National Day: Australia celebrates cultural diversity
Performance featured Pakistani-Australian singer and songwriter Mahmood Khan.
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LAHORE:
The Australian High Commission celebrated Australia Day in Lahore on Friday with a musical performance that highlighted the shared and diverse cultural heritages of Pakistan and Australia. The performance featured Pakistani-Australian singer and songwriter Mahmood Khan flew in from Australia especially to join the celebrations while students from the Leif Larsen Music Centre, Hunza played traditional Burushaski music of Gilgit-Baltistan on rabab and sitar. A world music artist originally from Lahore, Mahmood topped the Australian music charts in 2009 with the single ‘Like the River’ recorded live at the Sydney Opera House. He is known for his recordings with the late qawali maestro, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. “Australia is one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse nations in the world, where a migrant arrives to start a new life every one minute and 29 seconds,” Australian High Commissioner Margaret Adamson said. Almost 400 different languages, including indigenous languages, are spoken collectively by Australia’s 24 million people, and an estimated 75% of Australia’s population identify with an ancestry other than Australian. Over 55,000 people of Pakistani-origin are living and working in Australia.
Published in The Express Tribune, March 18th, 2017.
The Australian High Commission celebrated Australia Day in Lahore on Friday with a musical performance that highlighted the shared and diverse cultural heritages of Pakistan and Australia. The performance featured Pakistani-Australian singer and songwriter Mahmood Khan flew in from Australia especially to join the celebrations while students from the Leif Larsen Music Centre, Hunza played traditional Burushaski music of Gilgit-Baltistan on rabab and sitar. A world music artist originally from Lahore, Mahmood topped the Australian music charts in 2009 with the single ‘Like the River’ recorded live at the Sydney Opera House. He is known for his recordings with the late qawali maestro, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. “Australia is one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse nations in the world, where a migrant arrives to start a new life every one minute and 29 seconds,” Australian High Commissioner Margaret Adamson said. Almost 400 different languages, including indigenous languages, are spoken collectively by Australia’s 24 million people, and an estimated 75% of Australia’s population identify with an ancestry other than Australian. Over 55,000 people of Pakistani-origin are living and working in Australia.
Published in The Express Tribune, March 18th, 2017.