Coke Studio Ep 1: Thank you for ‘Larsha Pekhawar Ta’
The first episode of “Coke Studio” season five has lead to an interesting debate amongst its fans. Did the studio do justice to rap with Bohemia’s rendition? Has Hadiqa Kayani come of age? These questions and others have been making the rounds. One thing that is glaringly obvious is that an artist’s sincerity can be judged from behind the scenes (BTS) clips. For instance, Humayun Khan sounded like a mature artist when he spoke about his experience of completing his education first and then switching to music, that too, at a time when the music landscape of Peshawer was changing. But ...
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Why fighting Mullah Radio is not easy
It was on May 7, 2006 that our team started the transmission of Radio Khyber, located within Khyber Agency, one among the seven districts of Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) in the north-western part of the country. I started transmitting with a passion to empower local people and give them a voice- a voice which had been kept silent since 1901, the day the colonial empire of India promulgated the Frontier Crime Regulation (FCR) in Fata. The FCR was designed by the British, who used the region’s own tribal traditions and social psyche to rule ruthlessly over the territory. All the ...
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Whitney Houston: Tunes for a lifetime
Long before YouTube gave us instant access to all of our favourite music, my older sister and I would wait for the videos of our preferred artists to appear on televised music countdowns and record them on a videocassette so we could watch them over and over again. We would replay the tunes on the family room VCR and, along with our younger sister, often try to mimic the notes and dance moves of our most-loved musicians. When I learned of Whitney Houston’s death, my mind almost instantly turned to that videotape because there was a song of hers that we ...
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84th Academy Awards: Predictions, tweets & snubs
The Oscars are a time when fans, TV anchors, stylists, live bloggers, tweeters and seat-fillers (the lucky people who sit on celeb’s seats while they’re visiting the bathroom or the bar) satellite around A-list stars in the celluloid constellation known as Hollywood. Die-hard viewers host Oscar parties at home while Hollywood’s B, C and D-listers try to attend as many after-parties as they can (since they’re naturally not invited to most awards shows). It’s fun for all, whether you’re watching the show live at the crack of dawn in Pakistan’s time zone (and heading off bleary-eyed to work), or watching the ...
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Banning concerts is not a solution
Tracing back the history of Pakistani pop music is tricky. Wikipedia describes Runa Laila as a veteran among pop sensations; Nazia Hassan and Zohaib Hassan are ranked after her. Today, Pakistani pop music is one of the most popular genres in South Asia and also with the South Asian diaspora around the world.This fact has been accepted with much grace and enthusiasm by the majority, but there are always hindrances posed by certain hard-liner groups, changing governments and Islamic fundamentalists, who frequently have issues with Pakistan’s vibrant and thriving mainstream and underground music factory. Following Ziaul Haq’s military coup, ...
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Let’s bring back concert culture
So what do people my age talk about when they meet? When I say my age I mean the mid-30s where almost all of us have settled down to something or someone. We don’t talk about politics like everybody younger than us (thanks to Immy K) and older than us (thanks to the rest) does. We don’t talk about cricket because frankly, we are too busy to remember all the names in this ever changing team which is divided for us into the Afridis and the Misbahs. So what do we talk about? Music. Yes, definitely music. The one force that binds us ...
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News that is music to the ears
Every time a major political or controversial story breaks, our news channels make it a point to flash it continuously, spiced up with songs. And that irritates me a lot. It sounds non-serious, to say the least. Numbers like ‘Dulhan hum le jaiengay’ (we will take the bride) for Sania-Shoaib wedding, ‘Ye dosti hum nahi choreingay’ (We will not abandon this friendship) on PPP, MQM coalition after fall-outs really push the boundaries of what ought to be acceptable. It is so insane at times you wonder if they really are talking about real events and happenings. It’s a trend to ...
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Video Blog: Singing for peace
French author George Sand wrote in a letter to her friend in 1872: “Art for art’s sake is an empty phrase. Art for the sake of the true, art for the sake of the good and the beautiful, that is the faith I am searching for…” Mankind’s struggle against ugliness is as ancient as the human existence itself. In these times, as we continuously witness new wars and bloodshed in the name of “civilizational conflicts”, Sand’s statement should be the manifesto of every creative person. Sadly, in our not-so-pure land, commercial artists of every medium continue to produce material which doesn’t ...
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This is PTV: but for its glories ….
So much has changed. Leafing through Agha Nasir’s This is PTV is like returning to one’s ancestral home, or listening to old songs. It is not nostalgic trickery or old age delusion that tends to paint the past in golden hues. Pakistan Television and PIA were those few organizations that, though growing under the shadow of a harsh military dictatorship, were the saving graces of the time. We had something to be satisfied about. Here and there we had men in saddle, in bureaucracy and professions particularly, who were competent and wanted to do something. They were the regime’s counterweights ...
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Video blog: World Humanitarian Day
The music video “If I Could Change” was released on August 19th, 2011, on World Humanitarian Day. This music video makes an attempt to pay homage to humanitarian workers all around the world. The track features many popular superstars, such as, Bob Marley’s son Ziggy Marley, Somali sister-duo Sweet Rush and Salman Ahmad from the Pakistani band Junoon. The singers urge the world to show greater compassion towards people, in an attempt to rid the world of suffering and fear. The video shows clips of children in refugee camps and hospitals. It also shows flooded fields and ruined buildings, all in an attempt ...
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