Divanee – South Asian news and entertainment

A teenage girl leaves her home, walking quickly. Though born in Oslo, Norway, her brown skin gives her away as a foreigner. The daughter of a Pakistani father and Pashtun mother, she is unique for more than her ethnic heritage. As she walks, a man stops her and begins lecturing on propriety. Out of disgust, he grimaces. A wad of spit lands at her feet.

By the age of 14, Deeyah put out her first solo album. Having trained as a singer since childhood, she was already used to performing. It wasn’t until she achieved national fame and success, however, that she felt the repercussions of her achievements.

As a pop star, Deeyah expected criticism, especially that of  a racist nature from her white Norwegian countrymen. She would hear questions like, “What is this Paki doing on our TV?” and not be surprised.

“What didn’t make sense to me was the very negative reaction to what I was doing from within my community,” Deeyah recalls. She remembers people coming to her home and lecturing her father on what Muslim families should and should not allow their daughters to do. Her family was forced to change their phone number several time because Deeyah would receive death threats at home. As in the imagined scene above, Deeyah says it got to the point that she could not leave the house without someone lecturing her or spitting at her in the street. It was unbearable.

So she left Norway for the United Kingdom, at the age of 19.

Once in the U.K., Deeyah laid low for a while. But as soon as she started performing again, the same patterns of threats of violence arose yet again. People threw slurs like “prostitute” and “whore” at her, they wished her dead, they wanted to harm her. It seemed that the more successful Deeyah grew, the more people fought against her for the sake of so-called propriety.

Eventually, it got to be too much. Deeyah gave up performing. Around 2005, she moved to New York and started splitting her time between the U.S. and the U.K., which she considered to be home by this point. Her own music was left in her past, but Deeyah’s contribution to protecting other artists worldwide was still yet to begin.

Silenced Voices

Today, Lapiro de Mbanga sits in a Cameroonian prison, serving out a three-year sentence for inciting youth unrest that resulted in riots against the nation’s president, Paul Biya. His song “Constitution Constipee” became the de facto anthem of the furor that resulted in 280 million CFA francs (or $640,000 — the amount de Mbanga was fined in addition to his jail sentence). His use of music to protest constitutional changes that would grant Biya an endless presidential term and high living costs landed de Mbanga in jail.

Though it seems little can be done to wrest de Mbanga from what they consider to be unjust detention, international human rights organization Freemuse has not let this prevent them from trying. Several letters and urgent appeals to the Cameroonian government have not yet yielded success, but a new project from Freemuse is helping bring de Mbanga and 13 other artists worldwide to justice.

In 2008, Deeyah approached Freemuse with a proposition: an album featuring artists from around the world who have been silenced against their will. Two years later, in August 2010, their dream was realized and “Listen to the Banned” was released.

The partnership with Freemuse was a perfect fit. According to Program Director and former music journalist Ole Reitov, “Freemuse is the only international organization that documents violations of freedom of musical expression.” The 12-year-old group produces reports, conferences and seminars on such violations. They also do lobby work for persecuted artists, including de Mbanga. Freemuse documents stories of music censorship worldwide, and has covered over 110 countries so far.

Reitov says Freemuse attempts to understand the mechanisms of censorship within political, cultural and historical contexts. In doing so, he and his team uncover numerous examples of silenced artists every year. “Censorship is more or less a reflection of conflicts within a society,” Reitov says. And, according to him, there are degrees of repression, ranging from what he calls “mild censorship” to imprisonment and even killings.

As a result of their work, Freemuse has a database of hundreds of instances of music censorship. Their website lists over 450 artists whose stories are available to the public. With access to Freemuse’s cache of information, Deeyah sifted through hundreds of songs and artists to compile songs from artists whose voices may never have been heard otherwise.

Deeyah collaborated with Freemuse, but the content of the album was her responsibility. She connected with the artists — none of whom she was ever able to meet in person — and arranged to get the rights to their music in order to get them on the album. Some songs, like de Mbanga’s, had to be on the album because they were the reason the artist was persecuted, according to Deeyah. But others were simply so powerful that she felt they needed to be included.

“Once I heard the songs, I often fell in love with the artists so much that I wanted to hear more of them,” Deeyah says. “So then I started gathering their other albums and contacting them. I’d be going through several albums trying to find the songs that stood out and that connected.” If she felt the song connected with the other material on the album musically, it made the cut.

Deeyah realized that beyond language, style and ability, what the artists featured on “Listen to the Banned” shared was a common experience following and as a result of their persecution.

“The loneliness, the strength, the weakness that they feel, the hardship that they go through and what it does to them…those experiences are the common threads,” Deeyah says.

Her own experience of prejudice and violent threats from a loud few within her community, though tempered with the support her family and many other members of her circle, left a lasting impression. It was with compassion that Deeyah embarked on this project, in part because she understands the feeling of being targeted specifically for her love of music and desire to pursue it. In a way, “Listen to the Banned” was a way for Deeyah to cope with her struggles.

“I wanted the album to be a message to artists to keep going,” Deeyah says. She wanted to highlight artists who would not have the opportunity otherwise, because “music is incredibly important to our society.”

The Music

All of the 14 artists featured on “Listen to the Banned” hail from Asia and Africa. A question that may arise after observing this is whether music censorship is a regional problem and if it is linked to religion — specifically Islam.

“Of course, today one of the big issues and discussions in the Muslim world is the whole relationship between music and Islam,” Reitov says. “We’ve also worked with religious scholars in order to find out what are facts and what are just bullshit.”

Having lived in India and spent time working in Pakistan in the past, Reitov feels that South Asia is one of the strongest music regions in the world. When it comes to Islam’s role in censoring music, Reitov believes the rise of Ayatollah Khomeini after the Iranian Revolution of 1979 introduced a brand of radical Islam that caused problems the world had not seen before.

“Suddenly, all these conflicts about music came up — you didn’t have those conflicts before,” Reitov says, citing research done by Freemuse dating back to Plato’s time. He says that concerns about music existed throughout history, but they were never linked to Islam like this previously. Recently, Reitov believes that foreign influences that lead into internal conflicts in countries like Pakistan exacerbate people’s fears.

“My experience is that in Pakistan, everyone loves music,” Reitov says. “But, of course, if you have people telling you that it is wrong and you don’t know better or don’t have a state system that can protect you, what can you do?”

While these instances of music censorship are prevalent in Asia and Africa, Deeyah says the issue is not contained in these regions.

“Unfortunately today, we are finding that in parts of the Muslim world, music is suffering,” she says. “Then we see exactly the same thing in non-Muslim countries, too. I don’t think it specifically points toward [Islam] at all.”

The Message

Deeyah and Reitov hope that “Listen to the Banned” will spread awareness about the issue of music censorship. According to Reitov these issues, “have always existed and they will always exist.”

According to Deeyah, music censorship stems from fear. “The reason music is found to be so dangerous by so many people is exactly because it is so powerful and honest.” And she’s right — “Listen to the Banned” is exactly that. With songs in a variety of languages and styles, and messages of all types, the album provides a glimpse into the cultures, traditions, hopes and struggles of the artists it highlights.

“Music is a direct line to our emotions and our hearts,” Deeyah says. “The more these artists are heard, the harder it’s going to be for people to silence them.”

With “Listen to the Banned,” Freemuse and Deeyah take a step toward giving the silenced a voice. If their message is heard, perhaps it will bring the issue of music censorship to people’s attention. It may even provide the world a great new talent by inspiring a struggling artist to persevere in the face of hardship and danger. Ultimately, perhaps it can serve as a reminder that music is the medium that unites voices around the world, and is a force that knows no language, and certainly no boundaries.

—

To learn more about Freemuse, visit their website. To preview and purchase “Listen to the Banned,” click here.