How Screams Turned Into Murmurs
“Hello everyone, sorry for the delay. We are waiting for a few more people to show up and then we will start…”
This was how I was greeted as an audience member at a local rock concert in Karachi, Pakistan in 2015. The venue was the size of a large studio apartment with wooden floors and a make-shift ‘stage’ cordoned off by Christmas lights. The borders made by the lights was where the stage ended and the audience’s seating area began. But there was no seating as such. There were a few youngsters sitting with crossed legs and their heads in their palms, waiting for the musicians to begin, while others stood behind them in wavy rows, shifting around to decide where the best spot would be to see the band from. However, knowing that there will be a fairly low audience turn-out, the organizers felt this apartment-sized venue would suffice. Unfortunately, this has been a disappointing shift from a time in Pakistan when concerts frequently took place at venues meant for concerts – auditoriums, open-air parks and the likes.
In Pakistan, music as an art form struggles to find significance in society. While there are many genres in music such as Sufi music and Qawwalis, which have been part of Pakistani culture and tradition, more modern music is still struggling to maintain an audience due to lack of opportunities. While Pakistan goes through an identity crisis in the face of terrorism and politics, fan culture for music has been on the decline, and it is a small yet meaningful contribution to why the music industry has been failing in Pakistan.
Decline of the music scene
The debate in Pakistani media circles around the fact that those that had the most interest in music at heart have disappeared, referring to record labels and event organizers. A recent article published by DAWN, one of Pakistan’s leading English newspapers, titled ‘Is Pakistan’s music industry facing an existential crisis today?’ discusses the main reasons why the music industry is
suffering: “Today, major record labels exist in name alone, album sales have dried up, the infrastructure to support music distribution has crumbled in the face of technological changes, television exposure for music has dwindled…and public concerts — which have often been the bread and butter of the country’s musicians — are few and far between.”
Changing trends in Pakistani fan culture?
On the other hand, it is also important to look at the changing trends in fan culture in Pakistan. Spending a large chunk of my teenage years in Karachi, I observed the impact local music had on adolescents. The early 2000s were a time when boys sported long hair as an imitation of some of Pakistan’s mainstream rock stars, wore band merchandise and spent pocket-money on new music CDs and cassettes as well as concert tickets. This was a time when mainstream bands in Pakistan had their own websites, which had chatrooms and forums where fans were able to interact with other fans as well as their favourite musicians. This was an online space that offered
exclusivity as well, and made fans feel like they belong and because of this an alternative, underground music scene also thrived in the country.
Today, one can sense despondence in the air. The people that go to concerts today are the same people that grew up doing that. The youth today has found a myriad of other options to spend on, and musicians, especially independent musicians, are left playing shows to an audience made up of mostly friends and friends of friends. How is it leading to a failing music industry? Fandom does not just mean a group of people that simply love musicians, it also means money. And when there are no fans, there is no money to go around in the industry.
In 2015, a talk was held in Lahore, the city known for its art and culture. The talk titled ‘he Revolution in the Making: Pakistan Rocks Online’ was covered by another leading English news organization in Pakistan called The Express Tribune.
The coverage highlights some important aspects of the talk, where music researcher from Harvard University Abbas Jaffer was present along with Jamal Rehman, a prominent music producer in the country. The article quotes Jaffer as saying: “At one point channels were getting so many requests from musicians that even with 24-hour streaming, they did not have time to accommodate the content”.
During the same talk, Rehman went on to mention that “music is essentially a performance art where interaction between the audience and the artist is important”.
I reached out to a journalist who has been writing on music and films in Pakistan since the last six years, to further discuss this decline of fandom.
Despondency in fans
Rafay Mahmood has been working as the editor of the entertainment section at The Express Tribune since the last three years. According to him, it goes both ways: fan culture is dying because of lack of concerts, and lack of concerts is leading to a dwindling fan culture.
“After 9/11, Pakistan had no choice. So many things happened in the country on a political front that a music show host’s job was replaced by news anchors,” Mahmood shared. “Rock musicians are no longer on billboards, private media channels realized that there is more easier money in generating news than music because all you need to report a bomb blast is a reporter and a camera-man and economically it was a good alternative [to entertainment news]. He added.
Mahmood went on to explain that when it comes to concerts and live shows, those who still attend shows are doing it out of nostalgia. He also explained that concert tickets are hard to sell due to a culture of free passes. “Out of ten tickets, eight are taken for free by friends or family of
musicians, so how are they supposed to earn through ticket sales?” He further explained “The new generation is the Netflix generation. They have everything on their phones hence a lack of interest in attending concerts. It is like fast food; the new audience has a smaller attention span.”
He further said that Pakistani musicians that made it big a decade ago still manage to pull large crowds to their shows. “Those few artists serve the nostalgia for people for whom they created hit songs in the past. This was the generation of musicians that made it big due to television coverage they got in the past.”
What is most startling is how interests have changed when it comes to music fandom in Pakistan. According to Mahmood, people have lost curiosity that existed in music fans in the past. “Curiosity for live music is gone because everything is made available online,” said Mahmood.
“The new generation doesn’t know or care about the impact of a bass line or a guitar solo”. He added that today, why would people pay for a concert when videos are shared on social media. “We prefer convenience over quality as a culture at large. Today, live music means waiting in line.”
While music culture in Pakistan has evolved in the sense that there are more independent musicians fighting the good fight, culturally there is no room for music in Pakistan to begin with, according to Mahmood. When it comes to shows, venues are small, performances take place on
school campuses, and in order to pull decent crowds to shows, organizers need to put at least one mainstream musician on the roster because while independent musicians may release new music all the time, Pakistan is missing decent live performers. “it’s always the stars that lead the live scene,” said Mahmood. “People want to go live shows to sing a long, how many of them know the words to songs that indie musicians are releasing?” he added.
The concept of fandom and fan culture has evolved over the years globally. In the 60s, ‘beatlemania’ took over the world by storm. It was a phenomenon that united fans in the United Kingdom and the USA alike. And this applied to other bands as well and today we can see remnants of that ‘boy band’ fandom with bands like One Direction. However, in Pakistan that type of fandom existed for local mainstream bands in the 90s, but not so much today. But these global cases of fandom show how fan culture is important in helping music industries anywhere survive.
A 2015 article in Time Magazine titled ‘How Grateful Dead Fans Became Deadheads’ explores this concept. ‘Deadheads’ are Grateful Dead fans known for their loyalty to the band since decades, so much so, that these fans used to follow the band around when they toured various cities. The article goes on to explain the impact this fandom had on not just the band but the people as well, quoting Dennis NcNally, author of the book ‘A Long Strange Trip’ as saying: “[They] had only one thing absolutely in common: Each had experienced some inner click of affinity, some overwhelming sense of ‘here I belong,” when confronted by the Dead, its music and scene. It was the recognition of an essentially spiritual experience that bound them together.”
The early days of glory
This same case can be applied to Pakistan’s music scene a decade ago, to the extent that when Pakistani band Junoon earned international fame, Pakistani fans living in the US used to follow them around during their tour around America. Meanwhile in Pakistan in the early 2000s, band culture was at its peak and fans actively purchased merchandise and waited after shows for autographs.
“The fan culture within the south Asian context can be defined in certain ways,” Says Ahmer Naqvi, music expert and content Director at Patari, Pakistan’s first music streaming website. “With music over the last decade we’ve seen that its lost that obsessive fandom (trying to call rockstars on their phones, wishing to marry them, listening to everything that they release and attending concerts) to foreign stars and movie actors,” he said.
The atmosphere today is entirely different, and lack of interest by people is causing the music scene to lose its significance, leading to a deteriorating music industry in the country. Moreoever, the only time people are willing to be fans is when they don’t have to pay for it.
A 2013 article by Digital Music News titled ‘Technology Didn’t Kill the Music Industry. The Fans Did…’ describes the impact of people not willing to spend money on music and this case can be applied to the situation in Pakistan. The article explains how the concept of ‘free’ music has “destroyed” independent record labels and musicians. The article goes on to say: “If fans understood what it takes to make a record — all the time, money, people, and energy — they would have more respect for the art and science of it.”
Ahmer Naqvi further elaborated the music industry is missing out. “The younger musicians have never experienced widespread fan culture,” he said. “They have their cult fans who show up to their shows and are a small number but they don’t have experience like that the older stars.”
“The older stars are too afraid to put out music anymore because they’re well aware that they won’t ever get that feeling again that they once knew,” he further said.
The 2013 Digital Music News article highlights the question: why should music creators have to a “tip jar” for money. What if music fans were told to work at their jobs for free?
Ahmer Naqvi shares more insight into how Pakistani musicians also feel similarly. “Meesha Shafi [a prominent singer in Pakistan] told me how her biggest regret was never doing ‘ticketed’ shows,” said Naqvi. He added that back in 2007 when she started her music career is
also when the music industry of Pakistan started its downfall.
“Since then, even after the fame she [Meesha] got through television, she has only done live shows that have had corporate sponsoring such that there was free entry, and so despite the crowds there is no feeling of knowing that you sold out a venue with delirious fans,” he explained. Naqvi went to state that Meesha feels it is not worth trying to make another album because people in Pakistan are not into music anymore.
What’s the way forward?
Ali Suhail is an independent musician in Pakistan whose effort have only recently been recognized on a mainstream level after releasing five albums – all produced at home. He believes that the music industry is dwindling because musicians are losing relevance due to lack of fan culture in the country, and this creates a vacuum where musicians are losing out on the opportunity to earn money, which causes the industry as a whole to suffer in a minute manner.
“I guess if bands were represented by people who know how to represent artists, it would help,” Said Suhail. “Representatives who send them [musicians] to every city and make sure there is one show a month if not four shows a month; and if I can get even two fans out of that, it can propagate into more fans eventually who might actually want to invest in our music”.
In the end, when do we reach the conclusion that reviving fan culture will indeed improve the music industry of Pakistan?
“The biggest and easily the most decisive change will come when we aren’t in the midst of war,” Naqvi weighed in. “I know things are better, but Pakistan isn’t safe, particularly music is always seen as a target. Meanwhile, kids these days have a lot more places to spend their money – malls, cinemas, cell-phone top-ups – which didn’t exist at this level back when fan culture was at its peak.” All in all, it remains to be seen how a change in the country’s political climate will affect the head space of music lovers in Pakistan.