The BBC’s Syed Shoaib Hasan just published an article on Zeb and Haniya on the BBC News website. And while it’s awesome that Zeb & Haniya are getting this kind of international news coverage, I don’t particularly like the angle that Hasan has taken with this story.
As it stands, the article has the “Ooh, look! Pakistanis aren’t all terrorists – some women are allowed to sing!” tone and that really pisses me off. This despite the fact that political commentary in a story like this was inevitable. The phrase “girl band” in the title, ‘Pakistan girl band creates a stir’, ticks me off as well.
The article then makes a needless reference to Bollywood in its first sub-heading (“Ooh, look! They watch Indian movies…they must be normal people!”) and contains this sentence:
Addicted to their Bollywood movies and Pakistani pop music, many are at ease with privately imitating their idols.
Right. That exactly what all Pakistanis are like.
Hasan also keeps calling the duo “Pakistan's first all-female music band” which is not accurate.
Worst of all, though, he goes and quotes the eminently patronizing Nadeem Farooq Paracha who is, apparently, “Pakistan’s leading music critic”. I’m not sure why Hasan did that because Paracha’s sole contribution in the article is to put Zeb & Haniya down (in his usual eminently patronizing style) which is particularly irritating as this is supposed to be a news report and not a music review.
I mean, WTF? Why couldn’t this have been a straightforward article about a couple of female musicians who are doing well in Pakistan. Wasn’t that news enough? What was the added benefit of talking about how good or bad their music is? (This is like writing an article about a new female politician in Pakistan who is doing quite well and then getting a quote from a political analyst who says something like “her policies are good, but they are not extraordinary”.)
All those issues aside, though, I’m glad the article was written because at the very least it gives widespread and much-deserved coverage to Zeb & Haniya and their music.