Tag: music

When the Chips Are Down

 

That’s the thirty-second time tonight

That those kids have knocked and run again

I’d stand outside and fight

But there are a million of us: and fifty million of them

 

There’s a mob smashing down our door

So brave against three kids and their frightened mother

The police don’t come here anymore

We’re just Pakis, so why should they bother?

 

We tried so hard to reason

But it just pissed them off, that we spoke, just like them

We tried so hard to appease them

But we’re not the same, because we “didn’t die at Arnhem”

 

When the chips are down, my skin’s still brown

I’m just a Paki to you

When the chips are down, my skin’s still brown

I’m just a Paki to you

 

We wanted you to end your hatred

We didn’t even want respect

For hours behind that door we waited

Praying that you’d feel regret

 

And now you want us integrated

Because our background frightens you

But we’re happy differentiated

This way, we might enlighten you

 

We tried so hard to reason

But it just pissed them off, that we spoke, just like them

We tried so hard to appease them

But we’re not the same, because we “didn’t die at Arnhem”

 

When the chips are down, my skin’s still brown

I’m just a Paki to you

When the chips are down, my skin’s still brown

I’m just a Paki to you

When the chips are down, my skin’s still brown

I’m just a Paki to you

When the chips are down, my skin’s still brown

I’m just a Paki to you

 

I thought that we’d turned the corner

I thought that we’d climbed the hill

But we’re right back where we started

Disenfranchised, what a bitter pill

 

Copyright © 1999-2013 Shahid K. Ahmad

Vocals, programming, guitars, fretless bass: Shahid Ahmad

Solo: Rashid Ahmad

 

Where Does Music Come From?

When I come home on a Friday evening, I pick up an instrument and play. I don’t think. The muse has been ignored for the whole week and the pressure I feel to be the channel for creativity to become real is almost overwhelming.

Like Steven Pressfield, I believe we are channels for this creative force. As a Muslim, I believe that this is a gift from Allah, but you can call this force what you like and ignore that I’m on first name terms with the Creator of All That Is, Was and Ever Shall Be. I’m not too precious about the nomenclature. All I know is that I don’t actually know where the music comes from, just that I’m the channel.

I don’t even know what I’m going to say until I’ve spoken. I don’t know what I’m going to write until I’ve written, and I don’t know what is going to be composed until I pick up an instrument, tonight a guitar, and just play for a few minutes to release whatever it was that needed to come into being. And now it is part of the Creation and I as the medium have served my purpose. It never lets me down, because it is not me that is doing anything. I’m just the servant.

Does it work for people who have no “talent”? Sure. I believe that talent is the accumulation of perfect practice. I subscribe to Gladwell’s “10,000 hours” idea. As a youth, I put a lot of time into practising the bass guitar. As a child, I was the best in my primary school at all the recorders. I learned to just about get by on guitar, to sound out a few handy blues riffs on the harmonica, to play a few notes that sounded OK on a sax. I even learned to sing, just about, but I haven’t hit 10,000 hours in any of those disciplines, with the possible exception of the bass guitar. I did not have talent to begin with. I had a willingness to learn. Call it aptitude, passion, interest, whatever, it’s the thing that sustains you through plateaus and kicks your behind after you’ve been criticised by fools that should know better.

Undeveloped talent is like a radio that isn’t tuned properly. The more you develop your skill, the clearer your reception to the gift of art. There is a point at which your technique becomes the tool of the art. The more finely tuned you are to the source, the greater the range of creative expression you are “gifted” with.

I get a good signal. There is some static, some noise, some feedback, but if I keep putting in the hours, the art will ring like a bell.