India-Music/Culture/Diplomacy/South
Asia
Madhusree Chatterjee
New Delhi
The rock-pop
ensemble from Pakistan — “Strings”— turned 25 in 2013 with the same zest with
which it began in 1988 in Karachi featuring musicians Bilal Maqsood and Faisal
Kapadia on vocals and guitars.
The duo, who
were in college then, has travelled a melody road that has been “consistent,
serious, youthful and yet entertaining, rooted in the classical traditions of
subcontinent’s musical heritage”.
The recording
giant EMI signed “Strings” in 1990 for their first album of the same name – and
since the band has crossed the border to India to create soundtracks for movies
like “Zinda” and “Shootout at Lokhandwala” – besides the concert tours every
year. “Strings” — together with another Pakistani band, “Junoon” — are almost
as popular in India’s contemporary music circuit as any Indian pop ensemble.
The band,
for the last 25 years, has been devoted to live concerts — one of most
resilient performance mediums through which band music has been keeping itself
alive in the face of a digital onslaught. In the process, the trans-border band
has built cultural bridges between India, Pakistan and the South Asian nations,
vocalist Faisal Kapadia says.
“The South
Asian music industry is today very vibrant. But if you go back by 30 years, it
was dominated by cinema. Indian cinema! Bollywood playback musicians like Kishore
Kumar and R.D. Burman were the household names. The non-cinema musical genres were
the ‘ghazal’ and the ‘kawaali’ with musicians like Jagjit Singh, Mehdi Hasan
and Anup Jalota — who performed across the region. Listeners could not think of
regional contemporary music as a distinct oeuvre reflecting the world,” Faisal and
fellow star Bilal Maqsood told this writer at the South Asian Bands Festival 2013,
where the band played a creative repertoire of old and new compositions.
The
transformation in regional music took place in 1990, Faisal said. “Young
musicians got an opportunity to showcase their talent with the arrival of the
independent music channels on television. The satellite channels opened the
doors to young musicians in early 1990s. Now there is the Youtube and amazing musicians on it— there is so much to learn
from Youtube if someone has the dedication,” Faisal said.
“Strings” is
one of the few bands in the subcontinent to have survived the shifts in money
fortunes in the entertainment industry, changing sounds, band mortality and the
movement from the live stage, studio concerts to the Internet. The band’s early
attempts to experiment with synthesized sounds and rhythms were slow in striking
the right chord in listeners.
In 1992,
Strings released its second album “Strings 2” with the track- “Sar Kiye, Yeh
Pahar”. It became a hit on MTV Asia. The band rode the MTV wave for some time-
and then disbanded.
Eight years
later, Faisal and Bilal returned to play again. But by then, the collegiates had
grown up — to sing to more profound realities of the world and deeper emotions.
In 2003, Faisal and Bilal recorded “Dhaani”— the band’s third album. It
featured the track, “Najane Kyun” which was used as a soundtrack for the
Hollywood production, “Spiderman-2”. The duo followed it with “Koi Aane Walla Hain”
in 2008.
But the ambience
was different. “Independent music and the Internet made a difference in the way
music was handled and received by the audience. People stopped buying music,”
the musicians said. Downloading was the new distribution slogan.
“Film music
will always be there because producers pump in crores to market their movies. But
non-film music has almost disappeared in the commercialization of the market.
It is sad,” the musician said.
The blitz
launched by film music promoters affected a lot of musicians, Faisal discloses.
“New musicians are not recording albums. They are putting their songs on the
Internet to connect to listeners across genres and terrain”.
The band depends
on the power of the Internet for both musical and intellectual kicks — almost pledges
by it. “If people were to understand what was happening to the world, they
should tune in to the Internet. All the wars and even the Arab Spring started
on the Internet. The social networks like Twitter and Facebook will play an
important role in the future — by allowing musicians to interact directly with their
fans with direct responses,” Faisal says.
The musical
solidarity of South Asia is important to “Strings”.
“We all grew
up knowing about SAARC- South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation, but we
related to it politically. Politicians attended SAARC summits to discuss
politics, cooperation and development. What about the common man in the region?”
Faisal points out.
The last
decade has been one of liberalization for SAARC – when the spotlight of regional
understanding turned more to exchange of soft power. Music was a key tool of
understanding.
“India and
Pakistan have so much to share in films and music. We grew up on Indian music
in Pakistan. In fact, ‘Strings’ released its first album in India. My family hails
from Rajkot in Gujarat. But we did not know about music from Sri Lanka or Nepal
even till 20 years ago. The growing cultural cooperation in the region has
broadened our horizon,” Faisal admitted.
Nothing
short of history— Strings from Karachi “got talking to” LRB, a band from
Bangladesh in New Delhi last week (early Dec 2013). “They have great music,” Faisal
said. It was perhaps symbolic of a strange redemption of history 42 years after
the liberation war of Bangladesh when the erstwhile East Pakistan became an independent
nation, severing ties with mainland Pakistan in 1971. When pointed out, Faisal
smiles.
“Strings”
even collaborated with Advaita – an Indian band — for a special concert at Indian
President Pranab Mukherjee’s Rashtrapati Bhavan. “SAARC cannot achieve what it
has set out to unless there is free flow of information and culture. A musician
from Pakistan should be able to live in Nepal and learn from the country’s
musical tradition — and vice versa,” Faisal says.
Citing an example
of cross-border kinship, the musician recalled that when the band released
their first album in 1992 on an independent television channel, the response
from “the Indian fans was amazing and pure”. “It was our first response to
India. Since then we have been a part of the beautiful Indian music industry,” Faisal
said. The fact that the people in SAARC region like “all kind of music” makes
it easy for musicians to jump across cultural geographies and innovate.
Strings owes
it initial success and consolidation to two factors — band music composer Bilal’s
father job at the EMI and the fact that the band took precedence over individual
aspirations of its members, Faisal said. The members speak for each other —
never alone.
“Bilal’s
father worked for the EMI and all the famous musicians of the era like Munni
Bengum, Mehdi Hasan Khan ‘saab’ and Rais
Khan ‘saab’ would come to his home. He was familiar with classical music and
the industry. I am a Gujarati. I heard a lot of Kishore Kumar and R.D. Burman.
And western bands like U2, Bryan Adams, Sting and Bon Jovi. I learnt classical
music for one and a half years for little knowledge about the ragas,” Faisal
said, explaining about the band’s medley musical influences.
Strings sing
in Urdu and Hindi. “But we don’t have any folk influence,” Faisal says, when
asked about their inspiration from traditional genres of Pakistani music. “Karachi is Urdu speaking. Folk music is native
to Punjab and Sindh. We use light classical music in combination with pop sounds,”
the musician says.
At the
moment, Faisal and Bilal are composing soundtrack for a Pakistani movie, “Moor”.
“One of our friends is making the movie. It is set in the troubled border region
of Balochistan.”
The movie is
about a “guy who owns a railway station in Balochistan, but loses his fortune
in the ethnic strife for independence in the region”. “The music is very different
from the Strings sound. “We working two other musicians — Meesha Shafi and Javed
Bashir,” the musicians said.
The band
manages to live on music. “Corporate sponsorships, public events and tours (to
US, India and UAE) carry us through,” Faisal says. In Pakistan, sustaining as
contemporary musician is as tough as any other countries in South Asia.
“But we
encourage youngsters to take up music as profession at talent contests - where
we are often invited as judges,” Faisal says. The met its drummer in one such
contest. “ He is phenomenal,” the duo choruses.
Check for more arts. culture and literature stories at
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Check for more arts. culture and literature stories at
artsinfocus.webs.com/
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