learned that Abida Parveen was born in Larkana, Sindh,
Pakistan, where her father, Ghulam Haider, ran a music school.
Her family was also near to shrines of Sufi saints and she
was brought up in an environment where deep mysticism, poetry
and music of Sufi saints were prevalent. She learnt music
initially from her father and then from the famous singer
Ustad Salamat Ali Khan. But to all intents and purposes, her
singing career took off after marriage to Ghulam Hussain Sheikh,
senior producer in Radio Pakistan.
Abida
Parveen seems to have carved a unique niche for herself, performing
all over the world to a diverse audience. As I looked around
me, although the majority of people were Asian, there was
a significant part of the audience that were not. As a female
Muslim singer of devotional music, it is laudable that she
is the only female allowed to sing at the shrines of the Sufi
saints. Abida herself said "I have turned to Sufis because
they have spoken to God and Man through the language of Music
- Sufism and music are inseparable and their message of love
and peace is universal". Her songs are mainly in Urdu,
Sindhi, Punjabi, Seraiki and Hindi, but her intense and exhilarating
concerts transcend the need for language, her voice able to
portray emotions behind the text that even words cannot at
times. In fact according to The Daily Telegraph (UK), 'Abida
Parveen is one of the world's great singers - even if you
can't understand her' and when her album 'Visal'
was released in 2002 the BBC's Peter Marshall wrote that,
"Parveen could sing a shopping list and have an audience
weeping". I did not understand all the songs myself but
the raw emotional power behind her singing was enough to touch
my soul.
During
one of her songs, we were rather surprised to see a man from
the audience get on stage and start dancing. He seemed to
be in somewhat of a trance, quite oblivious to the attention
he was creating. From where we were sitting it looked like
the security men were asking him to leave the stage but the
organisers of the concert thought otherwise and allowed the
gentleman to carry on. As unnoticeably as he had walked on
stage, he left without creating any scene whatsoever. In fact
by the end of the concert when the first few lines of "O
Laal Meri" rang out, everyone one was up and clapping
and singing "duma dum mast kalandar". Had
I been nearer to the stage I would have probably been up there
myself. I think we all came out feeling exhilarated and in
a haze of well being. All I can say is that I was grateful
to my migraine for giving me a brief respite and the opportunity
to be part of such an incredible experience because the moment
I stepped through my front door the earth started shaking…
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(R) thedailystar.net 2004
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