After thirty years of wanting to, I finally attended a Bruce Springsteen concert this summer, at Madison Square Garden. For a journalist born and based in Pakistan who has carried Springsteen's music everywhere over the years, from war zones to weddings, it was a mind-blowing experience.

What Springsteen epitomizes is the meaning and power of American culture-and that is community. Through his music and his earthiness Bruce builds a community of people who share every beat of his guitar, who partake ever so briefly in the life of the artist but who share that with millions of other people. I thought about how General Zia ul-Haq, during his awful and brutal dictatorship, from 1977 to 1988, banned any public gathering of five or more people. That, of course, ended any hope of cultural performances. It's part of his legacy that even today, as Pakistan's youth culture flourishes with filmmaking, music, drama, and art, there are no proper venues or halls to perform plays, concerts, or dance. Much of the circulation of culture here is done through YouTube and private gatherings. Springsteen himself is hugely popular with millions of Pakistanis working or studying abroad, and young people at home who see his performances on social media. It is a crying shame that a country of a hundred and eighty million, home to some of the biggest cities in the world, has no large purpose-built modern auditorium where Springsteen-scale performances can take place.

Like no other rock musician-perhaps since the early Bob Dylan-Springsteen builds a wall of friendship and shared longing for American society to come together instead of splintering apart, as it is doing. He temporarily bridges the generation gap, the class divide, and the wealth gap. In other words, his music builds communities of people who want to realize their responsibility to each other. There are several Pakistani pop singers, such as Ali Zafar or Atif Aslam, who could aspire to play such a role if there were the opportunities, the venues, and the support from the state and society.            (Do read the whole article on www.newyorker.com)