Off to greener (Indian) pastures?
It’s become a trend in Pakistan that any musician who gets a decent amount of fame, then moves over to produce music in India. I watched Sajjad Ali’s interview some time back and he said that it was now close to impossible to remain profitable by just producing music in Pakistan. While this route may work for those singing more mainstream stuff, albeit with awesome voices like Atif Aslam or Rahat Ali Khan, those who are more cutting edge and quirky ‘rock’ bands should really not cross the border. These bands just end up softening their rough edges, selling sickly sweet songs to Bollywood movies and that ultimately spells their demise.
Today while listening to one of the new Coke Studio songs I remembered a Pakistani band ‘Call’ and wondered if they had produced any songs with Coke Studio and why I hadn’t heard of them for a while. Call made it really big around 2003-2005 with their album Jilawatan. Their songs ‘Sab Bhula Ke’ and ‘Nishaan’ were on people’s repeat playlists for months. Everybody wanted to go to a Call concert.
Then they went over to the Indian side to sing ‘Laaree Chhooti” for a Bollywood film (the song itself wasn’t bad) and then another one ‘Dhadkay Jiya’ (a lot more mellow but still good) and that’s sort of it. The sort of edgy music they started off with is no where to be seen.I just googled to see what was happening with them and it turns out they are now reduced to making jingles for Walls ice cream! Listen to their songs ‘Sab Bhula Ke’ and ‘Nishaan’ and then listen to one of their new songs. It came as a shock to me.
I would be pissed off if it weren’t almost tragic that our musicians all go down this commercial route! Is it really not viable to produce original edgy music any more?
4 Responses to “Off to greener (Indian) pastures?”
July 10th, 2010 saat: 1:23 am
Call has a contract with Pepsi. They can’t work for Coke. Cola wars it is. So no Coke Studio for Call.
At the end of the day Coke Studio is also a commercial gig. It’s all Rohail Hyatt’s magic that’s making it what it is really but had it not been for the commercial push, they hardly ever would have enough funds to produce something as big. The hard cold fact is, no one makes money as a musician in our country just by selling their music. No one. No matter how good they are. So if some multinational doesn’t pick them up, they go across the border where they are given a livelihood in return for their music. All of those who haven’t gone there yet are either waiting for a chance or are already in contract with one multinational or the other.
July 10th, 2010 saat: 11:51 am
Hareem you’re absolutely right. My point was not that Call have not been picked up by Coke Studio because they have sold out to mellow Bollywood tunes. I was just reminded of them by listening to another band Karavan who recently featured in the Studio. And yes, you’re right of course Coke Studio is all commercial, as I referred to in my last post on this.
Hmm sponsorships was something I didn’t mention in the post. You’re right. And of course the security situation doesn’t help either. They’re hardly able to do concerts now as they used to.
Thanks for the scoop about Pepsi ;) Didn’t know that :)
July 11th, 2010 saat: 11:28 am
also repeated and blatant infringement of copyrights comes to us like second nature. How do you expect ANY creative/ artists to have even a remote shot at making a livelihood out of their passion and all the beauty they have to offer. Such a shame.
July 11th, 2010 saat: 10:15 pm
Yeah, very valid point.
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