‘Corporations have come to dominate local music scene’

‘Anyone who fails to obtain corporate patronage can be seen as an Indie musician’.

LAHORE: Musician Farhad Mirza said on Sunday that Indie music could have different connotations in the Pakistani context in contrast to the West.

Mirza was speaking at a session on the future of Indie music at the second day of the Lahore Music Meet. He said Indie music had become an umbrella term in the west for do it yourself aesthetics, production values and an informed stance against petty commercialism. “Any Pakistani musician who has failed to obtain corporate patronage can be considered a practitioner of Indie music as they produce and market their work themselves,” Mirza said.

He said corporations had come to dominate the local music scene. Mirza said they had managed to secure influential cultural and creative posts in the industry by doling out sponsorships and carrying out sustained marketing campaigns. He said the thought of a for-profit corporation deciding the creative merit of art forms was bound to arouse suspicion regarding the direction that the industry was taking. Mirza said those who had taken it upon themselves to explore avenues that were neither popular nor lucrative in the industry were seen as Indie or independent musicians.

Producer Jamal Rahman said Indie music was the counter-narrative of popular music. Rahman said vocalists Atif Aslam, Shehzad Roy and Ali Zafar were mainstream musicians while those producing grunge music were their converse. Rahman said if singing in Urdu was in vogue Indie musicians would croon in other languages to create something different and carve a niche for themselves.

Vocalist Nadir Shahzad highlighted some of the challenges that confronted upcoming indie musicians. He said they barely managed to eke out a living as their audience was confined to a small circle usually constituted by their friends and acquaintances. Shahzad said a reduction in the entertainment tax and relaxation of rules regulating the process of obtaining a no-objection certificate for performances would go a long way in securing the genre’s future. “The future of Indie music can be secured with the assistance of the government,” he said. Shahzad said big corporations had refused to back their work at times. He said all they needed was the government’s assistance as they were self-sufficient.

Shahzad claimed ignorance of the division of music along the popular and indie lines. They said they had only become cognisant of the divide after people had started calling them indie musicians.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 6^th, 2015.