The beautiful rhythm of the Azan; the "put put" of rickshaws; the clack of horsecarts; the sound of haggling between buyer and vendor; the singing and yelling of children in the school yard. These are the sounds that weave a tapestry of life in Pakistan. They are also a creative way of conveying Pakistani culture.

On your next visit to Pakistan, produce some real live entertainment and education about the country for Americans by putting together "sound prints of life in Pakistan".

This requires you to get a quality tape recorder, plenty of empty audiocassettes and to pay an attentive ear to all that you hear from the wise to the wacky during the trip.

Plan what kinds of sounds you want to record. You can include the above-mentioned ones as well as others which represent life in Pakistan. Also, develop a log of what you have on tape so you can have an easier time editing it once you're finished taping.

While you can include short interviews, try to focus more on using the sounds to describe an issue or aspect of Pakistani life. For instance, you can describe the rickshaw as the "poor person's taxi" in Pakistan. You can use the background sound of a buyer and customer haggling to not only point to an age-old Pakistani tradition, but also to point out the difficult financial straits most Pakistanis today live in.

Once you have all of your sounds, you'll need to edit out what you don't need as well as include narration and explanation in English to give the project flow and so it can be understandable to a non-Urdu speaking audience. If you have experience, you can, of course do the editing yourself. But if you don't and you want to share this project with others outside of your family and close friends, it may be worth your while to invest in hiring an editor or a more capable friend to do the job for you, if you can afford it.

After you're done editing, you've got to use this project for what it was originally put together for: to promote and explain Pakistan and its culture, to both Pakistanis and non-Pakistanis. Here are some ideas of how you can do that with your work of audio art:

1. If you have a Pakistani-American radio show in your city, ask them to air it on their program. The purpose will be to give local Pakistanis a glimpse of Pakistan today, as well as to give an idea of what life in Pakistan is like to non-Pakistanis.

If you're in high school or college and your school has its own show or station, ask the station manager or show producer to broadcast it so that students can broaden their minds by learning about a different culture.

2. Submit it as a class project if you are in broadcast journalism or communications. You can do this for a specific assignment or you can hand it in as an extra project. Not only will your teacher learn something about Pakistan, but you may also get extra marks!

3. If you have photographs from your trip to Pakistan as well, combine them with this audio project to produce your own multimedia program about your trip to Pakistan. You can call it "Lifeprints from the homeland" or something similarly meaningful.

Once you've put it together, upload the program to your website so that millions of people can have access to it and get an insider's view of Pakistan.

4. Have an audio screening of the project followed by a discussion at your local Pakistani-American association as well as Pakistan Students' Association. This will be a fun way to introduce Pakistan from an American perspective, especially for the younger crowd who may have never visited there. It's also a good way to discuss the current state of Pakistan with those who have immigrated from there but haven't gone back.

5. Search on the internet for opportunities to have your report broadcast. There are sites begging for people to sumbit material. Why not send it in to www.yespakistan.com? Or a website devoted to promoting cultural diversity?

Remember, if you do submit the project, don't submit the original. Keep it and send the contest, teacher, etc. a copy of your audio masterpiece.

Date/Time Last Modified: 6/17/2002 3:48:55 PM

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