Aik Alif - Saein Zahoor and Noori. Coke Studio Season 2

Pakistan faces a new 9/11 everyday. Terror may have victimized our homeland but it has not silenced our voices... Enjoy a Masterpiece by TCT's favourite musician 'Ali Hamza'of the Noori Band. There are lessons for all of us in these beautiful verses, written by Bulleh Shah. Find out more about Noori at: http://nooriworld.net/

Lahore's Contribution to Bollywood - Rabiah Khwaja Gohar

I have been reading several arguments from our dear Indian friends about how crappy Lollywood has become, so I decided to look at this situation from a...different perspective.

What has the great city of Lahore contributed to the nation of India?

Ok first of all, India is not in an economical position to make multi-billion rupee films that it presently produces, and we all know for a fact that the films produced now are because of the BIG money being filtered in by the underworld. So if "Bollywood" made films according to THEIR budget, the films wouldn't necessarily be worth watching right? oooops...like they are now? hmmm? Its all there, the big names, the big costumes, the big tears, the big (cheesy) dialogues...the "dishown dishwon fight scenes" but whats missing..??

Before we start hating on "Lollywood" or Lahore, lets remember Bollywood has not been able to bring quality cinema in ages ..with a few exceptions....talent is essentially non-existent, the "hit" and 'super-hit" films are nothing but 'time-pass' or trunk shows for big designers like Ritu Kumar, Manish Malhotra etc... very strategically targeting desi shopaholic housewives. (apologies for the stereotype).
One might argue that Lahore played no role in the creation of "Bollywood", lets put that myth aside..shall we....and take a minute to trace the birth of "talent" through the great city of Lahore.

First and foremost, India's Taran-e-Hindi "Saray Jahan Say Acha, Hindustan Hamara" Written by Dr.Allama Iqbal from Lahore. Yes not many Indians know much about the author hence their disability to give recognition to originality.

I should stop here and rest my case, but I feel compelled to continue.

An interesting fact I recently read:
Teji Kaur Bachchan, the mother of Amitabh Bachchan ,was a prominent lecturer in Lahore University.

::::: And now before you forget what Lahore gave "Bollywood" :::::

Prithvi Theatres was established in Lahore by Prithvi Raj Kapoor a Pathan from Peshawar, who was a stage actor in Lahore at the time. (Pop Culture India by Asha Kasbekar)

Lahore's first Film studio, United Players, was responsible for launching the career of the first woman film-maker of India (Fatima Begum) who made Bulbul-e-Paristan in 1926. (Cinema Studies by Susan Hayward)

The renowned filmmaker of India, Ramanand Sagar, from Lahore, was the head of the Bollywood production company Sagar Arts Corp, wrote, directed, and produced motion pictures, and television programs. His most famous works include the Ramayan (1987) a popular 78-part TV epic. He studied at University of Punjab, Lahore. (Britannica)

The first silent film from Lahore was The Daughter of Today, released in 1924 directed by A. K. Kardar a Lahori, who went on to become one of the most famous film directors of India during the 1930's, 40's and 50's.
His works include Sharda, Dulari, Dillagi, Shahjahan, and Jadoo, all famous for Naushad Ali’s music. (History of Pakistani Cinema by Mushtaq Gazdar)
First talkie produced from Lahore was Heer Ranjha in 1932.
The actress who played the lead in Anarkali, Shahjahan, Shireen Farhan and Daasi was Ragni, also from Lahore.
Om Prakash was given his break by Dalsukh Pancholi (Founder of Pancholi Studios in Lahore) in the Film Daasi.

Lahore gave us legends like Muhammad Rafi, Om Parkash, Dev Ananad saab, Pran saab and Balraj Sahani (one of the most talented actors in "bollywood") and many many more, who started their career in Lahore. Chaitan Anand (Dev's brother) was a famous film director in Lahore. Mohd Rafi was introduced to radio Lahore by music composer Feroz Nizami (Lahori) and made his debut as a playback singer in the Punjabi film Gul Baloch.

Dalsukh Pancholi, a film tycoon from Lahore (born in Karachi) and the founder of Pancholi Studios of Lahore, studied scriptwriting and cinematography from New York, and played an important part in the careers of stars such as Noor Jehan, Ramola, Om Prakash, music composers Ghulam Haider and O.P. Nayyar. His first film was Gul-e-Bakawli (1938) starring Noor Jehan. Ghulam Haider's "shaala jawaania" one of my personal favorites of Madam, was an instant rage.
His film Khazanchi was one of the longest running movies of its time.
Master Ghulam Haider a phenomenal music director from Lahore, was the man who gave Lata Mangeshkar the break of her career in the movie Majboor (1948)

Pran established his career in Lahore as a villan in punjabi films.

Mohd Rafi's debut also happened to occur in Lahore, at the hands of music director Shayaam Sunder and Pancholi in the film Gul Baloch.

Roshan Ara Begum from Lahore was acclaimed the best interpreter of Kirana Gharana Sytle of Khayal singing in the subcontinent. Composer O.P Nayyar, Ustad Fateh Ali, BarRay Ghulam Ali (the only film he ever sang for was for Mughal-e-Azam) free of charge... only as a favor to Naushad, all are from Lahore.
According to BBC Urdu the most expensive film of India was made in Lahore in 1934. Its cost was 18 Lakh Rupees (at that time). Its name was ‘ShireeN Farhaad’
In the film Shireen farhad (the charactar of Farhad was played by Jayant a Muslim Pathan, father of Amjad Khan whose name is synonymous with the legendary villan of Bollywood Gabbar Singh)
Khurshid Begum and Shamshad Begum--the playback singer made her debut from Peshawar Radio in Lahore. (Not the classical singer Shamshad begum, Saira Banu's grandmother)

Father of the Chopras, B. R. Chopra was born in Lahore. He studied journalism, directed/produced plays, and worked as a film critic in Lahore. Yash Chopra, B. R’s younger brother was born in Lahore as well, later he joined his brother in Bombay to start their own production house.
B.R. Chopra was working on his first film Chandni Chowk when the partition riots began.

Academy Award winner lyricist Gulzar was born in Jehlum, Punjab.

Academy Award winner Shekhar Kapur of Bandit Queen and Elizabeth is too from Lahore. (He is the nephew of Dev Anand)

Grandpa Roshan (Roshan Lal) from Gujranwala, Lahore, was given a chance as an assistant by another Lahori musician, Khwaja Khurshid Anwar (who was in Bombay at the time).
Rudyard Kipling was also a Lahori.

Actress Meena Shorey (Khurshid) the "Lara Lapa" girl one of the earliest bombshells of Bollywood was from Lahore (Raiwind).
Her husband was Roop K. Shorey, a Quetta-born actor/director, and the owner of Kamla Movietone in Lahore. He later moved to India after the partition. His film Mangti ran over 75 weeks in Lahore in the forties, making it his most profitable film.

Actresses Kamni Kaushal, kuldeep kaur,and Anupam Kher are from Lahore
Suraiya (singer and actress) hails from Sialkot.

K. L. Saigal (singer) acquired fame in Lahore then later moved to Calcutta. His last film was in 1947, music composed by Khwaja Khurshid Anwar from Lahore.

Famous Musicians from Lahore who migrated later.
Pundit Amarnath, Shayum Sunder, Gobind Ram, Lachi Ram, Dhanni Ram were more than compensated by the arrival of Ustad Sardar Khan, Ustad Akhter Hussain Khan, Bundoo Khan, Nazakat Ali, Salamat Ali, Amanat Ali Fateh Ali, Bhai Lal and Ghulam Hassan Shaggan. There were musicians who were already in Lahore like Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, Inayat Bai Dheerowali, Shamshad Begum, Sohni, Alamgir Khan, Sadiq Ai Mando.

Khayyam the music composer of Umrao-Jaan fame started his career in Lahore.

Many pre-partition films were produced in Lahore. Lahore was considered the 'launchpad' for new actors, directors and producers.

Pre-partition, Lahore happened to be the Head Quarters of India's Northern Circuit in the mid-forties.
There were three major cinemas in the city that primarily showed punjabi films. (Aijaz Gul)
**Partition came with gains and losses for both countries.**
Noorjehan and her director-editor husband Shaukat Rizvi, actor-director Nazir and her actress wife Swaran Lata, director Subtain Rizvi, composers Master Ghulam Haider, Khwaja Khursheed Anwar, and producer-director W.Z.Ahmad all moved during partition.
Sahir Ludhianvi (Abdul Hayee) started his career in Lahore as a lyricist/poet, who later went on to become one of he biggest lyricist in Bollywood.

Raj Kumar of Mother India fame was born in Baluchistan, and who can forget the tragedy king Dilip Kumar (Yousuf Khan) from Peshawar, its not Lahore but yes its this side of the border.
Pundit Nehru, after watching the film Intezar(1956) lifted the ban in India on Pakistani films, and first time after the partition, a Pakistani film was shown in Indian theaters. The cinema walls in Delhi read this:
"Woh geet jo aaj tak aap ne nahin sunay, Woh naghme jo Noor Jehan ne aaj tak nahin gaey".
The love for music in the subcontinent lead Noor Jehan to jump start the careers of many music directors and filmmakers as she took over through her singing and acting talents. After listening to her voice one can forget the boundaries drawn by man. She was and is a wonder that shall remain with us forever.

Recently Lahore has given India Noor Jehan, Nusrat Fateh Ali, Sabri Brothers, Adnan Sami Khan, Reshma, Mehdi Hassan, Abida Parveen, Tassawar Khanum, Atif Aslam Ghulam Ali, Rahat Fateh, Shafqat Amanat Ali---- for their talent truly saturates Bollywood.

Numerous Bollywood films and Indian music directors have taken credit for their work.
Yet they say Lahore has given them nothing? hmm?

These are just a few examples of how Lahore has contributed to the success of "Bollywood"

I find it sad how a line drawn on the map can make people so ungrateful and hostile when it comes to giving credit to such great artists and the great city that produced them.

(The author is the grand daughter of Kh. Khursheed Anwar and currently resides in USA)

Writer's Block - The Ways of Our Youth By Bushra Hassan

Earlier this week, I heard that a music channel is searching for a VJ in Islamabad. The auditions were being held near my office, so needless to say, I jumped at this opportunity. Why? Do I want to be a VJ? Yes, why not. Is it my passion, my goal, my dream? Not at all. But it’s an experience and life is made up of experiences, new, different and unique. With the moral support of my best bud, and half a day off from work from a very supportive boss, I soon found myself in a queue, filling out forms and pasting stickers on myself. The experience was interesting, fun, enjoyable and yet disappointing.

Okay, this is not about my audition, or the fact that I used the platform to laugh at myself and the world, and the entire exercise. Okay, it is not about me, myself, and I. Despite being my favourite subject in the world, I shall not tell you about ME.

This is about the 100 something youngsters, who were all wearing their best. From neon green t-shirts, to plaid scarves, to skin tight jeans, the boys were a plenty. It was a sheer disappointment, that there were few girls. I counted five or six, all dressed in skin tight jeans and tops, full of make up looking pretty. It hit me then, being a VJ is considered to be more about clothes and make up, than substance.

The camera was rolling, the youngsters were asked by the channel to “pretend to be nervous”, in order to get a few laughs from the viewers, at the expense of the kiddies. The kiddies and myself complied obediently. I noticed the gestures, the body movements, the language – what it takes to be a VJ – and grimaced. Is this what we have become? Is this what is “IN” and what is “COOL”? Is this what it takes to be a VJ? Or, is this what the various music channels have told us that VJs need to be? Maybe. Coolness is your ticket to being a celebrity, to being on TV. Nothing else matters, or that was the view in the queue.

The same “cool” teenagers also went outside the location for a quick smoke and proudly tossed their cigarette in the green belt, causing a huge fire. Fire truck had to be called, the older men rushed with water to fight the fire …. All in the name of coolness, I admit.

The girls I was sitting with (yes, the girls sat in the shade, while the boys smoked in the heat) kept staring at the boys disappointed with the “quality of boys”. How they are not what Islamabad is, that they are not from “good families”, and how embarrassed they were to be with them, sharing the stage with them, and how confident they were that these “paindoo boys” stood no chance.

At what point did we decide that a good family meant a family of wealth and connections, rather than morality, compassion and integrity? At what point the strength of a youth became it’s following of fashion and copying babbling celebrities rather than its potential to do good, to be worthy, to be the future of its country? And at what point did we decide that we as a nation are divided into two groups: the cool; and the uncool? How the cool judge the others to be inadequate, simply because the parents could not afford better (please read: English speaking) school for them? Is the future of our country in the hands of the children of the powerful, who look down upon the children of the powerless, simply as a birthright?

Where is our youth heading and where is the leadership? Who are our next VJs going to be? What is their biggest strength? Yes, as I discovered, knowledge of the Pakistan music industry is important, but what of honesty, humility, courage, why aren’t these the trademarks of our people?

In the end, I returned with hope and disappointment. The kids all thought they had a chance; most of them are bound to be extremely disappointed. They will feel more dejected when the children of the rich get richer, as they humbly watch on. There goes another job, another future.

All is not doomed. I may not be the youth, but I am still young. My friend who held my hand through the entire exercise, is perhaps the coolest person I shall ever know, her fashion sense is beyond superior, her intellect extraordinary, her family background shinier than the sun, and there she was giving thumbs up signs to the less cool, and sitting in the sun, eight days before her wedding, supporting her uncouth friend for a few good laughs. This same friend, along with other truly cool friends went to meet injured IDPs and troops with flowers and fruits and words of triumph. Irrespective of status, class and any air of superiority, they met the troops, who from truly humble backgrounds, fight so our youth may enjoy their freedom. Then, there is the Pakistan Youth Alliance, that is giving direction to the confused minds of our young ones. There is still hope, people! There is a future.

It’s not over yet because our children and the children of friends like mine, will indeed bring a change. There will always be people who truly define what Pakistan is all about. The country where an England returned Barrister, with impeccable style and English speaking abilities changed the plight of the poor and the future of this country. He put the poor and powerless before himself, he thought them worthy of his life.

All is not over yet. We’re the children of Quaid and some of us may forget it, in the ecstasy of our youth, we will all return to find our one unified identity.

Images courtesy:

Google

Supreme Ishq.

This is Pakistan.

The very talented Noori performs with Saeein Zahoor the legend. Aik Alif by the Sufi Poet Bulleh Shah

Video with English Subtitles available at: http://www.babelsongs.com/2009/06/aik-alif-by-saieen-zahoor-and-noori.html

Tu Hai Kahaan?

Time to Rise Pakistan

The Tell Tale Heart: Soul Jam - Mehreena Aziz Khan

In the last few days, many of my fellow countrymen have been posting videos from Coke Studios second season airing this month on Pakistani television channels. Sitting in my apartment unit in Sydney, Australia, the status updates and YouTube posts keep me well updated on what is happening back home, whether it’s the bewailing of another deadly bomb attack, jubilation over restoration of the judiciary, or the laments and joy over cricketing performances.

For one accustomed to chilling reportage of the Swat operation, shedding tears over fallen martyrs in the war against the Taliban or cringing at videos of young girls being flogged in public, the Coke Studio videos were a veritable breath, nay gust of fresh air.

For one accustomed to chilling reportage of the Swat operation, shedding tears over fallen martyrs in the war against the Taliban or cringing at videos of young girls being flogged in public, the Coke Studio videos were a veritable breath, nay gust of fresh air.

This is the Pakistan I know and the one I grew up in. Rich with talent both folk and pop, both classical and modern. Where talented music and video producers have the skill to conduct creative experiments and come up with top-notch productions despite meager resources and training. Knowing a lot of the people behind the project personally, I know for a fact that most never attended a musical academy or formally studied production. They just have raw talent and determination, while their skills are self-taught. Whether it was learning to strum the guitar or the keyboard keys through books, or learning the ropes of music and video production from the internet.

One by one, the performances began and ended with aplomb, with every performer putting their soul into it, and the jam sessions began to feel like a balm for the embittered Pakistani soul - a soul wounded by violence and internal strife. This is the Pakistan that easily married the glory and timelessness of traditional folklore with modern pop. Where globalization and modernization enjoyed a peaceful and respectful camaradie with the historical and classical.

When two girls from Peshawar sang timeless quatrains of Omer Khayyam at the melodious strumming of the rabab, they evoked nostalgia for the beautiful heritage of the war-torn mess Afghanistan and parts of NWFP have become. Before the time where girls had their faces burnt with acid, their schools shut down and their teachers shot. Before CD shops were burnt, before ancient statues were ruthlessly bombed and before classical musicians were issued death threats and boycotted into oblivion. If only we could manage modernization and progress while preserving our culture as smoothly as the adept synchronization of western percussion instruments with the classic rabab by Rohail Hyatt's team.

All the performances were marked with the same characteristic. Saieen Zahoor's melodious rendition of verses of ancient wisdom reminded one of the Sufi poetry and mindset that once helped spread Islam in the Subcontinent. A time when love, poetry, tolerance and a deep respect for human values was the mode for propagation of religious sentiments. How the scene has changed since then. And as Saieen's voice died down, a fashionably bearded Ali Noor and his brother Ali Hamza took up the tune… both dressed in western attire, both ably carrying the tune forward and representing the modern face of Pakistani music with a sensibility and respect for their musical heritage.

The performance evoked memories of Zia-era PTV when Muhammad Ali Sheikhi and Allan Fakir's "Allah Allah kar bhayya" became hugely popular as the original pop-meets-folk ditty. A time when the likes of Nazia and Zoheb were banned from television. The triumphant re-emergence of pop music after the end of the Zia era, when youthful raw talent like Vital Signs and Jupiters sang jubilant and hope-filled anthems on the eve of Benazir's promised era of liberalization.

When I had returned to Pakistan in 2004 after spending a number of years in Germany, I found a vastly changed media landscape in the wake of the satellite television revolution. But a stark dichotomy was visible in television content as one click would take you from devout rant of Aalim Online or bearded mullahs talking about the intricacies of performing ablution, to the tantalizing gyrations of the likes of Nimra or scantily clad local models at a glitzy fashion show. The neutral majority found itself feeling alienated by both.

When I had returned to Pakistan in 2004 after spending a number of years in Germany, I found a vastly changed media landscape in the wake of the satellite television revolution. But a stark dichotomy was visible in television content as one click would take you from devout rant of Aalim Online or bearded mullahs talking about the intricacies of performing ablution, to the tantalizing gyrations of the likes of Nimra or scantily clad local models at a glitzy fashion show. The neutral majority found itself feeling alienated by both. The Coke Studio performances on the other hand seem to symbolize a balanced middle ground between the two extremes. At the same time they are a quantum leap from the pre-millenium PTV era of uninspired performance clips featuring rubab, tabla and other folk instruments that would dot the broadcast back then.

So hats off to all involved with the production and that, along with the welcome news of Pakistan's victories in the Twenty20 World Cup at the moment, is what I want my news of Pakistan to keep on being filled of: feats in arts and sports rather than deadly bombings and floggings.

Until next time its cheers from Aussie mate!

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http://www.cokestudio.com.pk/ for more on Coke Studio