• New Delhi, Nov 16 (IANS) It started off as a Delhi filmmaker's travel through Pakistan. But "Khayal Darpan" has morphed into an exploration into the classical music traditions of urban Pakistan.
  
  This Urdu/Hindi documentary (with English subtitles) is 105 minutes long and features artistes and scholars like noted Pakistani Khayal vocalist Fateh Ali Khan, classical singer of the Gwalior Gharana Ghulam Hasan Shaggan, Ustad Naseeruddin Sami, Badruzzaman, Sharafat Ali, Sarah Zaman, Raza Kazim and Sarwat Ali.
  
  In 2005, Yousuf Saeed spent over six months in Pakistan as part of a research fellowship. He surveyed the development of 'khayal' and other forms of classical traditions in Pakistan after the country's independence 1947.
  
  Khayal is the modern genre of classical singing in north India and its name comes from an Arabic word meaning 'imagination'. It appeared more recently than dhrupad.
  
  Like all Indian classical music, khayal is modal, with a single melodic line and no harmonic parts. The modes are called raga, and each raga is a complicated framework of melodic rules.
  
  After travelling in Pakistan's three main cities - Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad - interviewing musicians and scholars, attending music concerts, and observing music teaching in various institutions, Yousuf managed to document some of the surviving practitioners and patrons of music.
  
  In his film, he raises many vital questions about cultural identity, nationalism, legitimacy of music in Islam, Pakistan's popular culture and its affairs with India, and the survival of classical music in South Asia.
  
  This film, which will be screened at 5:30 p.m. Friday at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) on Rajpur Road here, seeks to break stereotypes about Pakistan.
  
  Continued on next page...
• 
  Divided into four parts, "Khayal Darpan" starts by exploring Pakistan's melodic past, especially in Punjab and Lahore where South Asia's legendary musicians of early 20th century performed in large concerts as well as small baithaks (homely gatherings).
  
  It talks about legends like Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, Raushanara Begum, and Nazakat-Salamat Ali, and their discerning local audience who could not be pleased by any substandard music.
  
  The partition of India changed the scenario drastically as hundreds of musician families migrated from India to Pakistan while many Hindu and Sikh patrons of music migrated the other way around.
  
  Musicians in the newly formed Pakistan carried on the tradition for a decade or so on their own strength, since there was hardly any state sponsorship except radio, to some extent.
  
  Classical music also went through an identity crisis in Pakistan. In order to fit into the Islamic national identity, it had to shed its non-Islamic features such as raga names or compositions, which referred to Hindu deities.
  
  But that was probably a temporary phase, since a large number of traditional musicians continued to practice the music in its original form, according to the filmmaker.
  
  Nevertheless, the purer forms of music like Dhrupad and Khayal had to make space for other popular forms such as ghazal, qawwali, folk and even pop music, as many musicians, historians and experts explain in the film.
  
  The latter half of the film looks at contemporary trends, especially the experiments done by some individuals to popularise classical music among the lay audience including Mehdi Hasan and Tufail Niazi.
  
  Continued on next page...
• 
  An interesting story weaved into the film is about a young blind girl from Lahore, Aliya Rasheed, who managed to come to India to learn Dhrupad music from the well-known Gundecha brothers in Bhopal.
  
  This is a story of the meeting of two different cultures and values, and more.
  
  The last portion of the film is about some serious experimentation in the theory and practice of classical music, especially in the field of instrument making by Raza Kazim, a senior lawyer-philosopher-musicologist of Lahore.
  
  Raza has been developing a string instrument called the Sagar Veena, which hopes to be different from most traditional Indian instruments as it separates the resonating chamber and the wiring frame, which remain on the same body in almost all string instruments. Sagar Veena has no frets but uses as many as nine strings - each with a different timbre.
  
  "Khayal Darpan" focuses on some hidden talents of Pakistan, and raises questions about the survival of classical music - not only in Pakistan but in India as well - and whose cultural property it really is.