PESHAWAR: Child stars who beat poverty and disability
PESHAWAR, Jan 24: Unlike many children their age, 12-year-old Tariq Hussain Bacha and Zeeshan, 11, have never heard of pop stars Britney Spears or Avril Lavigne.
But the two boys from the tough tribal areas are now stars themselves, after selling thousands of discs and cassettes of traditional folk songs at home and abroad. And their lives could hardly be more different to those of their pampered Western counterparts.
Little Zeeshan is confined to a wheelchair, while he and Tariq both overcome poverty, religious extremism and discrimination. "Disability was the force that drove me to be part of the music world," says little Zeeshan, who was left paralysed by polio in early childhood. Like many people in the NWFP, he goes by one name.
The pair shot to stardom with the release in August last year of their album 'Joora Guloona', a phrase meaning 'Pair of Flowers' in the dialect of the ethnic Pashtuns who inhabit the rugged region.
Stocked at first by a few shops in Peshawar, copies started flying off the shelves and soon there were orders from the United States, Germany, the United Arab Emirates and Afghanistan.
It has now shifted 10,000 copies, with no sign of slowing up. Child stars are not unheard of in Pakistani pop, which is dominated by songs from the subcontinent's movie industry and modern versions of ancient Qawwali music.
But Zeeshan and Tariq are the first to emerge from the folk music scene of their ultraconservative region, where musicians are thought of as belonging to a lower caste. "Artists are not welcomed in Pashtun society despite the fact they love music," says Tahir's father, Zahir Shah.
Mr Shah, 42, says his son has never even heard of teen idols like America's Spears and Canada's Lavine, whose videos form the staple entertainment diet of many youngsters in the developed world.
"Who would be able to tell him about them? Firstly we can't afford a satellite dish to watch them. Secondly, it comes with education and there is not much education in our society," he exclaims.
In fact the boys' fledgling careers nearly failed to get off the ground at all. Both were blessed with a gift for singing and musical parents. Zeeshan is a 'born singer', says his father Shah Jehan, 50, who taught him the harmonium.
And Tariq begged to be allowed on stage at the age of nine when his relatives were performing at Nishter Hall, Peshawar's main concert venue. Some three years ago, still as solo artists, they took their love of music and began performing shows and releasing a handful of home-produced albums.
But then a powerful alliance of religious parties swept to power in the province in November 2002, riding on the back of widespread anger at the US invasion of Afghanistan the year before.
The new government frowned on all music, closed Nishter Hall, and banned other public performances on the grounds of protecting public morality. In particular they hated the romantic, highly poetic songs that tap into the thick vein of Pashtun nationalism that runs through the region - the very material that formed the heart of the boys' repertoire. However, the boys bravely kept playing secrete solo gigs in the backrooms of peoples' homes. -AFP
