DJ Hanif Tayab: The Music Gallery opens avenues for sharing music

DJ Hanif Tayab believes that preserving music is equal to saving the world.

LAHORE:

“A lot of people don’t know that when Irish musician Bob Geldolf organised two Live Aid concerts to raise funds for Ethiopia in 1985, Pakistani rock bands also performed their version of Live Aid in the same year at Alhamra,” beams Hanif Tayab, a 45-year-old disc jockey (DJ), who has dedicated his life to the preservation of music.

Tayab has turned his family house into a music sanctuary called The Music Gallery, which he opened to the public in 2009. The DJ came up with this initiative after working for two decades in the music-making business as a DJ and providing music for many parties and fashion shows.

Going back in time

Located in the heart of Garden Town in Lahore, Tayab’s gallery houses both eastern and western tracks that date back to 1907.The Music Gallery is tastefully decorated with mountains of long-playing microgroove records and CDs neatly stacked on wooden floors. The collection, which Tayab started gathering as a child, includes 120,000 songs of which only 20 per cent are on display at the shop. The music outlet also shows the transition and evolving music preferences of Tayab, as he grew older, from classical to orchestra.

“Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Pink Floyd are polar opposites in the music spectrum, so it’s fair to say that my collection takes all the sounds and music that fall in-between and makes them eternal,” says Tayab.

The Music Gallery’s edge

The gallery tries to break away from the notion of being just a music museum or library. Tayab holds music lessons daily but the gallery’s major charm is the availability of all genres of music which he shares with like-minded music enthusiasts. His vast collection enabled him to open a music shop, in which one can get an inexhaustible supply of music, update their digital mp3 players, create customised CDs and also get theme music for parties and restaurants. His young clientele has the option of coming and updating their iPods or mp3 players with new music that is difficult to find in the market.

According to the music collector, The Music Gallery is his effort to keep the passion for music alive in Pakistan. Tayab expresses remorse while sharing that, in his knowledge, there is allegedly just one lone sarangi player remaining in Pakistan. Hence, the gallery is an effort to preserve music and ensure that it is not lost in the years to come.

Music makes people come together

According to the DJ, the listening pattern of music lovers is predicated by the top 10 most favourite songs, but his focus has been to collect and promote the other 90 from top 100 charts. He has an updated calendar for each week on western music charts and has also tried to invent a rating system for Pakistani music. However, he says that there are several issues with this process, due to the incoherence of the Pakistani music market and lack of documentation when it comes to the popularity of music in the country.

His collection of Pakistani and subcontinental music embodies the industry’s progression. “To preserve and promote Pakistani music, we have to revert to our classical orientation, which is inherently acoustic traditional music,” says Tayab who regrets the government doesn’t encourage the development of music. “Musicians in Pakistan tried to look for shortcuts through the usage of electronic synthesisers, so at the local level, players of classical subcontinent instruments always remained in obscurity.”

When asked whether others had been taking initiatives to promote or collect music, Tayab adds that there are several schools that promote music, but till now, all major collections, aside from Radio Pakistan, were initiated by private investors. Most collectors are focusing on classical subcontinental music, since it is ranked high in importance in Pakistan and its preservation requires the most attention.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 20^th, 2011.