‘It’s not what we do to music, it’s what music does to us’

KARACHI:

What do you get when Tina Sani, Zeb Bangash and Ali Sethi prove their vocal prowess on one stage — an afternoon well spent.

Granted that the panelists, which also included director and scriptwriter Sarmad Khoosat, did not speak extensively on the topic of the session, Literature and Music in Pakistan, they still upheld the promise of entertainment expected from them at the first day of the fifth Karachi Literature Festival. This understandably included repetitive requests for performances by the singers, especially by the musical powerhouse, Tina Sani.

Sethi, who was the moderator but could have been easily mistaken as a panelist with the amount of input he had in the discussion, set the ball rolling with the basic question - what was the journey of classical music like for the musicians on stage?

“I started with a jingle for a water cooler and it took me three to four hours just to get my voice straight,” answered Sani, whose name alone garnered applause from the audience. “The reality of singing inside the four walls of your house and then recording in a studio is worlds apart.”



Sharing her preference for nazms over ghazals, Sani said that she loves the aspect of storytelling that poetry offers, and much to the delight of the audience, she sang a few lines from ‘Gar mujhay iska yaqeen ho’ to elaborate the pauses, cracks and whispers that one needs to skillfully tell a story. “These cracks and pauses also got me into trouble with the composer as there were considered a flaw at that time.”

Zeb Bangash, of Zeb and Haniya, whose claim to fame includes singing songs in a number of languages, said that the “rich culture of Pakistan was beautifully encoded in our language,” adding that music can tell stories of the shared history of our regions.

While her powerful performance of Afghan song ‘Laili Jaan’ was no history lesson, it proved that people don’t need to know a language to enjoy music.

Khoosat, who is known for his comedic performances as much as he is known for his famed play ‘Humsafar’, shared the credit for the success of the title song with composer Waqar Ali and producer Momina Duraid.

“What many people don’t know is that ‘Humsafar’ was originally sung by Abida Perveen and written on the fall of Dhaka,” said Khoosat, admitting that he had no idea about the subject of the ghazal when he decided to use it as a song of love and heartbreak. “But then again, stories of love and heartbreak are plenty when we talk about the separation of Bangladesh.”

Published in The Express Tribune, February 8^th, 2014.