Bilal Maqsood says making music for children has been his most rewarding experience

Singer wanted to create music for children that is on par with Sesame Street but in Urdu as opposed to English

KARACHI:

Strings fans were heartbroken when the popular duo of Faisal Kapadia and Bilal Maqsood announced that they were going their separate ways after decades of working together. Months after the disbandment, Bilal Maqsood featured in a never-before-seen (in Pakistan at least) avatar wherein he backed vocals for children’s rhymes. In collaboration with a local snack company, the music composer released a set of tunes, in Urdu, for a different kind of younger audience - children.

In a chat with The Express Tribune, Bilal spoke about always wanting to create music for children that is on par with the likes of Sesame Street and doing so in Urdu as opposed to the popular choice, English. The singer shared, “I always wanted to do something for the kids. Even when Strings was alive, we often spoke about doing something for children because growing up; we enjoyed the rhymes and children’s shows of the times - some of which are still very popular today. However, it was only in the late 70s that I discovered Sesame Street and The Muppet Show and I noticed that there was something very different about it. Later, I found out that Jim Henson was the man behind the magic who was doing everything from the songs to the puppets and I became a huge fan of him. I decided that whenever I get a chance to create something for children, I’ll keep it modern.”

When Bilal’s children were growing up in the early 2000s, they consumed the likes of Barney, Noddy, and Mary Poppins but he was always upset at the fact that there was nothing made in Pakistan for kids. At the time, he also got in touch with Sohail Rana - a popular music composer in Pakistan - to release a compilation of children’s songs but the market did not connect to the music. Bilal was adamant about giving something of their own to Pakistani children, which is also why he contacted many TVC directors but nothing materialised. He revealed that he also got in touch with Farooq Qaiser, the man behind Pakistan’s iconic Uncle Sargam, before his passing last year to revive Kaliyaan but he was unable to get the funding he required.

It was when the snack company contacted him last year to create nursery rhymes. “It was like a dream come true and I told them that I’d leave everything to do this project,” the Mera Bichra Yaar singer shared. But composing the music for the rhymes came with its own set of challenges. Nevertheless, it was something that he knew he always wanted to do so he had been spending years experimenting with the kind of music that would work and found it fun.

However, there were still several things Bilal had to take into consideration. “The music should be soothing and not jarring so that even when children are listening to it on loop, it doesn’t hurt their ears. Kids have a certain intellect as well wherein they cannot express much but they understand everything. I noticed that there was no message in whatever was available for children. There was fat-shaming and violence in several rhymes too, morbid at times as well,” he added. 

Bilal’s limitation with the recently released songs was that he had 8 animals that he had to create rhymes on, which are also different from each other and have a message too. He commented. “Every animal has a certain characteristic so I thought I’d create something around it. However, the strategy I devised was that I’d centre the song around the trait, but the message would be an antithesis of that specific characteristic. For example, in Kuchu Kuchu Kachwa, the rhyme says that the tortoise is slow which can imply a certain child’s slow progress in academics. But the next verse, ‘pani mil jae tau dubki lagae, tez tez tez tez tairta hi jae,’ shows that if given their own space, the child can flourish in some other talent that they may have.”

A remarkable part of Pakistani society is obsessed with their children getting a hang of the English language - even though the vast majority of the country speaks its national language. This is also why there is a lack of Urdu rhymes for children to consume. Explaining if this was the need of the hour, Bilal commented, “For ages and for many, Urdu was a very boring subject in school. Urdu was never considered ‘cool’. The content available in Urdu in comparison with its competitors such as Cocomelon and others, fell short. To bring children closer to the language, one has to make it more inviting. The whole idea of my rhymes was to make them relatable and relevant. When children, who don’t know a word of Urdu, listen to these rhymes, they enjoy it because they can connect to the music. After all, it’s similar to the pattern of Cocomelon, Sesame Street and even the animation quality is on par with them.”

Bilal hopes that his work brings about a new wave of content creation for kids. He concluded, “I feel that more people need to jump into this niche because there’s a huge gap in this space and there’s a lot that can be done. There’s a lot that’s being done for children across the globe and over here, we’re almost at zero. I know that I’ve found my direction in life and want to produce more content for kids. I haven’t found anything else more rewarding than this mainly because of the overwhelming feedback I got from parents, teachers, and school principals, as well as children. It feels like I have done what I was meant to do in life. But this is just the start and I am planning something more for children.”

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