Laal is a band on a revolutionary mission. The communist Pakistani band Laal<\/i> (meaning “Red” in Urdu) fuses modern rock with a traditional Eastern sound and blends revolutionary poetry into their songs. This video shows the song “Umeed-E-Sehr,” or “hope of a new dawn.”<\/p>\n
————-
\nTaimur Rahman is Laal’s lead guitarist. Rahman knows his political poetry. He taught political science at a Lahore university, using the works of Habib Jalib and Faiz Ahmed Faiz in his lessons. Their verses describe the “night-bitten dawn of partition” and the “bare-faced lies of a military constitution.”<\/p>\n
“These were poets that spoke of a new society that would emerge in the future \u2014 a socialist society, a society with democracy, equity and so on,” Rahman says.<\/p>\n
Poets like Jalib and Faiz were part of South Asia’s progressive writers’ movement, which began in the mid-1930s. The movement’s founders wrote a manifesto, stating that their literature would address issues like hunger, poverty and political and social inequality.<\/p>\n
Rahman says that performing the poetry in its traditional way, to the beat of a tabla and the sound of a harmonium, would sound stale.<\/p>\n
“And young people couldn’t relate to it stylistically,” he says. “It became something that old people were involved with. Old people listened to Faiz and talked about Jalib, and we as young people were into other things.”<\/p>\n
So Rahman plugged in \u2014 and Laal made protest poetry electric. The band introduced a new generation to the poets and their politics.<\/p>\n
“This is not romantic poetry \u2014 this is purely revolutionary poetry.”<\/p>\n