AMJAD Islam Amjad, the well-known playwright, poet and teacher, started watching movies, “like any other young man”, without caring for content and musical or production values. But, “it is also out of this plenty of films”, that helped him develop a taste for social movies.
But, as he looks back, human values between the West and the East did not differ so widely in those good old days. In the 1960s, the West produced marvellous movies on social topics, and he still remembers Anthony Quinn’s The Wizard that left a lasting impact on him.
But then, as family institution started breaking apart in the West, subjects of its movies were reduced to personal problems of the individual. Further down the line, the West went into modern science fiction and left the burden of social subjects for the rest of the world to carry.
Coming to the local film industry, Amjad saheb calls it a disappointment. In the ’60s, it made some of the best musical and social movies, he says, remembering Heer Ranjha and Phanney Khan for their musical and social values. But then, as the financier replaced the producer in the ’70s and the ’80s, professionals were pushed off.
Disaster further stuck as there was no one to replace the outgoing wizards. Movies became a source of satisfying baser human instinct of these financiers, and technicians a tool for achieving the same. No wonder, Pakistan now has an industry that cannot stand on its feet.
Amjad saheb sees the same problem striking the Indian cinema as well. Replacements for people like Satyajit Rai and Shyam Benegal have not been found by the Indian industry. Mafia money has taken the better of it, which means that substance has gone out of 90 per cent of Indian movies, “but the remaining 10 per cent still carry a ray of hope”.
The music scene of Pakistan, again, hugely disappoints Amjad Islam Amjad. In spite of producing some of the best individual exponents of music, the local music scene has failed to achieve a form. “Ustad Salamat Ali Khan, Amanat Ali Khan, Mehdi Hassan and Noor Jehan are comparable to anybody in the world, but their legacy seems to have been lost somewhere,” he says, adding that Nayyara Noor and Tina Sani are the lone voices vainly trying to carry the tradition forward.
The failure has some historical reasons, he believes. In the subcontinent, nine of the ten top musical gharanas had been Muslims, but they failed to set a popular trend. Now, Pakistan music industry is facing the same problem. It still has immensely talented individuals, but their failure to give local music a form is kind of strange.
The crises of the film industry, he says, also hit the music world. As rhythm replaced melody, subcontinental music lost its inherent strength. Songs known for their lyrical values were no longer marketable, and so were those singing them. Once again, the crisis of Indian and Pakistani music has been the same. But the former is being shielded by trained manpower coming out of music schools. Since dance has always been a strong part of the Indian culture and it cannot be practised without music, music had an inherent advantage in India.
In Pakistan, musicians and singer have to fight on two fronts, a place for themselves and space for their craft. Hostile social atmosphere is an added extra. All these factors put extra pressure on them and make their work even harder.
The hope for revival is dampened by the fact that Pakistan has no instrumentalists comparable with their world competitors. There is hardly an individual who can play a sitar, sarangi or tabla of international level. “There may be some lone crusaders that I am unaware of, but there is hardly someone who can fight for his place in the international world of music.”
A writer of some of the best plays of Pakistan Television and over ten books to his credit, Amjad considers himself essentially a poet. Describing Mir, Ghalib and Iqbal as the best poets of their eras, Amjad saheb holds, among contemporary poets, Faiz and Faraz in very high esteem.
Talking about the future of books in an age of quick internet communication, Amjad saheb has his own fears and explanations. Literature, which was “a source of students’ tarbiat in addition to taleem, has been taken off the academic priority list. Now students are given the kind of education that leads to good employment and fiscal rewards. Thought-provoking literary work is no more in vogue. The trend, having it own financial benefits, has ruined the present and the future of the book and the writer, he laments.
AMJAD Islam Amjad, the well-known playwright, poet and teacher, started watching movies, “like any other young man”, without caring for content and musical or production values. But, “it is also out of this plenty of films”, that helped him develop a taste for social movies.
