Review: Siren Song: Understanding Pakistan Through Its Women Singers by Fawzia Afzal-Khan

This review was originally published in SAMAJ on July 19, 2022. 

As a student of ethnomusicology trained in Hindustani classical music, I was intrigued by Fawzia Afzal-Khan’s latest book Siren Song: Understanding Pakistan Through Its Women Singers. Afzal-Khan – a professor of English and Gender Studies in the United States as well as a vocalist trained in the Hindustani tradition – uses case studies of selected female singers to explore some of the contradictions of Pakistani society. On the one hand, Pakistan is a conservative Muslim-majority state where many people believe that the performing arts in general are contrary to religious injunctions and that women singers are not “respectable” women. Yet, divas  “Madam” Noor Jehan (1926-2000) are widely celebrated and have legions of fans. Afzal-Khan thus wanted to provide a more nuanced depiction of Pakistani society at a time when many people in the West have a very stereotypical image of Muslims and particularly of Muslim women, whom they believe lack all personal agency and  are completely covered by the burqa. Clearly, the truth is not that simple. In this book, Afzal-Khan explores  the ways in which great singers like Malka Pukhraj (1912-2004), Roshan Ara Begum (1917-1982), and Noor Jehan employed their personal agency within the constraints of a conservative Islamic society to fulfill  their ambitions to become performing artists.

Afzal-Khan utilizes a framework resting on feminist and performance theory. In the Introduction, she defines the book’s objective : “…my aim is to provide interested readers with a sense of Pakistan’s cultural history from a different perspective than that extolled by official state narratives, as well as from orientalist accounts of ‘oppressed Muslim womanhood’ that circulate ad nauseam in Western media; in other words, a ‘herstorical account from below’, utilizing women singers as the key heuristic site from whence to develop this alternative reading…” (xviii).  She elaborates on this objective as follows: “I am interested less in the sociology of women singers’ lives, than in tracing the ways in which these singers’ performances ‘create cultural representations of gender identities’; representations that issue challenges to embedded cultural gender norms of Pakistan” (xviii).

Afzal-Khan situates her methodology within the discipline of cultural studies and describes her theoretical orientation as a “postcolonial feminist cultural studies approach” (xix).  She uses this approach in order to “understand the imbrication of issues of gender, class, religion, and postcolonial state history as they have impacted the lives and work not only of the women singers of Pakistan but also of their audiences, in a constantly evolving exchange that reflects or is shaped by shifting societal pressures and values; and, in turn, shapes and alters these same values and attitudes” (xx).

The Evolution of Hindustani Classical Music in Pakistan Since 1947

Ustads Amanat and Fateh Ali Khan, the stars of the Patiala Gharana, one of the most prominent vocal lineages in Pakistan

My article “The Evolution of Hindustani Classical Music in Pakistan Since 1947” has been published in Economic and Political Weekly (online).  The essay is adapted from my M.Mus Dissertation entitled “A New Explanation For the Decline of Hindustani Music in Pakistan”

I am posting an excerpt from the essay here. To read more go to: https://www.epw.in/engage/article/evolution-hindustani-classical-music-pakistan-1947

The 1947 partition of British India on religious lines significantly impacted Hindustani classical music in the parts of the colony that became modern Pakistan.  There is a consensus that, since the creation of the country, Hindustani classical music has declined in Pakistan.  Various reasons for this decline have been theorised: the contested status of music in Islam, Pakistan’s search for a national identity distinct from India’s, and the loss of patronage. In this paper, I trace the evolution of music in Pakistan since 1947, focusing mainly on the adaptive strategies employed by gharana musicians to continue performing within the new societal constraints. These adaptations include focusing on the less problematic genre of ghazal rather than khayal and fusing elements of Western pop into local styles (as exemplified by Coke Studio).

Review: The It Girl by Ruth Ware

Regular readers of this blog will know that I am a big fan of thrillers and particularly of dark academia.  Donna Tartt’s The Secret History is one of my favorite novels.  Other works in this genre that I have previously reviewed here include These Violent Delights and The Maidens.

Ruth Ware’s The It Girl is among the most anticipated thrillers of summer 2022.  Similar to The Maidens (which is set in Cambridge University),  the book is largely set at Oxford University.  It takes place in two timelines: the first at Oxford and the second in Edinburgh ten years later.  As the novel begins, Hannah Jones learns that John Neville, the Oxford porter who was convicted of murdering her best friend April Clarke-Cliveden (the titular “It Girl”) has died in prison.  While this should in some ways provide closure to Hannah’s trauma and her mourning for April,  she later learns that an investigative journalist and podcaster has doubts about Neville’s guilt. This leads Hannah to wonder if she helped convict the wrong man all those years ago and if April’s murderer got away with it.  She ends up investigating the case herself and in the process begins to suspect all her old college friends and even her own husband Will (who happened to be April’s boyfriend before she was murdered).