Mizmaar recently made a comeback with Mashad Shehryar as its new vocalist. PHOTO: FILE
KARACHI: “Has Bollywood killed the Pakistani rock star?” is one question that keeps creeping into the heads of music enthusiasts. Although debatable; most audiences would point out to how the Indian film industry has seduced many Pakistanis away from their natural habitat of rock music and moulded them into run-of-the-mill Bollywood musicians. A few weeks ago the Pakistani rock group, Mizmaar ended its self-imposed exile and performed their first live gig on stage in almost seven years. What happened next is food for thought for several musicians in the country – the band opened their gig with the famous Bollywood song from Aashiqui 2; Sunn Raha Hai.
In a conversation with The Express Tribune, Kashan Admani, lead guitarist of Mizmaar explained why a band’s orientation towards music shouldn’t be judged on the basis of their set and why “Has Bollywood killed the Pakistani rock star?” is still relevant.
“Back in the day all major bands like Junoon, Noori and Strings played folk songs in their gigs and nowadays bands have to perform Bollywood songs as audiences are able to relate them on a better level,” remarked Admani.
He added that none of this used to happen almost a decade ago when there was an abundance of music channels in Pakistan. “People these days only get to listen to Indian music which is all that channels are playing.”
But Admani believes the most important thing for any live act is to ‘put up a good show’, which can only happen if they give the audiences what they want. “As a band we can go on stage and start doing our own thing. But there is no point in doing that because then the audience would become disenchanted; which is something we don’t want to happen.”
According to him a major reason why an increasing number of Pakistani bands have started performing their own versions of Bollywood songs is because these songs are very similar to Pakistani pop songs. “Performing older Indian songs was relatively difficult because they used to have a lot of dhol and tabla in them whereas the songs currently made in Bollywood are very similar to the pop music that was produced in Pakistan a few years ago,” told Admani.
He kept on emphasising how Pakistani bands constantly need to adapt and avoid the risk of becoming stuck in the same style and cycle. To avoid that, the band’s playlist ranges from original numbers to mainstream singles like Daft Punk’s Get Lucky.
“We are fortunate that we have our own repertoire but these days you don’t get to see many new bands or songs becoming famous. So it is important that all of these musicians keep on evolving and keep themselves open to new ideas.”
The band had previously announced plans for releasing their third album very soon as well.Published in The Express Tribune, May 20th, 2015.
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