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punkistani's LiveJournal:
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| Saturday, June 13th, 2009 | | 12:11 pm |
NEW 9000 miles
Hey lj buddies. Please check this out! http://www.myspace.com/thekominasNEW 9000 miles. lyrics “Do I strive for a hustle, when time slinks and snails it’s way by” ran my thoughts in Chicago, remember how we slept in parking spaces that night, searching for Noble Drew, our brain synapses fried. Dear heart, pound less, this rib aint caged to confine, How can I swim 9,000 miles I’m 9,000 miles away from home Lying in a ditch, I hung my eyes off the crescent I rubbed the bristles on my chin, where do I begin? Mere moments away from doomsday, I see the tipping of the scale, you knew how I would fare, So why did you test me, when all you really wanted, was to singe me There’s almost no line, between fear and love, sometimes I’m made of fire, sometimes i’m made of mud But I, But I hold my own on my own here, still barely holding on | | Wednesday, May 27th, 2009 | | 7:27 pm |
| | Monday, May 25th, 2009 | | 2:20 am |
Log
I wrote a really long entry on the Taqwacores Webzine, which is what I'd probably upload for now. There's a rendition of a classic kirtan, that was recorded in Scotland about the Sufi martyr Bhai Mati Das, who was killed by the moghul emperor Aurenzeb. And thoughts on death and poetry. The entry is called "Better than a thousand years as a jackass". Please read it, bookmark the site, and comment. Current Music: she talks to rainbows | | Friday, May 22nd, 2009 | | 5:09 pm |
A great review on YellowBuzz
Wendy, the writer behind Yellow Buzz - a punk/noise and diaspora blog, reviewed Wild nights and it's probably the best writing on the album I've come across. It was cool, she came up from the South, interviewed us, went to Maine to record with her noise/punk band, and came back down for our basement show in Lowell. She's fantastic. She actually wrote about the music! This is a first. And she sat down with all of us and spoke as an equal. It's about time someone sat down and reported things accurately, and meaningfully. | | Wednesday, May 6th, 2009 | | 11:29 am |
Basement Show on the 15th in Lowell
We'll be playing some new sh!t, so make it up. From the mouth of Nick (of Sinbusters): "So the show starts at 8:00 at my apartment at 16 plymouth street. So far the bands playing are: Ladderlegs Ralph Eats Dynamite Sinbusters Los Bungalitos The Kominas! & the Big Sway (probably). Hetfield and Hetfield might also play. Tell your minions to keep inside the house and park discreetly in the parking lot as to not make our house look like a crazy party target for the cops who patrol our street." | | Wednesday, April 15th, 2009 | | 4:00 pm |
To POC's in T-dot
Our girl, Sena is looking for a geetarist and bassist. "I want to re-start my band, Secret Trial Five www.myspace.com/secrettrialfive in Toronto.. I have found a drummer, and we need someone who plays guitar to actually get started.. We are also looking for someone who plays bass. PLEASE HELP ME GET THE WORD OUT!!! My band: We are a Taqwacore (muslim punk) band, started in 2006 in Vancouver. We play politically conscious punk, and focus on topics such as islamophobia, racism, sexism, imperialism, war, etc. You don't need to be an expert, it's a punk band. I'd prefer muslims and/or POCs, but you know, whatever.. Also, let me know if you know anyone you think I should get in touch with about this, any listservs I should be posting this on, any connections you have, if you're going to a punk show in the near future and need company, etc. etc. K thanks! Sena senahussain@gmail.com" | | Saturday, March 28th, 2009 | | 2:12 am |
| | Tuesday, March 10th, 2009 | | 3:46 pm |
| | Monday, March 2nd, 2009 | | 5:31 pm |
Track hunting
Does anyone have a copy of "Big trouble in little asia" by Hustlers HC (from UK). Old track, haven't heard it in a bit. Fire it over to basim dot usmani at gmail dot com . I'm leaving in a few days for NYC via Doha. The gig looks exciting, almost makes me overlook my expenses. Maybe we'll "move some units". Just a few more sleepless nights and I'm out. | | Saturday, February 7th, 2009 | | 4:11 pm |
This is a hold up
Okay, the Kominas are playing SXSW (South by South West in Austin)! I'll be flying out in about a month; trying to hustle my stories to pay for my ticket. So click this: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/04/pakistan-swat-talibanThat was a very cathartic article to write. I'm so frustrated with Muslims online, and in Pakistan. None of them can talk about the Taliban with any sort of conviction, I find myself having the same conversations about the great game, Soviet's in Afghanistan, and CIA/ISI trained mujahideen. It's like Pakistani Muslims are stuck talking about the 80s. We have a whole new problem now, the Taliban isn't fighting soviets anymore; they're after your sympathies. They want the government to give it land so they can impose their rule on its residents. They want other Muslims to mind their own business, to save themselves. College youths in Pakistan who are just learning to use the word "hegemony" feel the Taliban is justified for being at odds with the "global Israeli/American hegemony". Yeah, but what about the people of Swat, Bajaur, Waziristan, or dare I say it (dare! dare!), Kabul? Are they worth less than Palestinians? The reason Swat hasn't been brought up, I think, is because Muslims think their shit doesn't stink. So it's been two and a half years, and I've had a political awakening after a religious disillusionment. I don't have any stake in an afterlife, in a God, or a holy book. I feel nothing but apathy when confronted with American flags burning on the street either. Nor would I care if they burned the Pakistani flag. Maybe I'm an anarchist? I'll tell you one thing though, I'm anti-Taliban. In other news, my past employer decided to withhold last month's pay, which is always a pleasant surprise! | | Sunday, November 9th, 2008 | | 12:09 pm |
| | Wednesday, September 10th, 2008 | | 6:55 am |
the car after the fire
 Yup, there she is My cousin just told me some bad news: RIP: Warith Deen Muhammad Current Music: Kidd Skilly | | Monday, September 8th, 2008 | | 12:27 pm |
don't sweat the technique
There's a horsefucker that lives by my apartment; he finds cars parked on the street and slashes their tires. Often cars driven by guests and friends of mine. Here's a video that my jiggars, Asif and Shahj edited about the ordeal, and how we got him to fuck off. My car ignited half a year ago on the canal. I'll have to post pictures, but it was a Suzuki deathtrap made sometime around 2002. Not that old, but shitty enough to have all the car wiring underneath the pipes pumping Compressed Natural Gas from the tank to the engine. Smoke came out of the wheel when the wires shorted, and I had parked the car underneath a tree, took the keys out and waited. The wires between my legs ignited. I scampered out a few feet saw the thing turn into a big fireball, with drops of fire and oil coating the street like napalm. There's a tree by the canal I walk by on my way to work that's all burnt like a tandoor. Cars are for losers anyways. Oh, here's a write up on Political/Protest music in Pakistan, it discusses Shezad Roy, Laal, and Noble Drew (the Kominas' front out in Pakistan). It has an awesome shot of the punkhouse/apartment we have in Lahore, all painted up. That golden portrait in the back is W D Fard, so we got to Show and Prove! Study your lessons | | Monday, August 18th, 2008 | | 3:25 pm |
Party like its 1946
Musharraf resigned!!!! Wow. I'm going to be Mush-free when I land in PK. There are some awful people in line to take his place though. | | Thursday, August 14th, 2008 | | 5:10 am |
Kominas album on CDBaby on Independence day woes
So today was the great day when Pakistan came into being, and the release of the Kominas' Wild Nights on CD Baby. Please buy it if you support what we're doing. We have a habit of giving discs away to curious folks at shows - which is bad business, but help prove people wrong and pay for the damn thing. Ha, ha. 
 here's the short link: http://cdbaby.com/cd/kominasBombs went off in Lahore today, on its fucking day of independence. Wow! And I found out from some Indian corner shop folks by the place I'm staying at in the UK. They were talking about it really jovially, told me they couldn't wait til Pakistan was no more. Wow. That's really all I have to say. | | Friday, August 8th, 2008 | | 1:30 pm |
Shows I need to hit in UK
Tomorrow is Rebellion Festival in Blackpool which has my favorite bands, Cocksparrer, Varukers, 4skins playing - but it's priced at 30 quid and travel would be 120 quid on top of that. That's 400 bucks - it would wipe me out only three days into my trip. FUCK. So I'll just go to this gig instead.  What else should I catch? | | Saturday, August 2nd, 2008 | | 9:40 am |
Brooklyn Show and Turtle Island thoughts
Before I get too deep into this entry, I'll mention the show we're playing later today in Brooklyn. This Saturday, August 2ndThe Kominas / Metamphetamines / Blast Off! / Sociedad Discriminada Doors at 5pm @ The Silent Barn, 915 Wyckoff Ave at Hancock (in far east Williamsburg, AKA Ridgewood), Exit L train at Halsey and take a left on Wyckoff walking towards the Manhattan skyline (past the gas station which should be at your back). Silent Barn will be on your right about two blocks down. mapIt's been good to meet up with family again here on Turtle Island. As the years pile on, I realize more that my father's brothers and mother's siblings have wisdom to share with me. I felt disassociated from them early on; I had an imagination I could escape into for hours when they'd dissect my flaws with my parents. I'm beyond dissection since moving to Pakistan, its like I've held out my entrails for them. On a long car drive from Boston to Detroit, my Uncle told me what drove him out of Lahore. He said after graduation, his first employer was offering him a position as a favor to his father. It was the culture of favoritism and never getting a job on his own merits that scared him. So he left for work in Saudi Arabia. "I started a restaurant with one goal," he told me, "that one by one I could slowly get our family out of Lahore, and out of Pakistan once and for all." It's insane how sentiments can change in one generation. My grandfather was a "Student Guard" of Jinnah's from Panipat, he was extremely active in getting the man to speak at his university. His name was Ali Pasha, and when authorities caught wind of his activities pre-partition, he changed his name to Muhammad Ali Usmani to operate clandestinely. Hence, we are Usmanis. I realize though that Pakistan has done nothing for his memory. When the Pakistani police pull me over, the first thing they ask is "tumara zaat kya hain?" (what is your caste?) This region has a multitude of castes that dictate your place in society: martial Rajputs, artistic Chughtais, industrialist Sheikhs, mischevious Gujjars and so on. Usmanis are no caste. We are on the outside of this social order. To the police deployed in the country my grandfather dedicated his life in the service of, Usmani is a meaningless name. It raises suspicions which is funny; in the country of my origin, I get profiled for holding bombs. None of my family managed to make any political headway after partition, and my Grandfather's political opinions found their place in his writing. It was an offer to become a teacher of literature at Aitchison College that brought my father's family out of Mochi Gate in the Walled City and into faculty housing on Mall Road. I've been especially inquisitive about my Grandfather, we never saw eye to eye with each other. I was the eldest son of his eldest son and fell short of expectations. When I first moved to Lahore from California at ten, he asked me to write an essay on what I remembered about America. He crumbled up the essay I submitted about laser tag and skate boarding. "What about the museums? The Native American reservations? The Universities?" he asked me. I spent the last five years of his life living with him in Lahore. There were themes in what he told me that became more apparent as I got older... I was in the running to be selected for a debate about the UN at school, because my class teacher thought that meant my speech would be written by my Grandfather. And it was, though I didn't qualify for the debate because his handwriting was too messy. His eyes were probably as bad as my memory was at the time, I couldn't memorize for shit. All I remembered was that my Grandfather condemned the UN for failing to come to the aid of indigenous peoples in Australia, Canada and America. A few years ago when I was trying to teach myself how to read and write Urdu with a family friend in Boston, we tried to crack open one his books Panipat ki kihani (Paniput's story). It was about his attempts to revive a style of Quranic recitation our family safe guarded for generations before the formation of Pakistan. Since Quranic kirat (recitation) was developed, worldwide there are still only 14 accepted styles of it. Panipati is one of them. Interest in it waned with the mass migrations of family and loss of culture in 1947. He lived to see his father's life work on its deaths throes. My father saw the same in the death throes of his father's Pakistan. The major theme I noticed in my Grandfather's words was that of preservation. He wanted to preserve culture because he had seen so much dissolving around him after being uprooted from India and having his eldest son being uprooted from Lahore. I can't imagine how he saw me, an ABCD. I know he passed away with an unflattering impression of me. But if only he was alive today. Since landing back in the USA, I make it a point to tie a bandana on my head and visit the Gurdwara to study Punjabi with the Sikhs. I've been studying it in the Nastaliq or 'Muslim' script for the past year and a half, so it's been interesting adapting to Gurumukhi. But the Sardars and Kaurs meet me graciously, intrigued by some of the Muslim writers I read with them. They've held onto Baba Farid but long forgotten Mian Muhammad Baksh, Shah Hussain, or Waris Shah. I'm slowly polishing my Urdu reading too, though Punjabi is much better suited to music. I can hear how I sound singing on Noble Drew's tracks, and I'm miles better than how I was singing Punjabi in America. In Mochi Gate, my family speaks pure Punjabi - but none of them was interested in teaching their children. They all were taught Urdu. But I have no favoritism towards Punjabi or Urdu - in America they're both equally foreign to me. The idea is to take steps towards preserving them when Bollywood Hindi threatens to bury centuries of poetry and insight in languages with lesser sales margins. In times like these, my Grandfather could have provided a lot of guidance. | | Thursday, July 31st, 2008 | | 6:26 pm |
Gig tonight w/ Kominas, Sociedad Discriminada (Mexico Punk) in Central Square
With Sociedad Discriminada from Mexico, we rock out, fuck Immigration... TONITECantab Lounge 738 Mass Ave, Central Square. 9pm. Not sure about age limits, poke me - I'll get you in... We're playing another show this Sat at a house show in Brooklyn. I'll get the details up even more last minute... These are all shows being played for selfish reasons. | | Thursday, July 24th, 2008 | | 5:16 am |
The New Band, Noble Drew
I've been holding out a bit. Well - I haven't updated in weeks to say. Life's been out of control. I played four shows between Lahore and Islamabad with my new band Noble Drew. Check out the song here: http://www.myspace.com/nobledrew7The name was chosen for many reasons, but here's the one that matters to me: Noble Drew gave a national identity to the Blacks in America as Moors, when the government was not ready to recognize the countries of their origin. At the same time, he represents an intersection of Cherokee natives, Black slaves, and Islam. It feels great to raise the flag of American Muslims in Pakistan, Lahore. The song, Thalayyo Vi ChimaRo,which translates to "stick to me from the bottom up" is about a lot of frustrations. The first is my frustration with lovey dovey music videos that run on the seven (that's right) different music channels in Lahore. They all feature tantalizing models walking on Karachi beaches with poodle headed guitarists playing with their hair in the wind. There's oddly enough not many girls to be seen in Lahore. Then we have khoon mazdoora da choosan waalay, the 10% blood sucking feudal families who need to contract scabies. They need to get stuck to me from the bottom up when I'm stiff in the morning, holding up my shalwar with no naala. We'll throw more songs up soon, but I'm on a family trip in the States right now. Detroit is where I'm at, visiting family - though I'm headed to Chicago in a matter of hours. To those who've ordered KOMINAS - Wild Nights in Guantanamo BayIf you haven't recieved your order never fear. Our one man label operation has had a reshuffling in staff, and my objective in Chitown is to get the discs and mail them out personally. This sleeper cell has a headache, and is tired of being fucked all the time. Here's to abstinence and getting what you paid for. Sorry about the Desi time, I was oversees. After I get my records back from the old label guy we worked with, someone will take over duties in Boston. Maybe even my dad. How's that? | | Friday, July 18th, 2008 | | 6:24 pm |
Back in turtle island, new show announced
Hey!! Kominas show this Sunday at ten! The Trash Bar, 256 Grand Street, Brooklyn, NY 11211 21 , 7$ Come out, come out wherever you are! I'm available short time only. Same cell. |
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