f66 Still Ghazaling…
Najma was the very first Asian artist who we put on the cover of (then) Folk Roots, way back in 1987. Thos Brooman does the water, bridges bit…
A
t today’s date of writing, here we are on Friday 4 January 2019, another brand-new year. But 2019, for heaven’s sake. That makes it thirty-two years since Najma Akhtar and I got acquainted and we’ve been buddies ever since. Which may or may not qualify me to write in a balanced way about the unstoppable force that is Najma. But let’s see.
Najma’s family is of both Pakistani and Indian Muslim descent. Her father was an entrepreneur businessman who set up the first Asian printing press business in Lon- don and later went on to work as a distrib- utor of Indian films. So, Najma grew up in London listening to a huge cross-section of Indian film music. Her parents bought her a harmonium when she was a teenager and she began to imitate her favourite film songs. “Although my parents’ work and connections helped introduce me to music when I was a child, I’m sure the last thing on their mind was for me to pursue it as a career.”
She won Birmingham’s Asian Song Contest in 1984 and her prize was a trip to India, where Najma had hopes of becom- ing an overnight success. “That didn’t hap- pen, of course, and I came back to England with my parents and finished my studies. More and more, though, I realised I really wanted to be in music.” A footnote to her Song Contest appearance is that Najma’s tabla player on the night was Talvin Singh, then known as Bobby, making his first-ever public performance.
Najma’s recording debut came two years later with Ghazals, an album of pure- ly traditional Ghazals – Urdu love poems, often dating back centuries, set to music and also containing elements of Sufi mysti- cism. It was recorded in Mumbai during 1986 under the musical direction of the famous Indian film music director Ravi. “That was a daunting experience. I knew the songs that I’d be singing, but I had no training… I had no idea! All of the musi- cians were assembled and waiting in the studio when I arrived and the songs were then recorded as a live performance.”
Back in London, Najma was subse- quently introduced by the Gramophone Company of India to producers Iain Scott
and Bunt Stafford-Clark of Triple Earth Records. “The idea of the album with Iain and Bunt was really to create a Ghazal album for non-Asians and we added ele- ments of jazz in order to help speak to a Western audience.” This became Qareeb, released on Triple Earth Records in 1987. After much discussion, the traditional songs of love that lie at the core of the album had been set into musical arrangements intro- ducing fretless bass, keyboards and saxo- phone alongside the traditional instrumen- tation of santoor, violin, tabla and dholak. In 1989, James Hunter of the New York Times wrote of Qareeb: “This is the work of a musician who senses that, these days, she can remember the ancient, honour the everyday – and sing to several continents at the same time.” Najma says that “this is when my music career really started.”
Iain remembers the sessions as a warm and happy experience. Najma’s perfor- mances of six songs with the traditional instruments were recorded in just one night-time session and the bass, keyboards and sax were added over six subsequent days. “We also overdubbed Najma’s voice in order to create harmonies, which is quite unusual for Indian vocal music.”
Shortly after that, Najma and I first crossed paths, at the 1987 Glastonbury Fes- tival, where WOMAD had been invited to organise its own field of stage perfor- mances and workshops.
When we spoke about this dim and distant past, it was Najma who reminded me about that first encounter. “I do remember performing at what I believe was the first WOMAD stage at Glaston- bury, in 1987. Do you remember that?? Wow, of course I do, that was my first ever concert and also the first time I went to a music festival. It was a hugely overwhelm- ing experience for me and I remember it like yesterday – feelings of both panic and excitement simply at being there, although I’m sure I must have missed many great things.”
I remember that weekend well, too. Panic and excitement pretty much reflect my own experience. This was in the dark ages, pre-glamping, up-market Glaston- bury. Elements of that festival could have come from an underworld scene depicted
by Hieronymus Bosch rather than the musi- cal wonderland that it has since become. The supposed attendance of 52,000 must have been more like 100,000 and it seemed vast, most especially at night.
After their Friday performance, Najma, her Armenian bassist, Laz Gregorian, and Iain Scott were then accidentally left behind at the festival site after dark. The three of them wandered around, complete- ly lost, until the break of day. “We went from gate to gate, from pillar to post, and as the sun rose we finally walked to Shep- ton Mallet station for a train back to Lon- don. That was a lovely end to our adven- ture, actually, watching the rising sun as we walked along the meandering lanes and away from the site. But what a night.”
Talk about a baptism by fire. And in
truth, Najma’s early musical adventures brought her new challenges at every turn. “Working with western musicians, widening my musical horizons… and Glastonbury, my goodness. Initially it was a real battle, breaking out of established boundaries – and breaking out of Glas- tonbury of course!”
electrical engineer, her sister a civil engi- neer and her brother a business and indus- trial engineer. Najma also initially followed this family tradition and earned a master’s degree in chemical engineering from Birm- ingham’s Aston University.
J
“In a traditional Indian family, educa- tion is the most important thing. Arts are secondary. And in the Asian community, whether you are Muslim, Sikh, or Hindu, the acting or singing professions still aren’t considered at all respectable, espe- cially for girls, and not solid or lucrative enough for boys.”
Whatever our background, many of us working in music will have gone through that “When are you going to get a proper job?” thing coming from our worried parents. And for Najma, coming from these roots, it was a real struggle to break that mould. This vividly reflects
ust to explain some of the person- al boundaries with which she was contending, you should know that Najma comes from a family of engineers. Her father became an
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