Chaotic Karachi: Expressions for Sanity

Podcast

Episode 19 of the TIMEZONES podcast series, co-initiated and co-produced by Norient and the Goethe-Institut. According to the rapper and comedian Ali Gul Pir, Karachi is the most misunderstood place in the world. For TIMEZONES, he produced an episode that will give you a «real» feel of what it’s like to be an artist in this city of a million plus dreams, hopes, and problems.

A world leading magazine called Pakistan «the most dangerous place in the world» but take it from Ali Gul Pir, who has lived most of his life there: «It’s an amazing place. Karachi has given me my identity, my voice, and space to express.» In this podcast episode, he meets artists that he’s friends with, to talk about how they use collaborations and work to express themselves, and he also discovers the hurdles of a Pakistani female guitarist.

→ full transcript of episode 19

Credits

A podcast by Ali Gul Pir

Co-initiated and co-produced by Norient and the Goethe-Institut

Featuring: Babar Mangi, Sarah Waqar, Shehzad Ghias, Gul Muhammad Recorded at BigFoot Studios

Includes a bonus talk, moderated and produced by Rafay Mahmood, featuring Bilal Ali

Sampled tracks/sounds
00:58 – Bigfoot Music feat. Gul Mohammad: «Haiderum»
03:56 – Ali Gul Pir X Babar Mangi: «Ghareeban Ja Khwab»
04:54 – Sehra music recorded by Babar Mangi (unreleased)
07:42 – Bigfoot Music feat. Kami Paul, Gul Mohammad & Khurram Iqbal: «Maslat»
09:54 – Sarah Waqar: «Nothing Else Matters (Acoustic Instrumental)»
15:13 – Babar Mangi: «Ghareeb Ka Bar»
16:13 – Sound from a political address

Artistic Editor: Suvani Suri
Project Management: Hannes Liechti
Video Trailer: Karrl
Jingle Voiceover: Nana Akosua Hanson
Jingle Mix: Daniel Jakob
Mastering: Adi Flück, Centraldubs
Artwork: Šejma Fere
Copy Editing: Kathrin Hadeler

Listen on

→ Listen to further TIMEZONES episodes

Featured Artists

Babar Mangi is a rapper, writer, and producer from the province of Sindh, Pakistan. He has a film degree and is also part of a rap group called Indus Valley Squad. Follow him on Instagram, X, Facebook, Spotify, or TikTok.

Sarah Waqar is a guitarist and drummer who learnt music at the prestigious National Academy of Performing Arts in Karachi, Pakistan, and is currently teaching there. She has performed with many musicians and has done a lot of collaborations with Eastern musicians as well. Follow her on Instagram, Facebook, or Spotify.

Gul Muhammad is from the Pakistani Hoshiyarpur gharana and is the grandson of Ustashi Ghulam Muhammad. Gul is a sarangi master who is credited with not only spreading classical music in Pakistan through his works but also teaches classical music at Karachi Arts Council. He is also a member of the acclaimed musical group called Sounds of Kolachi. Follow him on Instagram.

Shehzad Ghias is a Pakistani comedian and podcaster who has a Masters in theater and has performed in several countries. His podcast The Pakistan Experience is one of the most watched podcasts in the country. Follow him on Instagram, X, Facebook, or YouTube.

Bonus Talk

Can a Huge Crowd Become a Huge Audience?
moderated and produced by Rafay Mahmood, featuring Bilal Ali

While Karachi is a melting pot of various cultures, foods, and languages, its creative producers, particularly musicians, live every day with looming uncertainty. A city of over 20 million people is fighting over resources such as water and electricity and yet the musicians here keep pumping new life into its fabric and carving a new tomorrow for themselves with every passing day.

Karachi is not hostile to its musicians, the audience loves them, but a lack of a proper music ecosystem and soft control of political parties and in some cases religious outfits makes it really hard for the musicians and the crowd to connect. Every day is a struggle to survive as a musician, a good season of concerts might not come again so one has to live with a backup. Just a few brands who are interested in investing in a select few musicians aren’t enough to turn the huge mass that is Karachi into an audience. The people are thirsty for music, the artists are desperate to perform but the future is uncertain.

Chaotic Karachi: Expressions for Sanity by Rafay Mahmood, featuring Bilal Ali

Rafay Mahmood is a Karachi-based journalist, researcher, and commentator. Follow him on Instagram, X, or Facebook.

Bilal Ali is the front-man of the pop-electro rock band Kashmir. Bilal and his fellows rose to fame by clinching a widely known talent competition, Pepsi Battle of the Bands. Since then, Kashmir has released two albums and toured Pakistan as one of the newer bands catering to the Gen Z listeners. Bilal is now also working on his solo album. Follow him or his band on Instagram.

Playlist

With this playlist you get a flavor of what Karachi music used to be and what it is now. A selection by Pakistani rapper and comedian Ali Gul Pir with songs and tracks from his friends and artists of which he is a fan.

Trailer

by Karrl

The TIMEZONES podcast series plunges into the world of artists and their practices, asking: what does living and working in culture and the arts involve in different countries, cities, and contexts today? The artists’ thoughts on their moods, their social, political, and intellectual realities and their philosophies (of life) have been worked up into experimental audio collages.

The podcasts run the gamut of formats and content, from straight journalism to experimental and documentary approaches, ethnography and fiction, sound art, and improvisation. The TIMEZONES series endeavours to create new artistic forms of storytelling, listening and exchange across the boundaries of geography, time zones, genres, and practices.

The TIMEZONES podcast series is co-initiated and co-produced by Norient and the Goethe-Institut. This episode is supported by Pro Helvetia, Swiss Arts Council.

Biography

Ali Gul Pir is a rapper, writer, comedian, and actor. He has over eight million views on his songs and has been nominated for Hum TV Awards and won the innovation hero award by Google in 2012. He has acted in numerous television shows for ARY, Hum TV, Aaj TV, and Geo TV channel. International news channels have written about his work, such as BBC, Al Jazeera, and Norient. Ali is passionate about equality and freedom, his work is often about social injustices like corruption, harassment and many others. Follow him on Instagram, Facebook, X, Tik Tok, YouTube, or Spotify.

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Chaotic Karachi: Expressions for Sanity

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«TIMEZONES» – Episode 19. According to the rapper and comedian Ali Gul Pir, Karachi is the most misunderstood place in the world. This podcast episode will give you a «real» feel of what it’s like to be an artist in this city of a million plus dreams, hopes, and problems.

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Published on January 31, 2024

Last updated on March 05, 2024

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5 Videos from Moldova: Pluriversal Identity

Playlist

by DJ Borş aka Madalina

Aici Chișinău!

I've congregated my fellow space and time sharers (Chișinău, summer 2023) to create this playlist that is relatively representative of the chaotic blend of our identity and sense of belonging to this minuscule yet grandiose space. As part of the diaspora (as are 28.7% of Moldovans), I see belongingness and the concept of longing (dor) as closely tied to our sense of identity.

These songs and images, besides being fun and dancey, symbolize the identitarian limbo and relativity of our post-imperialist reality, caused by 106 years under the Russian Empire, 47 years under Soviet rule, 29 more years of in/direct Kremlin-led political rule (until current president Maia Sandu took office), and a continuous process of re-embracing formerly suppressed national/post-national identities.

My generation is re-evaluating the collective identity, questioning memory and history; we search for a more pluralistic understanding, where our identity is not one, but in constant change. After the fall of the USSR, our parents negotiated nationalities – Romanian/Moldovan/Soviet-nostalgics – Romanian being the culture and nationality we held before the USSR. Now, I’d like to think, we go beyond nationalism, considering a series of forms that have affected our existence. This, again, I’d like to think, helps us mold a trajectory moving forward.

The attention we now give to Bessarabian1 folklore is a way of decolonizing our culture, but also an effort of balancing the new pendulum shift toward Westernization and maintaining a distinct identity informed by pre-imperialistic ways re-expressed by us. The direction of the future is well known (i.e., globalization/EU agreement 2023), but is it really? How are we using music and image to create multiple directions for our diverse existences?

For everyone – I invite you to see Moldova as a pluriversal cosmos compacted into a mini-country. Pentru ai mei – vă invit să ne bucurăm de multilateralitatea noastră și să explorăm/experimentăm/dizolvăm/creăm un mâine AȘÁ (nu, așa-ș-așa)!2

*azi așa, da’ mâine (today it’s like this, but how about tomorrow?).

Music: Surorile Osoainu/Tălăncuța
Track: Lerule (Moldavian SSR, 1986)
Directed: Andrei Tamazlâcaru
Sequences from the film Tălăncuța: Anatol Codru (a Moldova-Film production)

Tălăncuța is the phenomenon of our culture, an expression of respect for the spiritual heritage of the people, the heritage that we collect bit by bit and return to the people. I would be very sad if this was all interpreted differently. The Osoianu Sisters are the heart of Tălăncuța…

Ditto. The Osoianu Sisters and the Tălăncuța ensemble are the carriers of folklore, putting it on a silver platter for my generation through their many collaborations and openness to making folklore accessible and malleable for «younger» genres. The legendary Andrei Tamazlîcaru, the founder of Tălăncuța, led folklore collection expeditions during which a large amount of little-known and unprocessed songs were collected and included in the ensemble’s repertoire – thank you for your service! The preservation of folklore is a whole topic of discussion, but for the sake of my argument, it stands as a way of rebuilding an identity that’s been desecrated and ridiculed by a bugged system. I mean… who takes a language and just changes its written form?3 It’s quite exciting to see rising interest in folklore, yet it’s time to start a more multifaceted conversation beyond the binary of folklore that is authentic/not, pure/not, correct/not. After all, you can’t spell folklore without folk = people = us and lore = to teach (although there are multiple etymologies). So, the question lingers – what did/do we learn to re/shape ourselves? (azi așa, da’ mâine?).

Music: Sergiu Cibotaru
Track: Troleibuzul 25 (2009)
Direction: Viorel Mardare
Editing: Viorel Mardare

Until 2000 we were another world, another continent, surrounded by grape leaves, civilized concomitantly. Until a trolleybus with red stripes came…

We can theorize and overanalyze what is the symbolism of this trolleybus along with the 2000s urban elements in the video (spoiler: it shows the shift from a Soviet bus ostanovka to a «post-Soviet»4 bus station), but this video represents a constant – the unity of our community (cliché, but hear me out). The star of this video is its director Viorel Mardare (no hard feelings, Sergiu), who created numerous music videos and commercials (like «Go on. Fruits from Moldova») that depicted the richness of our reality, with a sprinkle of nostalgia, and a bit of… contextual humor. When Viorel fell ill with cancer, the Chișinău community came together to celebrate his life and unity alongside it, even reuniting the legendary band Snails for a special «last» concert at the cancer treatment fundraising event. See the next video.

Music: Snails
Track: Blue Passports (2011)

We allow… (says everyone in the intro) ... the use of this video for the making of the video clip «Blue Passports».

I remember when Snails launched a call to the diaspora to send dancing videos featuring Moldova’s blue passport (now it’s red – we need a remix). As a model diaspora member, I abided, and so did many others. The unity I talked about in the previous video makes a comeback across borders. The 28.7% of Moldovans who migrated, we (yes, I speak for everyone) grab on to any real connection to our land (sometimes obsessively so), to any chance to feel that kinship that will never be the same once you’ve left. For a moment we microdosed a sense of belonging that dissolved our traumatic de-rootedness a bit. Moldova sees a clear growing economic and cultural schism between the diaspora and local population, where our economy is highly dependent on remittances, our summers and holidays are packed with the diaspora «stimulating the economy», and an influx of returned young professionals bringing the «best practices» from their studies abroad.

I invite my diasporans to be more vulnerable; maybe it’s alright to say that it’s a bit overrated over there, or it’s ok to come home during the summer and feel like a boss when you pay for everyone’s jinică (wine) and gălușca (food). But how much do you miss home? How hard is it to not understand the new street lingo? And how angry are you for having to leave because of all your debt? Because of uncertainty? Because of hope?

I invite the locals to be more vulnerable. Maybe it’s annoying to see the privilege of geographical mobility, the work-from-homes with foreign salaries. Why do they think they know more? But how much do you miss them, though? How much do you wish your country was a choice?

Let’s sprinkle some vulnerability and see that we’re all lost, and we’re still one.

Back to Snails, my favorite band from 2008–2011. On this legit platform, I want to officially take the opportunity and direct a message to the band – ap’ când? Ni-i dor! (When? We miss it!)

Music: Via Dacă
Track: Mai lin (2023)
Image: Maria Guțu (from the documentary Printre stânci), Valentin Bostan
Editing: Valentin Bostan

Smoother, smoother, wormwood flower, in my heart…

Ditto. Let me explain. In our folklore, «wormwood and basil are considered to bring good luck in love… girls used to wash themselves in the morning [with wormwood- or basil-infused water] to be more beautiful or to have luck in love», explains Albinel Firescu, head of the Ethnography Section of the Gorj County Museum. Via Dacă takes the mysticism from our folklore and explores the magic of our land, making sense and making felt what we tend not to let ourselves feel. The video is special because it uses snippets from Maria Guțu’s documentary Printre stânci, depicting life in a northern village. It reflects the song (titled «smooth»’) by showing how smoothly time flows in the village, the beautiful moments shared with the other-than-human, the collective understanding, and the ease of love (all kinds of loves). Let’s wash ourselves with wormwood water and fill ourselves with loooooove.

Music: Dim the Light (feat. Mic-ul Psih)
Track: Accept Your Inner Bîc (2021)
Script, direction, editing: Adrian Gușan
Director of photography: Lucian Spataru

You gotta accept your inner bîc.5

This music video reflects the increased self-reflection of my generation about our lack of emotional intelligence and other… shortcomings (blame our Soviet parenting). Not sure. Haven’t consulted the artists (because I wasn’t sure this video was gonna make the cut ahhahahaaha jk jk). For me, it seems to adopt a sense of pohuism,6 that, I argue, should rather be a sign that maybe there is an alternative way to… not be a bîc? (băi băieți, șiți mujici, hai vă rog la terapie).7 Anyway, the video is good, with an intriguing storyline, loads of local nuances, and niche references. It is also filmed in the legendary Pro Sănătate bar (the business lunch cantina unexpectedly turned into the social center of the andărgraund).

Appendix

Because I need some local cumătrism8 points, here are some other videos that are legit and wonderful, but I just didn’t have the word count to fit them in.

1. Bessarabia is a historical region in Eastern Europe, bounded by the Dniester river on the east and the Prut river on the west, where the nation of Moldova is currently. Folklore precedes nationalism, hence the terminology used.
2. Translation (Romanian): For my people – I invite you to celebrate our multilateralism and explore/experiment/dissolve/create a tomorrow!
3. Throwback to when the Soviets took the Romanian language, changed its alphabet from Latin to Cyrillic, and called it Moldovan LOL, jk #toosoon. Also, never say «Moldovan» language.
4. «Post-Soviet» is a loaded word. Read Paula Erizanu’s (Erizanu 2021) article to learn more.
5. Bîc is a concept that depicts moronism and unfilteredness with a flare of toxic masculinity vibes.
6. Pohuism is a concept, a movement, a lifestyle, that embodies the «doesn’t really matter, I do me, and imma embrace it, y’kno»?
7. From Romanian: it might be beneficial for men who possess toxic masculinity characteristics to consider therapy.
8. Cumătrism is a concept similar to favoritism/cronyism/nepotism but like, cute, unless it’s in politics, or with politicians you don’t favor. ;)

List of References

Erizanu, Paula. 2021. «30 Years after the Collaps of the Soviet Union, Is It Time to Finally Stop Using the Term ‹Post-Soviet›?». New East Digital Archive. August 31. (https://www.new-east-archive.org/features/show/13044/30-years-independence-ussr-term-post-soviet-use).