Blending art with politics

Tanveen Kawoosa
If one is identified with the head, the other goes well with the heart. If one banks on reason, the other arouses your emotions. Music and politics can never meet, as some believe art is art and so politics is politics. Yet one cannot be naive there are occasions when the twain do meet. As goes the saying, there is nothing to it you only have to hit the right notes at the right time and the instrument plays itself.
 So whenever the time is ripe, politicians play the cards and of course play well. And they know who can drive whom crazy. Music across the border easily whips ups frenzy and attracts wide gamut of audience here.  The stage was all set against the backdrop of picturesque setting and the gorgeous surrounding of the Dal Lake. The passionate ‘’Junoon band’’ from across the border had brought in a token of peace for the bruised Kashmiris.
The much enthusiastic Pakistani band too revealed their obsession with Kashmir beauty and did not miss a chance to speak loaded statement in praise of it. This age old rhetoric equating Kashmir with paradise is not new in political conundrums.  Ronald Barthes has rightly pointed out  that  the traveller's attention  always  remain on a limited range of landscape features, thereby 'overpowering’ or even 'masking 'the 'real spectacle of human life and history and simultaneously providing an illusion of cultural stability and continuity.
Prancing around on the stage, members of the band struck the rights chords with the audience which mainly constituted bureaucrats and politicians barring few University students. The band got thunderous applause from the enthusiastic audience. So young audience rocked with the visceral power of the rock in front of the international dignatries.Message was loud and clear, there is ‘’other side’’ of the Kashmir.
At times, the well attended concert was disjointed and did not deliver the satisfying blend of musical traditions. Never mind even if songs muddled and lacked a coherent point of view. Never mind, there is none to raise a finger. When audience do not know the chemistry of rock or jazz, you are free to play anything. All done in the colour of money and politics.
As goes the saying, music touches the deepest recess of the heart. Equating music with the much hyped ‘peace’ makes a space for ridicule and mockery. Indeed there is more to it then meet the eye. When the carrots -and -sticks strategy of military power fail, cultural power takes over.  The function is simple enough to legitimize direct violence. Art is safe as long as it remains with intellectuals but when it becomes integral part of state craft, it assumes horrendous dimension.
Nevertheless, it is not fair to abuse art or culture; rather we must be bold enough to admit our failure.  The creative freedom of expression is born out of the needs of the people living under oppression and exploitation. Ironically, we failed to create a stir with this intellectual tool.
Turning the pages of history we come to know that art has depicted true colours of the revolutionary movements of the world. Art is an intellectual means of expressing anger, an emblem of protest, a gesture of resistance against blatant oppression.
Let me quote Orson welles,In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and what did that produce…? the cuckoo clock. These premier artists played exemplary role in an Italian High Renaissance.
One of the greatest Irish poets of the 20th century W.B Yeats depicted bitter history of Ireland in his poems. In 1916 W.B Yeats published ‘Easter 1916’ about the Irish national uprising  which  describes the poet's ambivalent emotions regarding the events of the Easter Rising staged in Ireland against British rule on Easter .  Let me quote the famous last lines;’ Now and in time to be, wherever the green is worn, All changed, changed utterly; A terrible beauty is born’’
Even in India, Street theatre which is basically a militant political theatre of protest has always remained major force in rallying artists and intellectuals around large issues of concern. The rise of consumerist culture, political oppression, and gruesome violation of the human rights gives birth to creative geniuses who refuse to be cowed down by the terror tactics, instead agitate and mobilize the people through creative medium. It is time to ponder on the famous verse by German playwright and anti-fascist campaigner Bertolt Brecht_

And will there be singing in the dark times?
Yes there will be singing of the dark times!