I read about this “Pakistani girl band” a while ago last December but only got my hands on their album Chup a few months ago. Mutineers, Zeb & Haniya is not a girl band.
Zeb and Haniya are two Pakistani women cousins, Haniya Aslam and Zeb (Zebunissa) Bangash, who make fantastic music. Two weeks ago, they were awarded “Best Live Act” in the MTV Pakistan Music Awards. They are Pashtuns (Pathans) whose families are based in the town of Kohat in the North West Frontier province.
Zeb & Haniya is the music I want to listen to on a Sunday morning/afternoon— great vocals; and not so mellow that I wander back into bed, but not so aggressive that I’m further traumatized the first few hours I’m up after a late night out. Their music draws on a number of different traditions-- folk, the blues, jazz, rock, swing (!), ghazals, qawwali, Hindustani classical music, and Turkish and Lebanese music; Manish calls them a “little too pop,” but I think there’s more going on there.
They’ve received a fair amount of press in India and in the States because they defy outsiders’ expectations of the Pashtun valley. Last summer, they commented on music’s role in Pathan culture:
In their grandmother’s house in Kohat in the North-West Frontier Province, recall Zeb and Haniya, there were always “lots of harmoniums and tablas lying around.” Their uncles, “all big strapping Pathan men,” sang “beautifully.” And their grandmother too wrote and sang in three languages — Pashto, Urdu and Punjabi…“We are not fighting our culture to make music. When Pathan families get together, there’s lots of fun, lots of food, lots of meat, and lots of music. That has been fading away from our experience and other people’s perception of Pathan culture. It is something we want to reclaim,” said Zeb.
While they sing mostly in Urdu, one of their ten songs, “Paimana Bideh,” on Chup is an adaptation of a folk song in Dari and Pashto:
Their video for the song “Aitebar,” which NPR PRI's "The World: Global Hit" commentator Aaron Schachter playfully called “Clapton-esque,” features two modern dancers and is a far cry from the booty-shaking Bollywood video, for which I’m thankful. Here's how they describe what's going on in the video:
The basic concept is a woman who's ended the relationship and she's symbolically closing the house where she spent time with her partner, husband, we don't know, that's been left open. And as she goes through each room she relives a part of her relationship that coincides with what we're singing about, the emotion we're trying to express. So sometimes it's anger, sometimes it's hatefulness, nostalgia, freedom, some sort of tension.
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Zeb & Haniya began performing professionally in 2000-2003 when they were college students at Mount Holyoke and Smith Colleges in the Pioneer Valley. Since graduating, they’ve built a solid fan base in Pakistan through their website and live performances. Check them out if you haven’t already!
