metropolis m

HUM translates as ‘we’ in Urdu, the national language of Pakistan. And the singers and songwriters of the hummed songs within the sound installation have all been political prisoners. These six, born across a span of nearly 80 years, with the earliest in 1911, anchor the songs to specific liberation struggles in Turkey, Egypt, Burma, Pakistan and Sudan. One such example is Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s poem Hum Dekheñge, (which can be translated as the assertion: We Shall See) inspired by the possibility of revolution.[1] When Faiz, revolutionary poet, writer and first chief editor of the Pakistan times was first arrested he was kept in solitary confinement for four years. Hum Dekheñge was written more than 20 years later, in 1979 during Zia Ul Haq’s dictatorship. Faiz’ banned poem was set to music and sung by famous Ghazal singer Iqbal Bano in Lahore stadium in 1986, enlivening the crowd of 50,000 to chant: ‘Inqilab Zindabad!’ (‘Long Live the Revolution!’).[2] Her called-for encore was recorded. In the days following the concert, raids were carried out to find and destroy the tapes, testament to the power of Bano’s rendition at that time. And now, as songs travel not only through the synchronous sharing of oral history but across asynchronous digital and networked connections, the sentiment of Hum Dekheñge has been echoed in protests against the Indian Government’s citizen amendment act (CAA) which penalises refugees based on their religion both at sit-ins and dispersed online as videos which have gone viral.[3]

In response to the anti-CAA student protests in India, the Pakistan Students Solidarity Marches erupted in 2019 in more than 50 different locations in Pakistan, during which Waheed paid a site visit for the Lahore biennial.[4] HUM was originally commissioned for the biennial and is dated 2020 but there is something about the work which brings it beyond a layered and composed recording. The urgency of protest can be felt in the sounds. It doesn’t feel like I am just listening to something archival and fixed. The edges of the hummed songs blur. The humming voices seem to occupy me and the struggles of this present. Waheed understands the architecture of listening, the vulnerability needed to touch an audience, and the necessity to come together in solidarity against tyranny. As well as signalling to me to slow down and pay a different kind of attention to listening, the atmosphere of HUM allows me to become sensitive to the way sound can occupy space within the present. The wordless songs are unrushed: audible inhales sip air between the long, mouth-closed, tonal, nasal exhales. Alone and uninhibited that afternoon I joined in with the background hum, my voice becoming a disguised entity amidst the multiple voices which support, extend and strengthen a single humming voice. 

The symbolism of the white carpet initially reminded me of grief, and perhaps there is an element of this in the work; creating space to acknowledge the losses within these different struggles, the years of incarceration, isolation and forced exile. But the complexity of Waheed’s work lies in the space it creates for a breadth of feeling. How it activates, informs, allows for and deepens my understanding of various political struggles and how in the first instance of listening, whilst my cognitive understanding is kept at bay, I am moved before I understand why. The resonance of the collective voices in HUM is held above the Rotterdam metro rumbles but below the city sirens. From Waheed I learn that this deeply felt, indeterminate middle space of humming can signify safety and connection—a lullaby effect—and yet, be poignantly political.