TriNetre - Archive for September 26, 2003

Mr. Levy paints a portrait of Mr. Pearl as a Galahad piercing the secret of terrorism's Unholy Grail.

What is really going on here in Mr. Levy's speculations about what Daniel Pearl learned? I believe that, wittingly or unwittingly, he is reading back into Daniel Pearl's investigation the results of his own later investigation. That he is crediting Pearl--justly or perhaps overgenerously--with his own insights. That he came to admire Daniel Pearl as a reporter, as a human being who believed in what he believed in--in tolerance, in justice, in the reconciliation rather than the clash of civilizations; that he saw Daniel Pearl, one imagines, as a younger version of himself. That he came to admire Daniel Pearl so much that he gave him what he--at some level, conscious or unconscious--felt was a posthumous gift: the gift of his own investigative insights.

I heard the clarion call of harmoniums dancing the antique melody around like giant, singing wooden spiders. Then, all of a sudden, the rising of one, then ten voices hovering over the tonic like a flock of geese ascending into formation across the sky.

Then came the voice of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Part Buddha, part demon, part mad angel ... his voice is velvet fire, simply incomparable. Nusrat's blending of classical improvisations to the art of Qawwali, combined with his out and out daredevil style and his sensitivity, outs him in a category all his own, above all others in his field. His every enunciation went straight into me.

I knew not one word of Urdu, and somehow it still hooked me into the story that he weaved with his wordless voice. I remember my senses fully froze in order to feel melody after melody crash upon each other in waves of improvisation; with each line being repeated by the men in chorus, restated again by the main soloists, and then Nusrat setting the whole bloody thing aflame with his rapid-fire scatting , turning classical Indian Solfeggio (Sa, Re, Gha, Ma, Pa, Dha, Ni) into a chaotic/manic birdsong.