Left in Pakistan needs Freud more than they need Marx: Shahram Azhar

Singer talks Laal, Urdu poetry and upcoming album 'Banbaas'

KARACHI:

Shahram Azhar is somewhere between nostalgia and reinvention. He greets me over Zoom, with warmth and easy humour that feels like a balm for the slightly disjointed nature of online conversations. It's the kind of interaction that carries a familiar tinge of the COVID lockdown years — him in the UK, me in Pakistan, with five hours and a screen between us. But distance doesn't dull a reflective liveliness that accompanies his comeback.

"I'm really happy to be releasing new music after, what, ten years? It feels like a lifetime. We formed Laal," he says, his tone turning mock-serious before delivering the punchline, "in 5000 BC."

Even through the pixellated window of a video call, his words linger with a certain gravity. "I've been sitting on so much music — poetry by Jaun Elia that I've set to song over the years. For me, it's never just been about music or poetry as standalone things. I want to expose the younger generations to Urdu poetry. And not in some cliched, rose-tinted way." Shahram pauses, the next thought landing with precision. "In Western traditions — French, German, what have you — philosophy is often carried through prose. For us? Poetry is everything. It's the vessel for philosophy, for consciousness. The Urdu word 'shair' itself comes from 'shaoor,' meaning consciousness. That says it all."

A new listener is in the making. One that is perhaps the intended audience of Jaun's work. "Gen Z fascinates me. They share geocultural values across the world — Pakistan, Sweden, Uganda — it's incredible. They've even created new vocabularies. And I think, in a way, Jaun was writing for them," Shahram insists. "His poetry isn't about romantic laments. It's existential, introspective. His verses resonate with this generation's struggles, the one who is ready to dismantle the old and established."

Last month, Shahram released the first track, Band Baahar Se, a rendition of Jaun's ghazal from his upcoming album. It is a nostalgic sound with a soft-flowing grace. A smooth flute section opens the song and spills into a deliberately paced chorus. There's a certain restraint to his approach — no flashy hooks or unprovoked experiments. A quiet reverence for the poetry and the rhythm of ritual anchors the track. If there's a familiarity that echoes the past, a trace of Jagjit Singh or Mehdi Hassan, it takes an attentive ear to recognise Shahram's own careful debt to a musical lineage that doesn't need to shout to be heard.

And the reception has been a gift. "I find it surprising that people were able to tolerate such difficult poetry, but it has certainly lifted my spirits. You'll hear me singing even more challenging poems in March."

 

On Laal and left in Pakistan

Shahram moves fluidly between musings about his early days with Laal and the inner world that led him to this new chapter. "When we made Umeede Sahar, we adapted Faiz Ahmad Faiz and Habib Jalib. That work required a distinct temperament. But over the past decade or so, I kept returning to Jaun. When it comes to the internal world — the heart, the mind, the unspoken — Jaun has this extraordinary ability to capture it all."

His forthcoming album is called Banbaas: Exile in Wilderness. Banbaas carries a deep resonance, rooted in the concept of exile, specifically that of the kind found in the forests of Hindu mythology. It speaks to the themes of displacement and alienation, the disorienting sense of being torn away from the familiar. In the Ramayana, Ram, Sita, and Lakshman are exiled to the forest for fourteen years, their journey through the wilderness, one of both physical and emotional reckoning. That imagery of wandering, of searching, carries a universal weight. In many ways, it mirrors his own path.

“I did not want to jump on the bandwagon and produce stuff just for the heck of it,” Shahram says of his departure from Laal, a band that had entered the music scene with socialist revolutionary anthems and a manifesto of change.

With Laal, Shahram's vision was loud, fiery, and impossible to ignore. The music brimmed with an incendiary energy — social change, Marx, communism. These were no small ambitions. But as I sit across from him on Zoom, five hours apart, I sense a shift in his demeanour, a calmness that feels far removed from the burning rage of Laal's early days.

"I still believe I'm doing my part for the revolution," he says. "The difference is that Faiz and Jalib occupied themselves with the external world. The injustice is happening outside. Indeed, it is. But isn't there something breaking inside me too?"

Shahram’s banbaas has changed him. He looks the same, more or less. His voice, however, is a lot more grounded and not without effort. Over the past decade, Shahram has been committed to reshaping his cadence with Kharaj Riyaz. “My voice is naturally high-pitched,” he admits. “Some people think that’s a great thing, but I don’t. In my opinion, singing bass is far more challenging.”

Politically, too, he has a sharpness to his critique of the widely lamented state of the left in Pakistan. “I felt the internal, the psychoanalytical, was missing in those days, and that absence made many of our comrades on the left deeply narcissistic and self-serving. Back when we released Umeede Sahar, I’d often find myself wondering—what are we really here to do? To others, I’m saying, Jaag mere Punjab. But at the same time, my friends are ready to sell Jalib at fashion shows. Faiz and Jalib never accounted for narcissism and how it could unravel social movements.”

“People often ask me, ‘What does the left in Pakistan need?’ And my answer is simple: they need Freud more than they need Marx,” says Shahram.

The making of 'Banbaas'

Shahram’s upcoming album isn’t just about Jaun. There will be tracks inspired by another of his favourites: Iftikhar Arif. He will also sing a poem by the Karachi-based Ahmad Salman, in an attempt to answer one burning question. “People often ask me why I left Pakistan. From 2015 to 2018 I was teaching in Karachi, but due to various unfortunate reasons, I had to leave. This song will answer that.” Another track draws from the poetry of Ibne Insha, incorporating, for the first time, love poems—a departure from his usual repertoire.

His second ghazal from the album, expected to come out on March 8 to mark International Women's Day, fills him with palpable joy. "Woh tau ḳhushbu hai havaon mein bikhar jaaega / mas.ala phuul ka hai phuul kidhar jaaega. This is a very popular ghazal by Parveen Shakir and there have been many renditions of this, but they seem to have overlooked its last verse. Mujh ko tahzib ke barzaḳh ka banaya varis / jurm ye bhi mire ajdaad ke sar jaaega."

Particularly fond of Parveen's conjoining of 'barzakh', which in Islamic philosophy parallels limbo in Christian theology, and 'tehzeeb', Shahram sees the ghazal as a quiet embrace of exile, a thematic that aligns with his own without protest. "This is very relevant given how women across the world face an alienation and exile within their own bodies."

As with the most tender of stories, Shahram's reverence for Parveen comes wrapped in its own lore.

"When I was seven, Parveen Shakir was the chief guest at an event at Liaquat Gymnasium in Rawalpindi. For that gathering, one of Pakistan's most esteemed composers, Master Abdullah, composed the ghazal Woh tau ḳhushbu hai for a seven-year-old kid. That kid was me. So that was the first time I performed it, in front of her."

Shahram’s next track will see him revisiting this iridescent composition, a treasure uniquely his, as he humbly notes. For a singer navigating his self-aware comeback, music and Urdu poetry follow their own distinct protocols. “You cannot sing Iqbal in the style of Jimi Hendrix,” he states. “Urdu poetry has its own aesthetic. It may not have the mass appeal of bhangra or Bollywood, but it occupies its own niche.”

With Banbaas, the singer returns to his roots in Hindustani classical music, presenting his craft in its most authentic form. Guitars, drums, and cello intertwine with Ustad Baqir Abbas’s flute and Ustad Raees Ahmed’s violin, creating a rich, organic soundscape. There’s no autotuning here—just the faintest touch of digital refinement. “Even the raags I’ve chosen are rarely heard in Pakistani music,” he notes. “Band Baahar Se blends Asavari and Kirwani, a combination scarcely sung in Pakistan. Another piece from Jaun, Ruh pyaasi kahan se aati hai, is composed in Shivaranjani.”

When all is said and done, Shahram approaches his music with little ambition for fame. “I am a tenured professor teaching Economics in the UK. Music is not my bread and butter,” he shares. But he has high hopes. “It's a way of coming to terms with the harsh internal and external realities of life. I started singing when I was six after my father passed away. Music for me has always been, and will always be, a spiritual service. I have never aspired to be a celebrity.”

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