"Irtiqa" - an instrumental from Umer Piracha

by Salman Hameed

This past January, I had a post about Umer Piracha, a promising young Pakistani musician (and a lot more) who is interested in intellectual inquiry and is fascinated by science. In particular, I had singled out his instrumental on Extremophiles, which was inspired by a passage in a book by astronomer Chris Impey. He has recently been also profiled in the Tribune Express: From Multan to Philly, Umer Piracha found his calling.

Now he has a new instrumental out that is even more relevant to this blog. It is called Irtiqa. Here it is:



This is how Umer describes it:

Moral Idealism [i.e. the belief that one's group or community is on the side of the 'good' and fighting for it], according to the best research in Psychology, is the product of biological evolution of the human brain, and is to blame for most of the mass violence in humanity [as opposed to greed/sadism etc]. But there is a second type of evolution, that of thought, which allows one to recognize and overcome this ugliness that seems to come so automatically, and seek to love and protect all mankind without attaching too much importance to strict national or religious identities. It is for these reasons I'm calling my new track 'Irtiqa', an Urdu word that means Evolution. It is dedicated to the minorities in Pakistan, who are victims of the first kind of evolution, and perhaps could be saved by the second. The track is in no particular language, just my brainwaves translated into sound waves.

I think his piece captures both the urgency of the current situation as well as sounding a cautiously progressive (and hopeful) outlook towards the end.

Looking forward to more music from him...