Episode 6: Coming full circle

Latest offering may further Coke Studio’s visual redundancy but worth lauding for stellar line-up of singers

KARACHI:

Season 8 is nearing its end so is yet another ripple in the vastness of the Pakistani life. The sixth installation of the ongoing season was a mix of creative leaps and clichés. While a major positive from this season — bringing to the spotlight Pakistani reality TV singers who were chasing shadows — became a little more apparent in this episode, Atif Aslam was handed his 12th appearance on the show that is far from completing 12 whole seasons.

Ali Haider reminded us of the time when audio cassettes sold well because the musicians were willing to churn out new music, the audiences were welcoming and milieu was happier. The episode indeed managed to bring back the Atif of Jalpari and the Ali of Purani Jeans and Chand Sa Mukhra.

Atif seemed at peace with rediscovering his older self that bothered little about sensibilities and sang because his calling forced him to. Had it not been for Mai Dhai’s simplicity, Atif would not have been able to shun the commercial element in his works for the seven minutes.

Read: Coke Studio 8: Still haven't found what they're looking for

Sara Raza Khan’s voice quality has no parallels. She is more than capable of inheriting the throne of film music that was rescued with grace by Shazia Manzoor in the years of turbulence and the episode managed to encapsulate their aptitude reasonably. Rizwan and Muazzam’s debute set the ball rolling for Coke Studio’s qawwali escapades; however the overindulgence has now come full circle. Not once in the entire track did Shazia let the qawwal group take her down.

Fizza Javed and Mulazim Hussain were inspiring. They are specimens of the new crop of technically sound vocalists which is not shy of battling it out with those who focus heavily on showmanship and less on their baritone voices. While we’ve emphasised on the myopia surrounding covers and tributes time and again, quality singing does leave little room for scrutiny.

Strings, rather Bilal Maqsood, have settled on an arrangement style that is more formulaic than Attaullah Khan Essakhelvi’s hundreds of studio albums. The number of times words like ‘folk’ and ‘feel’ are uttered in the BTS clips equals the number of times flutes, melodicas, harmoniums and rubabs were summoned to save the day.

Coke Studio became what it is because never before did the masses see musicians play their showy instruments with broad smiles on their faces in controlled environments. The episode went on to repeat that their role is fading amidst boring strumming patterns and fillers and most importantly, a female artist will not be allowed a solo act till kingdom come. The pinned-to-top posts on Coke Studio’s official Facebook page from every episode validate what people like Arsene Wenger mean when they oppose laurels like the FIFA Ballon d’Or —  concentration on individuals will kill the communal self of Pakistani music.

The visual element of the show is somewhat approaching redundancy. The experiment of high-end motion graphics with Abbas Ali Khan from the previous year was left unfinished. Lighting is highly methodic and the footage of tracks that do not welcome house band members makes their absence felt through empty chairs and pointlessly placed mic stands. We can comfortably take the leap and note that the end product of Jiya Karay and Ve Baneya would have been different had the Vision Mixer Director and Director of Photography  reciprocated the moods of the two tracks.

The final episode of Coke Studio 8 has been postponed due to the Mina tragedy. The episode will now be available online on October 3 and aired across television channels on October 4.

Verdict: The episode is a mix of creative leaps and clichés but reminds us of what we will miss when the season will wrap up for good.
Rating



Published in The Express Tribune, September 30^th, 2015.

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