Monday, August 02, 2004
An article i wrote...was published in The Daily Times on July 31, 2004
heres the link....
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_31-7-2004_pg7_27
and heres the article!
Raza Kazim: The man, the myth, the music
By Mehreen Malik
LAHORE: The work of the Sanjannagar Institute of Philosophy and Arts (SIPA) is as serious as its name suggests. Raza Kazim, a lawyer of international renown, former member of the Communist party, photographer, philosopher and patron of the arts, established SIPA because he believed that a change in society, marking a clear break from the old order, was only possible through a “consciously initiated process” of changing the psychological, intellectual, emotional and social constitution of the human mind.
Raza, who believes that history is on his side, has chosen music as one of the ways to bring about reform. Music, he says, is a primary tool for emotional interaction and communication.
“This is why we have opted for Indian classical music for the effective emotional communication of the core philosophical ideas of Sanjannagar,” says Raza. “The primary target of such music is its relationship with the intellect and emotions, which makes it necessary for modern musicologists to explore how music works in relation to mental processes.”
Partition gave us freedom but what did this freedom mean, he asks. “It meant giving free reign to negative colonial trends.” The musicians that Pakistan inherited had, like most other performing artists, grown up with the ‘mixed morality’ of the colonial period. Their music was meticulous but spiritless, which is “the hallmark of a colonial situation anywhere”.
However, SIPA’s involvement with Indian classical music is not of an academic nature; it is one of the practical expressions of Raza’s belief in a “socio-cultural renaissance” of the people of Pakistan. Musicology at SIPA marks a departure from musicology in India and the west, where it is more historically oriented, while SIPA aims at ‘developing informed intelligence’, by teaching the theory as well as the practice of music.
“To pursue classical music in any way, you need to have a distant vision,” said Raza. “And I use the word ‘distant’ because it is a long road towards fulfilment, and there is always the chance that half way through, you will discover that even though you had the vision, you didn’t have the spark.”
Raza began his musical journey more than 30 years ago, eventually establishing SIPA on February 2, 1995 and launching a four-year Bachelors Degree Programme in South Asian Classical Music in collaboration with NCA in 2002.
The institute’s musicology library holds 505 books, with an audio library of western and eastern music which consists of 871 CDs, 825 cassettes, 2,103 LPs and 131 EPs catering to almost all forms of music: classical, pop, film, folk, Sufi and fusion. In collaboration with UNESCO, the institute has engaged the services of a foreign research consultant, Dr Lowell H Lybarger, to compile three musicology text books and a biannual journal on South Asian musicology.
The institute also houses an instrument making and audio engineering section whose main achievement is Raza’s invention, the Sagar Veena, a completely new addition to the variety of existing south Asian musical instruments. Raza is currently redesigning the sitar, sur bahar and the tanpura as well. He has also designed and assembled sound equipment such as power amplifiers, pre-amplifiers and speakers, specifically made to “faithfully reproduce the unquantifiable nuances and micro tones” of south Asian classical music.
Besides research in musicology, SIPA’s philosophy department is developing a “practicable methodology” for people to adopt so that they can re-examine and “change themselves both as individuals and as society”. In trying to find a “way of life” defined by a synthesis of the growth of the intellect and the development of human sensitivities, the philosophy department is researching various fields including consciousness studies, quantum mechanics, and theory and quantum levels in biology.
Photography is being pursued as a visual medium for emotional and intellectual expression, and as a tool for the refinement of mental processes responsible for this interaction. This approach towards photography is what SIPA calls Symbolic Photography. At SIPA, photographs are used as “dynamic symbols”.
“In order to become a dynamic symbol, a photograph must be easy to view and recognise,” said Raza. “It must not have any stark notes and its appeal must not be in terms of wonderment for the objects depicted, which is characteristic of pictures printed in magazines like National Geographic.”
But why did Raza feel such a strong need for a socio-cultural renaissance? Faced with the avalanche of evacuee opportunities and properties at Partition, the Pakistani’s made the “wrong” choice of basing their new world upon personal aggrandizement and a divorce of all moral sensitivities followed, he says. The “pragmatism” of this choice was that it was the shortest route, in given circumstances, to personal economic growth.
“It was a mad gold rush in which morals and cultures were left behind in rusty suitcases,” said Raza, for who the shift is a physical memory. “Thus, ours is not a story of villains and tragedies but of the mistaken choices of a whole people. The strength of the paradigm shift was such that people’s agenda’s were now unmistakably single-minded. All other articles like morality, culture, society and even humanity, were discarded.”
For Raza, it has indeed been a long journey to revive these “abandoned values”. “Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds,” says Raza, quoting a Shakespearean sonnet. And perhaps SIPA is the place where this line will find resonance.
heres the link....
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_31-7-2004_pg7_27
and heres the article!
Raza Kazim: The man, the myth, the music
By Mehreen Malik
LAHORE: The work of the Sanjannagar Institute of Philosophy and Arts (SIPA) is as serious as its name suggests. Raza Kazim, a lawyer of international renown, former member of the Communist party, photographer, philosopher and patron of the arts, established SIPA because he believed that a change in society, marking a clear break from the old order, was only possible through a “consciously initiated process” of changing the psychological, intellectual, emotional and social constitution of the human mind.
Raza, who believes that history is on his side, has chosen music as one of the ways to bring about reform. Music, he says, is a primary tool for emotional interaction and communication.
“This is why we have opted for Indian classical music for the effective emotional communication of the core philosophical ideas of Sanjannagar,” says Raza. “The primary target of such music is its relationship with the intellect and emotions, which makes it necessary for modern musicologists to explore how music works in relation to mental processes.”
Partition gave us freedom but what did this freedom mean, he asks. “It meant giving free reign to negative colonial trends.” The musicians that Pakistan inherited had, like most other performing artists, grown up with the ‘mixed morality’ of the colonial period. Their music was meticulous but spiritless, which is “the hallmark of a colonial situation anywhere”.
However, SIPA’s involvement with Indian classical music is not of an academic nature; it is one of the practical expressions of Raza’s belief in a “socio-cultural renaissance” of the people of Pakistan. Musicology at SIPA marks a departure from musicology in India and the west, where it is more historically oriented, while SIPA aims at ‘developing informed intelligence’, by teaching the theory as well as the practice of music.
“To pursue classical music in any way, you need to have a distant vision,” said Raza. “And I use the word ‘distant’ because it is a long road towards fulfilment, and there is always the chance that half way through, you will discover that even though you had the vision, you didn’t have the spark.”
Raza began his musical journey more than 30 years ago, eventually establishing SIPA on February 2, 1995 and launching a four-year Bachelors Degree Programme in South Asian Classical Music in collaboration with NCA in 2002.
The institute’s musicology library holds 505 books, with an audio library of western and eastern music which consists of 871 CDs, 825 cassettes, 2,103 LPs and 131 EPs catering to almost all forms of music: classical, pop, film, folk, Sufi and fusion. In collaboration with UNESCO, the institute has engaged the services of a foreign research consultant, Dr Lowell H Lybarger, to compile three musicology text books and a biannual journal on South Asian musicology.
The institute also houses an instrument making and audio engineering section whose main achievement is Raza’s invention, the Sagar Veena, a completely new addition to the variety of existing south Asian musical instruments. Raza is currently redesigning the sitar, sur bahar and the tanpura as well. He has also designed and assembled sound equipment such as power amplifiers, pre-amplifiers and speakers, specifically made to “faithfully reproduce the unquantifiable nuances and micro tones” of south Asian classical music.
Besides research in musicology, SIPA’s philosophy department is developing a “practicable methodology” for people to adopt so that they can re-examine and “change themselves both as individuals and as society”. In trying to find a “way of life” defined by a synthesis of the growth of the intellect and the development of human sensitivities, the philosophy department is researching various fields including consciousness studies, quantum mechanics, and theory and quantum levels in biology.
Photography is being pursued as a visual medium for emotional and intellectual expression, and as a tool for the refinement of mental processes responsible for this interaction. This approach towards photography is what SIPA calls Symbolic Photography. At SIPA, photographs are used as “dynamic symbols”.
“In order to become a dynamic symbol, a photograph must be easy to view and recognise,” said Raza. “It must not have any stark notes and its appeal must not be in terms of wonderment for the objects depicted, which is characteristic of pictures printed in magazines like National Geographic.”
But why did Raza feel such a strong need for a socio-cultural renaissance? Faced with the avalanche of evacuee opportunities and properties at Partition, the Pakistani’s made the “wrong” choice of basing their new world upon personal aggrandizement and a divorce of all moral sensitivities followed, he says. The “pragmatism” of this choice was that it was the shortest route, in given circumstances, to personal economic growth.
“It was a mad gold rush in which morals and cultures were left behind in rusty suitcases,” said Raza, for who the shift is a physical memory. “Thus, ours is not a story of villains and tragedies but of the mistaken choices of a whole people. The strength of the paradigm shift was such that people’s agenda’s were now unmistakably single-minded. All other articles like morality, culture, society and even humanity, were discarded.”
For Raza, it has indeed been a long journey to revive these “abandoned values”. “Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds,” says Raza, quoting a Shakespearean sonnet. And perhaps SIPA is the place where this line will find resonance.
- posted by Mehreen Malik @ 3:53 PM
