{"id":5800,"date":"2009-05-31T16:12:11","date_gmt":"2009-05-31T21:12:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com?p=5800"},"modified":"2009-05-31T15:59:09","modified_gmt":"2009-05-31T20:59:09","slug":"not_another_gir_1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/2009\/05\/31\/not_another_gir_1\/","title":{"rendered":"Not another girl band!"},"content":{"rendered":"

I read about this \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Pakistani girl band\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/a> a while ago last December but only got my hands on their album Chup<\/em><\/a> a few months ago. Mutineers, Zeb & Haniya<\/a> is not<\/u><\/strong> a girl band.<\/p>\n\n

Zeb and Haniya are two Pakistani women cousins, Haniya Aslam and Zeb (Zebunissa) Bangash, who make fantastic music. Two weeks ago, they were awarded \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Best Live Act\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in the MTV Pakistan<\/a> Music Awards. They are Pashtuns<\/a> (Pathans) whose families are based in the town of Kohat<\/a> in the North West Frontier province.<\/p>\n\n

\"SB_ZebHaniya.jpg\"<\/p>\n\n

Zeb & Haniya is the music I want to listen to on a Sunday morning\/afternoon\u00e2\u20ac\u201d great vocals; and not so mellow that I wander back into bed, but not so aggressive that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m further traumatized the first few hours I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m up after a late night out. Their music draws on a number of different traditions– folk, the blues, jazz, rock, swing (!), ghazals, qawwali, Hindustani classical music, and Turkish and Lebanese music; Manish calls them a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153little too pop,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/a> but I think there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s more going on there.<\/p>\n\n

They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve received a fair amount of press in India<\/a> and in the States <\/a>because they defy outsiders\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 expectations of the Pashtun valley. Last summer, they commented on music\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s role in Pathan culture:<\/a><\/p>\n\n

In their grandmother\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s house in Kohat in the North-West Frontier Province, recall Zeb and Haniya, there were always \u00e2\u20ac\u0153lots of harmoniums and tablas lying around.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Their uncles, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153all big strapping Pathan men,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d sang \u00e2\u20ac\u0153beautifully.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d And their grandmother too wrote and sang in three languages \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Pashto, Urdu and Punjabi\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6\n\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We are not fighting our culture to make music. When Pathan families get together, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lots of fun, lots of food, lots of meat, and lots of music. That has been fading away from our experience and other people\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s perception of Pathan culture. It is something we want to reclaim,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Zeb.<\/blockquote>\n\n

While they sing mostly in Urdu, one of their ten songs, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Paimana Bideh,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d on Chup<\/em> is an adaptation of a folk song in Dari<\/a> and Pashto:<\/p>\n\n

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Their video for the song \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Aitebar,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d which NPR<\/strike> PRI’s “The World: Global Hit” commentator Aaron Schachter playfully called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Clapton-esque,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/a> features two modern dancers and is a far cry from the booty<\/a>-shaking Bollywood video, for which I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m thankful. Here’s how they describe what’s going on in the video:<\/p>\n\n

The basic concept is a woman who’s ended the relationship and she’s symbolically closing the house where she spent time with her partner, husband, we don’t know, that’s been left open. And as she goes through each room she relives a part of her relationship that coincides with what we’re singing about, the emotion we’re trying to express. So sometimes it’s anger, sometimes it’s hatefulness, nostalgia, freedom, some sort of tension.\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

<<\/param><\/param><\/param><\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n\n

Zeb & Haniya began performing professionally in 2000-2003 when they were college students at Mount Holyoke and Smith Colleges<\/a> in the Pioneer Valley<\/a>. Since graduating, they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve built a solid fan base in Pakistan through their website<\/a> and live performances<\/a>. Check<\/a> them<\/a> out<\/a> if you haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t already!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I read about this \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Pakistani girl band\u00e2\u20ac\u009d a while ago last December but only got my hands on their album Chup a few months ago. Mutineers, Zeb & Haniya is not a girl band. Zeb and Haniya are two Pakistani … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5800"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/42"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5800\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}