Resistance rappers: the Pahnji Gang raging against the machine in Pakistan
Deep in Pakistan’s countryside, Sindhi Chhokri and her teenage brother Toxic Sufi are raising a few eyebrows.
Under the banner the Pahnji Gang, the siblings have also been finding an audience for their rap music in rural Sindh. “Growing up, it was hard to navigate past a string of unsaid things that did not seem right. And when we did, we would be reprimanded by the village elders,” says Sindhi Chhokri, real name Urooj Fatima, speaking from her village in Yaqoob Kapri, near Jhuddo city.
Her 18-year-old brother, Mohammad Kapri, who raps as Toxic Sufi, says music has allowed them to “speak freely” about issues that are otherwise “conveniently shoved under the carpet because they make people uneasy”.
Songs around sexual violence, “honour” killings, police brutality, child labour, even enforced disappearances, are winning the pair a YouTube following although Fatima says they still cannot afford a studio to record videos. For now they have a computer and a microphone from money left by their late father.
A successful performance at the Lahooti Melo, a music festival in Hyderabad, even saw the audience sing the lyrics of their song Inqilab (“revolution”) back at them.
“There must not have been less than 2,000 or so youth, when we started chanting ‘mujhey khappay inqilab’ [‘I want a revolution’], the response was amazing. Now I know how it feels to be a celebrity; I still get a high from looking at the videos of our performance,” says Fatima.
Lahooti was founded by the Sufi musician Saif Samejo as a grassroots organisation to promote Indigenous culture, music and art. He sees rap as a continuation of Pakistan’s heritage of poetry and music.
“The Pahnji Gang talked about resistance in the way that Sufi saints talked about it hundreds of years ago, and their poetic expression found resonance with the spectators,” says Samejo.
He says disenchantment is widespread in Sindh among young people unwilling to accept the status quo and fighting to bring about change however they can. “Those in power, and in cahoots with the religious leaders, have indoctrinated the uneducated masses through fear and patronage,” he says.
“Many have found an alternative, registering resistance and protest and demanding change in a peaceful way,” says Samejo, adding: “The fusion of Sindhi and Urdu added a touch of authenticity, and they connected with their audience and to the latter’s feeling of rage and disillusionment,” he says of the Pahnji Gang’s performance at the festival. “The power of song can really unite people.”
Fatima started making music in 2018, when Kapri made her listen to hip-hop. “I didn’t like it one bit; there was a lot of anger and yelling,” she says. But it struck a chord. “I heard Emiway Bantai. The music addressed life’s struggles, experiences and aspirations; I understood the rapper had found a way to vent all things wrong in society; I thought I could too.”
Pakistan already has one Baloch female rapper, who goes by the pseudonym Eva B. Fatima is also inspired by Dee MC, an Indian rapper. “I’d love for us to be recorded by Coke Studio [noted for providing a platform to established and emerging artists and highly popular],” she says.
Fatima is following in her family’s tradition. “My late father and my mother were followers of a Sindhi nationalist party – the Awami Tehreek – and my father wrote revolutionary poetry as well as plays condemning human rights violations, which was not liked by the village,” she says. He was adamant his three sons and four daughters would pursue higher education, something viewed with suspicion in their village where most children were not allowed “to study beyond fifth grade”.
“The village elders asked my father to put an end to his liberal ways or leave. A panchayat (village council meeting) was held and it was decided that it would be best if he left his ancestral village of Fazal Mohammad Kapri,” she says.
“We moved out to land that belonged to my mother, two kilometres away, and set up our own village, which has expanded to 66 households and is known as Yaqoob Kapri, in 2005,” says Fatima.
In 2015, when she was 16, the family was once again threatened. “I would go to school riding a motorbike so [the villagers] threatened my father that they will kill me if he did not stop me. My father told them off saying it was none of their business as he had given me permission.”
Fatima also helps one of her brothers, a farmer, with buying seeds, fertiliser and pesticide from the market. “I go on the motorbike, get the rates from different shops and then buy accordingly and rent a rickshaw, load the stuff in it and it gets delivered to our doorstep,” she says. “I know I am breaking a lot of stereotypes but all this is possible because I have the full support of my mother and my brothers.”
But she finds mindsets changing in her ancestral village. “I volunteer with a national women’s organisation, Shirkat Gah. I hold awareness sessions there and have formed a women’s club. It has 16 members aged between 18 and 45. After two years of conversations about the importance of girls’ education, I was thrilled when one of my cousins, who had taken her daughter out of school after grade five, enrolled her into secondary school this year. Change, it seems, has come.”
Kapri is keen to discuss a riskier subject – religion. “You can be jailed, you can be killed, and you can be disappeared for ever if you cross the red line,” Samejo has warned him.
“But”, Kapri adds, “isn’t this what rap music is all about – to speak the truth?”
ically. But we are talking about real people, struggling with real difficulties.”
The film shifts perspective: in one scene we see the world through Lucía’s eyes; in the next it’s her mother Ane (Patricia López Arnaiz), a sculptor. At the start of the film, Ane is relaxed with her “son” (as she sees Lucía) having long hair and wearing gender-neutral clothes. But she is increasingly worried when Lucía starts to openly identify as a girl.
Solaguren’s interest in parents of trans kids came from her interviews about the transition process. “What some of these families were telling me was that it wasn’t the kids who had changed. The kids were the same all the time. What had changed was the others’ gaze. The transformation is the way that we look at these kids, no?”
When it came to casting, Solaguren was adamant that she didn’t want to audition cis boys for the role of Lucía.
Instead, a casting call went out to trans groups, primary schools, dance clubs and children’s theatres for “girls”. “I wasn’t asking for trans girlsor cis girls. I was asking for girls.” In the end, the children in the film are played by a mix of trans and cis kids, all first-time actors. On the advice of lawyers in the trans community, and at the request of children themselves, their gender identities are not being revealed publicly.
The role of Lucía was given to Sofía Otero after casting went to the wire. “Sofía came along to the first audition, but she was such a happy girl, nothing like Lucía,” remembers Solaguren. “So we didn’t see her.” So this sunny little girl was cast in a small role, and it was only months later, after meeting 500 more wannabes, the clock ticking, that they went back and re-auditioned her. After the Silver Bear win, a decision was taken to shield her from publicity.
Solaguren herself was 27 when she took the plunge to become a director. “It took me a long time to believe that I could even try.” She grew up in an ordinary working-class family; her dad worked in a factory and her mum was a housewife. As a child, she spent hours writing and illustrating stories. At university she studied audiovisual communications and toyed with becoming a journalist.
Everything changed when she took a film class. “Up to this moment I just thought a film was a film, no?” she laughs. “But thanks to a great teacher I discovered film analysis. It was like going into an unknown universe.” She tells me this so enthusiastically, gesturing with her hands, that she flicks out her headphones. “It got me,” she finishes with a laugh.
It was the films of the Italian neorealists that spoke most directly to her. “I started discovering new characters in films, like kids and women. I identified with … I felt very identified with, by this cinema ...” Again she struggles to find words in English, finally settling on: “It was my language.” Critics have compared her film-making style in 20,000 Species of Bees to Ken Loach and the Dardenne brothers, praising her compassion and humane gaze.
After graduating, she worked in TV. “I got a job for an association of producers as a …” She mimes typing with her fingers.
Doing admin? Secretary? “Yes something like that.” She went on to work in TV post-production.
In 2011, she took the leap, moved to Barcelona to study an MA in film. “I decided to go for my dream, let’s say. But the whole trajectory has been a process of struggling with my own fears, trying to believe in myself.” I ask if imposter syndrome is a concept in Spain. She nods: “I found a lot of women have different symptoms of this. Not asking for the money they deserve. From the outside, I can think, ‘That’s not fair! You deserve it!’ But it’s a big difference from within. I don’t know what happens. It’s as if we really still don’t believe this space is also for us.”
Did she ever meet the family of the boy whose story inspired the film? “Yes. About 12 months before shooting, I introduced myself.” They had already heard about her film and she gave them the script to read. “They told me they were really touched that it could have helped in some way.”
• 20,000 Species of Bees is at the London film festival on 10 and 15 October, and released in the UK on 27 October
• In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org