Violence, not romance, Pakistani pop’s fixation

PESHAWAR: A lover’s eyes compared to a drone strike, a smile to a suicide bomb and lips to fire.

The violence of Pakistan’s bloody insurgency has been injected into catchy pop lyrics after more than a decade of war against militants opposed to all forms of song and dance.
Some of the hit songs are regarded as deeply poignant in the country’s conservative Pashtun belt — but others are criticized as sensationalist, and accused of capitalizing on the brutality.
“Come, look straight into my eyes, attack my heart, come destroy everything, come destroy everything,” croons popular singer Rahim Shah in the video to “Shaba Tabahi Oka” (Come On Destroy Everything), as the famous Pashto-language film hero Arbaaz Khan dances.
An actress sings in response, singing: “Look at me, bomb my heart, come destroy everything.”
Then the hero, jumping, rolling and dancing, replies: “My Laila is carrying bombs in her eyes, you are killing me with your eyes, your lips are on fire — your short top is killing me and your trousers are tight.”
The song, which accompanies the popular 2012 Pashto film “Ghaddar” (Traitor), is still a top hit on video websites such as YouTube and Dailymotion.
Pashto is the main language of northwest Pakistan, which has borne the brunt of the country’s bloody decade-long battle with homegrown insurgents — and the focus of the CIA’s drone missile campaign against militant commanders.
The frequency of the violence people have witnessed in that time has seeped into popular culture, artists say, leaving a sometimes incongruous mark on the region’s cultural output.
In another Pashto movie, “Da Khkulo Badshahi Da” (Beautiful Are Always Crowned), released in 2014, an actress sings at the center of a group of armed men.
“My lips are sugary, I sing sweet songs ...,” she says, before singing the song’s title lyric: “I attack with my eyes, as lethal as a drone strike.”
Not everyone is impressed. Popular Pashto singer Bakhtiar Khattak said some artists were cashing in on the bloodshed that has become an everyday feature of life since the insurgency rose up in 2004.
“It is true that poets write what they see in society but some film makers are deliberately mixing violence and vulgarity in songs,” he said.