This is the story of an unlikely friendship between a death metal guitarist from Los Angeles and a struggling but brilliant young sarangi nawaz from Lahore. And a reminder of how YouTube and Facebook can deliver on their potential and really be a force for good.
Zohaib Hassan Khan is at the pointy end of a long line of Punjabi sarangi players that traces its roots to the mid 17th century. The family has proudly associated itself with the Amritsar gharana whose four-fingered approach to the sarangi as opposed to the usual three is its khasusiat (speciality). "This allows us to create many more combinations," Zohaib told me recently. "And it is much easier to play than with just three fingers."
Zohaib's story
"Even though my extended family included some of the greatest names in sarangi playing in Pakistan – Ustad Peeru Khan, Ustad Nathu Khan and Ustad Hussain Baksh Amritsari – for many years there has been no scope for the sarangi. None of my uncles taught their children the sarangi. What was the point? No one wanted to hear it. It had no value.
"My father was a bank officer on a small salary. And as a young boy I came down with polio. Paying for the several operations on my knees put my parents in a very tight position. So when I was about 13 or so my father said to me and my brothers, 'You better take up music to earn a living'.
"Of course, as teenagers we all chose pop instruments like the keyboards and drums. I took up the guitar. But once I heard my great uncle, Ustad Peeru Khan, play the sarangi I was enchanted. Around that time my uncles persuaded my father that I should take it up myself."
Raga Megh (live at Lahore Music Forum)
"I played for Radio Pakistan for about 10 years but really they didn’t value me at all. If they had a ghazal singer that needed accompanying, they might call me and pay me a couple of thousand rupees. And that too, six months later. You can see why sarangi players in Pakistan don’t own their own homes or drive cars.
"Sarangi is a difficult instrument. It takes 20 years to master and after about 10 years I got fed up. My father suggested I take up drums, which I did, but he was really torn. One day I found him weeping. He begged me to take up the sarangi again, even though there was not much hope of making a living. So in his honour, and that of my mother and all my family who have blessed me and prayed for my success, I went back to the sarangi."
Raga Chandrakauns (Lahore Music Forum)
David's story
David Berner grew up in Baltimore but moved to the suburbs of Orange County, staunch Republican territory in southern California, about 20 years ago. A music lover from a young age, David’s musical tastes are anything but conservative, and include a lot of experimental-avant garde-Jazz -metal bands with names like Secret Chiefs Three, The Melvins and Sigh. While he had played guitar in a local covers band, Nog, it was a chance aural encounter with the sarangi in the music of Secret Chiefs Three that shifted the trajectory of his life.
Like Zohaib, David and his high school buddy, Eric Shepherd, were blown away by the sound of the sarangi. "It seemed to be able to produce any sort of sound," David told me over Skype last week. "When you listen to Ustad Sultan Khan play, it is so relaxed and yet so versatile. You connect with all and every human emotion with the sarangi. It’s my main instrument now."
Obsessed, David searched the internet for "how to play sarangi" videos and eventually posted one of his own early attempts on YouTube. Several days later he got an email from Karachi from a man who introduced himself as the uncle of a sarangi player named Zohaib Hassan. "We noticed you are trying to play with four fingers. That is the style of the Amritsar gharana." The man promised to put David in touch with Zohaib.
Collaboration
The connection was made at a particularly low point in Zohaib’s life. His father and inspiration had passed away suddenly. The landlord was an unsympathetic sort of fellow who imposed noise curfews that restricted Zohaib’s practice and ability to give lessons. And he kept jacking up the rent. Zohaib’s family moved in with an aunt, also in Lahore’s Old City, but in such crowded premises it was impossible to give lessons via a poor Skype connection to someone on the other side of the world.
Even so, Zohaib agreed to teach David (who himself became good enough to recently contribute a sarangi track to an album by the Japanese metal band, Sigh.) Their friendship has blossomed over more than 4 years. Though David has never travelled to Pakistan, he and his friend Eric are now self-confessed obsessives of the Amritsar gharana and want to do anything they can to promote Zohaib and his music.
Although Zohaib was getting some recognition in Pakistan via the Lahore Music Forum and Tehzeeb Festival (both recent platforms to preserve and promote traditional music in Pakistan) his housing situation was critical. In 2013 David and Eric launched a crowd sourced fund raising campaign on Facebook and after contributing from their own funds were able to raise enough to pay two years lease on a house for Zohaib and his mother in Lahore’s Old City.
Raga Vaijayanti
In 2014 David (who plays the tanpura in this clip) and Eric, a sound engineer, established Vibhas Records as a platform for Zohaib to release his music to a global audience. One album 'Raga Brindabani Sarang and Raga Bairag' has already been released (available on BandCamp) with another in the works.
Zohaib is currently on tour in the US sponsored by the Dosti Music Project, an initiative of the American Embassy in Islamabad, and is receiving invitations from as far afield as Australia and Poland.
There is so much to celebrate about this story; Zohaib’s wonderfully smooth playing first and foremost. Though he is deprecating about this achievements (“I just do what my ustads have shown me”), his playing is truly accomplished. His tone simply glistens. And given his relative youth, we can look forward to many more years of magical sounds from his sarangi.
But this is also a story of the generosity of strangers. And a reminder of the inherent humanity that still drives many a soul. Lost in the daily round of horrific headlines that portray Pakistan as a cultural moonscape, there is something absolutely pure and heroic in the very improbable tale of Zohaib Hassan and David Berner, polar opposites in so many ways but brothers-in-musical-arms.
Zohaib Hassan Khan is at the pointy end of a long line of Punjabi sarangi players that traces its roots to the mid 17th century. The family has proudly associated itself with the Amritsar gharana whose four-fingered approach to the sarangi as opposed to the usual three is its khasusiat (speciality). "This allows us to create many more combinations," Zohaib told me recently. "And it is much easier to play than with just three fingers."
Zohaib's story
"Even though my extended family included some of the greatest names in sarangi playing in Pakistan – Ustad Peeru Khan, Ustad Nathu Khan and Ustad Hussain Baksh Amritsari – for many years there has been no scope for the sarangi. None of my uncles taught their children the sarangi. What was the point? No one wanted to hear it. It had no value.
"My father was a bank officer on a small salary. And as a young boy I came down with polio. Paying for the several operations on my knees put my parents in a very tight position. So when I was about 13 or so my father said to me and my brothers, 'You better take up music to earn a living'.
"Of course, as teenagers we all chose pop instruments like the keyboards and drums. I took up the guitar. But once I heard my great uncle, Ustad Peeru Khan, play the sarangi I was enchanted. Around that time my uncles persuaded my father that I should take it up myself."
Raga Megh (live at Lahore Music Forum)
"I played for Radio Pakistan for about 10 years but really they didn’t value me at all. If they had a ghazal singer that needed accompanying, they might call me and pay me a couple of thousand rupees. And that too, six months later. You can see why sarangi players in Pakistan don’t own their own homes or drive cars.
"Sarangi is a difficult instrument. It takes 20 years to master and after about 10 years I got fed up. My father suggested I take up drums, which I did, but he was really torn. One day I found him weeping. He begged me to take up the sarangi again, even though there was not much hope of making a living. So in his honour, and that of my mother and all my family who have blessed me and prayed for my success, I went back to the sarangi."
Raga Chandrakauns (Lahore Music Forum)
David's story
David Berner grew up in Baltimore but moved to the suburbs of Orange County, staunch Republican territory in southern California, about 20 years ago. A music lover from a young age, David’s musical tastes are anything but conservative, and include a lot of experimental-avant garde-Jazz -metal bands with names like Secret Chiefs Three, The Melvins and Sigh. While he had played guitar in a local covers band, Nog, it was a chance aural encounter with the sarangi in the music of Secret Chiefs Three that shifted the trajectory of his life.
Like Zohaib, David and his high school buddy, Eric Shepherd, were blown away by the sound of the sarangi. "It seemed to be able to produce any sort of sound," David told me over Skype last week. "When you listen to Ustad Sultan Khan play, it is so relaxed and yet so versatile. You connect with all and every human emotion with the sarangi. It’s my main instrument now."
Obsessed, David searched the internet for "how to play sarangi" videos and eventually posted one of his own early attempts on YouTube. Several days later he got an email from Karachi from a man who introduced himself as the uncle of a sarangi player named Zohaib Hassan. "We noticed you are trying to play with four fingers. That is the style of the Amritsar gharana." The man promised to put David in touch with Zohaib.
Collaboration
The connection was made at a particularly low point in Zohaib’s life. His father and inspiration had passed away suddenly. The landlord was an unsympathetic sort of fellow who imposed noise curfews that restricted Zohaib’s practice and ability to give lessons. And he kept jacking up the rent. Zohaib’s family moved in with an aunt, also in Lahore’s Old City, but in such crowded premises it was impossible to give lessons via a poor Skype connection to someone on the other side of the world.
Even so, Zohaib agreed to teach David (who himself became good enough to recently contribute a sarangi track to an album by the Japanese metal band, Sigh.) Their friendship has blossomed over more than 4 years. Though David has never travelled to Pakistan, he and his friend Eric are now self-confessed obsessives of the Amritsar gharana and want to do anything they can to promote Zohaib and his music.
Although Zohaib was getting some recognition in Pakistan via the Lahore Music Forum and Tehzeeb Festival (both recent platforms to preserve and promote traditional music in Pakistan) his housing situation was critical. In 2013 David and Eric launched a crowd sourced fund raising campaign on Facebook and after contributing from their own funds were able to raise enough to pay two years lease on a house for Zohaib and his mother in Lahore’s Old City.
Raga Vaijayanti
In 2014 David (who plays the tanpura in this clip) and Eric, a sound engineer, established Vibhas Records as a platform for Zohaib to release his music to a global audience. One album 'Raga Brindabani Sarang and Raga Bairag' has already been released (available on BandCamp) with another in the works.
Zohaib is currently on tour in the US sponsored by the Dosti Music Project, an initiative of the American Embassy in Islamabad, and is receiving invitations from as far afield as Australia and Poland.
There is so much to celebrate about this story; Zohaib’s wonderfully smooth playing first and foremost. Though he is deprecating about this achievements (“I just do what my ustads have shown me”), his playing is truly accomplished. His tone simply glistens. And given his relative youth, we can look forward to many more years of magical sounds from his sarangi.
But this is also a story of the generosity of strangers. And a reminder of the inherent humanity that still drives many a soul. Lost in the daily round of horrific headlines that portray Pakistan as a cultural moonscape, there is something absolutely pure and heroic in the very improbable tale of Zohaib Hassan and David Berner, polar opposites in so many ways but brothers-in-musical-arms.
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