of Depeche Mode, the theosophy of Sufi Kalam by Qawwali greats such as Aziz Mian and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, the unrealistic romanticism of legends Mohammed Rafi and Lata Mangeshkar, and the anger of early British reggae.

In the late 1990s Tas set up Cinephilia, a video rental store in the bohemian district of Moseley. As a teenager Kurosawa, the Japanese film director and screenwriter, inspired the artist’s love of world cinema but this passion could only develop later in life due to the lack of access to non-mainstream cinema. Cinephilia became a gathering space for the city’s creative community. Contact with artists, writers and philosophers opened up new possibilities and Tas worked in clubs as a VJ, but also established important film festivals in the city. This new world was an eye opener but deep inside he felt he did not belong. He realised that he needed to reinvent himself and that it was going to take artists of South Asian heritage a long time to change the world. He decided to learn filmmaking, music production, architecture design and creative writing.

New Art Exchange39-41 Gregory BoulevardNottingham NG7 6BE

0115 924 8630info@nae.org.ukwww.nae.org.uk

FREE EXHIBITION GUIDE

TASAWAR BASHIR: A BIOGRAPHY BY SKINDER HUNDAL, CEO OF NAE

The art and ideas of Tasawar Bashir (alias Tas) are refreshing to come across. His current work presents the distillation of a new aesthetic approach referred to as SU-Fi – the sci-fi within Sufism – working regularly with the Oscar award winning composer and Sufi artist A.R Rahman and Nesta Fellow Brian Duffy. Tas designs soundscapes and architectural forms through a modern re-construction of Sufi ideas, combining popular South Asian folk culture with science fiction and transporting audiences to other cosmic realms. This distinct SU-Fi enquiry has earned Tas a scholarship to undertake a PhD and M3C/AHRC fellowship with the renowned Brammal School of Music at the University of Birmingham and an academic/artist residency at NAE.

Tas playfully operates under the guise of the C.I.A – the Cultural Intelligence Agency, a tongue in cheek take on being a ‘Muslim’ male under surveillance and scrutiny, perhaps provoking us all to think again. Tas is an agent of social change, appropriating

the same technologies used for control and power. He symbolises a wave of consciousness in cultural production, in that ‘everyone can be an artist’, thus challenging systemic behaviours and traditions that quietly numb us into ways of being and seeing the world through a singular prism, encouraging cultural ghettos.

His non-linear route into the Arts challenges both ‘system’ and ‘cultural’ paradigms. It was just over 20 years ago Tas liberated himself first from a teenage marriage and then a bourgeoisie career, switching to a creative pathway, shattering stereotypes of being a conventional Muslim boy from Sparkhill Birmingham, breaking the mould as to who can be a contemporary visual artist.

In his formative years Tas would regularly question those around him about identity, culture and belonging, searching for the third space between Western and Eastern traditions. The rich density of inner city Birmingham afforded encounters with all sorts of interesting characters; fashionistas, market traders, bookish theologians, socialist elders, working class drug-dealers, and white collar fraudsters. Tas connected with them all through a love of music; the dark escapist electronica

In 2011 Tas carried out Art-Faith lab at NAE, an immersive four-week residency working with the team and local community. Recreating the conditions of a darkened cave, a Quran data visualisation lit one side of the cavernous space whilst the soundscape of distant Qawwali echoed as if from outer space. The SU-Fi aesthetic was born… It was this daring step outside the cultural norms that struck a chord with ICA Director Ekow Eshun.

Tas’ journey mirrors the NAE journey, to seek out new ways to champion art and ideas from the street. We are proud to present the first iteration of Dam Pani in the UK, Tas’ first solo show in a UK gallery, as part of the nationwide Here There & Everywhere season.

Join us on 15 July and 22 August to hear Bashir talking about his practice in more depth. Documentation of these events will be available on our website shortly afterwards.

MAIN GALLERY16 JULY – 24 SEPTEMBER 2017

I

DAM PANITASAWAR BASHIR

MK: As part of your PhD, you’re researching how Qawwali and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s performances affect people. What is the specific appeal of Nusrat?

TB: I’ve interviewed South Asian elders who described how they felt really alienated in Britain in the late 1970s. Missing the homeland; its sights, smells and sounds, they describe how performances by Nusrat, ‘transported’ them back home. I think it provided them with a spiritual connection they weren’t getting from mosques and temples. Nusrat was an exceptionally gifted vocalist and his unique expressive style moved everyone who saw him perform live. It was his ability to take listeners on a journey that helped to fuel his success. His appeal was universal too; when he was signed by Oriental Star Agencies (OSA), Birmingham, he developed a following of white-British fans.

MK: In the installation we hear a sample of Nusrat’s voice, plus various Qawwali notes, altered through synthesisers and granulation software. How important was it to create an abstracted experience of Qawwali?

TB: The most interesting thing about Qawwali is how sound and word are used to transform space. So whilst we can describe the installation as an abstraction, my experimental approach is actually one that Sufi and Qawwali musicians have employed for years. Qawwali effectively takes Sufi poetry and musical ideas from North Indian classical music traditions to create an immersive experience for listeners. Qawwali transforms the meaning

of sacred words through layers of repetitive vocalisation, through tabla rhythm and beat that denotes the passage of time, and harmonium to add tone and colouring. Listening to early recordings made on the EMI Pakistan label I realised it is an evolving art form that uses new technologies as they become available. When Qawwali arrived in the UK during the late 1970s, it was performed in new spaces and places, in cavernous churches; in large community centres with hard surfaces; through big PA systems with echo and feedback. Nusrat himself was constantly pushing the genre. So I think that Dam Pani is honouring the Qawwali and Sufi tradition in a number of ways, just using the latest set of tools.

MK: You’ve sampled Nusrat singing ‘Allah Hu’, meaning ‘God is’, but extracted just part of the word ‘Hu’ meaning ‘is’. This sound is played through the bowl of water at various pitches and frequencies which creates patterns on the surface. What does the bowl and water represent?

TB: The bowl and water allowed me to represent Nusrat’s presence beyond the sensory experience of sound alone. Dam in Dam Pani means ‘divine breath’ in Urdu and Hindi. Often Sufi’s perform something called ‘Dam’; they say a prayer and breathe on a person, or over an object such as water to bless it. It’s a concept found in Christianity and Judaism too – God blew into dust or clay to create humankind, hence why the expression ‘dam’ in embedded in the name ‘Adam’. Sufis often use the term ‘dam’ when they’re singing and not only are they repeating the expression, but they’re actually

Dam Pani, meaning 'Blessed Water' in Urdu and Hindi, is an installation of sound, light and water, by artist and academic Tasawar Bashir in collaboration with Brian Duffy. The piece has emerged from a long-standing love of music and Bashir’s current PhD research on Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (1948-1997), the critically acclaimed Pakistani Qawwali singer who became an international phenomenon in the 1980s.

Qawwali is a form of Sufi devotional music from South Asia – visitors can listen to some tracks in the resource room. Qawwali performances are known to ‘transport’ listeners through their sacred sounds, and the voice of the Qawwāl singer is believed to transmit spiritual energy. In Dam Pani, Bashir experiments with abstraction to explore the essence of this spiritual Sufi experience. He has focussed on just one utterance by Nusrat, playing his voice through water to visualise patterns on the surface.

Here, Bashir discusses the development of Dam Pani with NAE’s Director of Programmes, Melanie Kidd.

MK: As an artist you have broad interests spanning spirituality and astrophysics to architecture. Music has also been an ongoing obsession; why are you drawn to the tradition of Qawwali in particular?

TB: I was quite a rebellious teenager, and growing up, I struggled to appreciate and relate to my Muslim faith. Then my Dad took me to a Qawwali concert in the 80s. The experience was so strange and powerful it stuck with me for years. Even though I couldn't understand a single word, it was like my whole being was blitzed by ‘luminous’ sounds, as if something was shining inside me. There was one song that I really liked. Even though it was performed during a Qawwali concert, it turned to be a Hindu bhajan, praising Lord Krishna. Some Muslim friends told me not to bother with that track, but I was fascinated by this inter-faith quality. I therefore became curious as to how Qawwali was defined, constructed and presented. Each time I looked into it, I discovered new things; for instance, it’s often sung from a female perspective – unusual in that its usually men who publically perform Qawwali. I then realised there was no fixed text; like Jazz, there were improvisational elements. Although mainly Islamic, Qawwali also draws upon words and imagery from Sikh and Hindu sacred literature.

performing ‘dam’ as well. They’re trained to breathe in a certain way. I deliberately picked ‘Hu’, from ‘Allah Hu’ as it’s quite a breathy and powerful sound. So here in Dam Pani, the water is being blessed by through a digital recording of Nusrat’s voice.

MK: Given the spiritual subject matter, visitors may have expected a more ornate or shrine like installation. Instead the satellite-like form of the dish and the bluish tinge of the space speak more of sci-fi or space travel.

TB: Within Sufi cosmology there is a space beyond this reality that Sufi texts refer to, a kind of interspace between this world and the divine realms. Within Sufi poetry the over-riding narrative is to seek union with the Beloved. And in Sufi theosophy,* when the soul leaves this world it moves into inter-space and is therefore not dead. This is why when Sufi teachers die their passing is celebrated. Interspace is an imaginal space but according to the greatest Sufi philosopher Ibn Arabi, it is a place more real than our world. Medieval Sufi poems speak of dervishes or wanderers who could read minds, literally fly, and obliterate time and space. These people were referred to as Qalandars. When witnessing Nusrat sing, you got a sense that he is not only performing Qawwali, but he is embodying Qalandari, as if singing from a different plane. Within Sufi cosmology he is still alive, and that means divine information is being sent to us from another dimension. So, yes, I see many similarities between these ideas and Science Fiction, and it was important to experiment with the Sci-fi aesthetic in the installation.

MK: Sci-fi is fundamentally about exploring our place in the universe and considering fundamental philosophical questions about humanity. Does this aspect extend to Qawwali too?

TB: Yes, I’ve always been interested in science fiction and the idea of utopias, and I became curious about some of Nusrat’s early performances and song choices. Many invoke a pre-Partition Punjab and a unified India. I’ve analysed early recordings of Qawwali and here, village life is imagined without ethnic division. So, the modern idea of discreet, separate religious and ethnic identities isn’t borne out in Qawwali. Instead Qawwali promotes a common humanity and ascends above doctrinal religious orthodoxy. Qawwali speaks about the plight of the human condition in universal terms.

MK: So the abstraction within Dam Pani, and the introduction of science fiction aesthetics creates the space for you to explore broader ideas?

TB: Yes, for me, it’s about digging into the awe and wonderment of existence and I think science fiction is the perfect device to do that. I also like the idea of challenging religious orthodoxy, because it is really limiting when you’re trying to ask spiritual questions. These aesthetic devices are therefore a way of bypassing the intensity of a religious discussion to get to the heart of what really matters.

* Theosophy is a collection of mystical and

occultist philosophies on the purpose of life

and the universe. The word is of Greek origin,

meaning wisdom of the gods.

Turn overleaf for Bashir’s biography 

I