THE ICON INTERVIEW: THE BALLAD OF ARIEB
“No one used to notice my shirt before,” said Arieb Azhar, referring to his signature red-and-white chequered shirt of the Croatian national football team. “They used to think it was a wacky-coloured shirt. Today was different — people at the airport were looking at me. A couple of them smiled. The guy at the cab counter saw me and said ‘Sir haar gaye!’” he laughs. We are meeting the day after the FIFA World Cup final and the ‘haar gaye’ refers to Croatia’s loss to France.
It was the first time the little Balkan state had even made it that far. And it seemed everyone was rooting for them. “Because Croatia was the underdog,” says Arieb. “And for the first time people are actually looking up Croatia on the internet. [Previously] people only knew about it as a tourist destination.” Because King’s Landing is in Croatia, I responded, referring to the capital of the Seven Kingdoms from the hit television series, Game of Thrones. The Old City in the coastal city of Dubrovnik, a UN World Heritage Site, is the setting for King’s Landing and is swarmed by tourists every year.
The singer, musician, festival director (Art Langar) and now the newly-appointed Executive Director at The Second Floor (T2F) in Karachi, has a strong association with Croatia. “I was a teenager when I moved there,” he says. “And 10 months after I landed in Zagreb — it was still a part of Yugoslavia then — the war started. I was there throughout the four-year war. The first two years were terrible.” The Yugoslav Wars were a series of conflicts by nationalist groups in the former Yugoslavia that sought the independence of Croatia, Slovenia and later, Bosnia. It resulted in the breaking up of the entire country.
Although Zagreb, where Arieb was based, was not on the frontlines, residents could see shelling in the distance and Serbian planes would often fly over them. Most of the other foreign students who had been studying along with Azhar had already left by then. “The few of us who stayed became integrated into society,” he had once told me earlier during one of his trips to Karachi.
Musician, activist and, now, the new director of T2F, Arieb Azhar talks about his passions, what his vision is for arts and culture, and his link to the Croatian football team
The nearest bomb shelter was a 10-minute walk away and so instead, he and the others would huddle in the basement of the closest building whenever the sirens went off. These shelters or basements were completely plunged in darkness. “At times there were 20 of us cramped in a room. You could make as much noise as you wanted and so we sang songs. That’s how I learned a lot of the region’s folk songs and music.” Arieb would stay in Croatia for 13 years before moving back to Islamabad, Pakistan in 2003.
A lot has happened since his return. “We used to host these Sweet Leaf City Jams all over the city,” relates Arieb. “Then a bunch of us set up the Rock Musicarium [a venue for live music performances] in Islamabad.” He released his debut album Wajj in 2006, he was featured in Coke Studio several times (Season 2, 3, Season 10), and other than touring both locally and internationally, he launched the Music Mela festival in Islamabad in 2014. Folk, classical, mainstream and underground musicians from around the country would gather together to perform at this three-day event.
“It was the first festival of its kind,” he relates. “Before the first Music Mela, the only music festival that was happening was in Lahore — the Rafi Peer World Performing Arts Festival and then the Sufi Festival. I then joined forces with my ex-partner Zeejah Fazli, who has an organisation called Face [Foundation for Arts, Culture, Education]. In 2015 and 2016, we did the Music Mela together through the Face platform.”
In 2017, he launched the first Art Langar — a two-day festival that brought together musicians from across the country, had art installations but also hoped to make a difference to the lives of the lesser privileged. “In Islamabad we worked with Mashal Model School for street children and brought around 350 students and did some music and art activities with them. And we shared meals, which was the langar aspect of the festival,” he relates. “The point was to connect music, art, culture with community building and some very basic human values. Like looking after the poor, feeding the hungry and just looking after each other.”
One gets the impression that he believes there is a disconnect between these basic human values in people. “I do,” says Arieb. “I feel that the music industry across the world, ever since pop music started thriving, sort of lost touch with what real street or folk music was about. It was about the word on the street, talking about peoples’ problems, dealing with human issues and now largely it’s become about fame and fortune.