Caption goes here photo: John Clewley
The fascinating sounds of “Lollywood” (Pakistani cinema) soundtracks have been exploding from the World Beat turntable for the past week, courtesy of an excellent recent double vinyl compilation, ‘Life Is Dance!’ Plugged-In Sounds Of Wonder At The Pakistani Picture House (Finders Keepers, 2011). The compilation was sourced from EMI Pakistan’s vast archives by Chris Menist, DJ partner of Zudrangma’s Maft Sai and a member of local favourites the Paradise Bangkok Molam International band, and is a part of the series called “Sounds of Wonder”.
Lollywood soundtrack music, as I’ve discovered, has many stylistic similarities with the more well-known Bollywood sound. There is, as Menist says in the liner notes, “something more rough around the edges and often more compelling about what was being laid down in the EMI studios in Lahore”.
The title track, Life Is Dance, is taken from the movie Society Girl, and it features the seductive, soaring voice of Nahid Akhtar, driving percussion (another featured artist is the percussionist, producer and composer Altaf Hussein Tafo who produced 700 soundtracks in his career), a sixties-sounding guitar and synthesizer. The effect is infectious. Several of the songs like Naughty Boy are in this vain — cheeky seduction by “bad girls” in bar scenes that feature snatches of English. English lyrics, used as hooks or chorus (done years before J-pop and K-pop did it), and mixed with local languages like Punjabi or Urdu on songs like Catch Me If You Can and Naughty Boy are my favourites of these types of songs; perfect pop confection, complete with weird Moog sounds, undulating tabla and chunky guitars.
Pakistan has a very rich musical culture, with a deep classical tradition, many folk and traditional styles from different regions and a Sufi tradition, from the South, that produced qawwali devotional music, so it should come as no surprise that, as with Bollywood, some of the music from these styles should turn up on soundtracks. For instance, harmonium riffs performed by synthesizers and vocal techniques from traditional music. You can hear some of these styles percolating through songs like Jawani Meri Bijli and the wild Wey Titly Non Par.
This is a wonderful collection of funky tracks that would grace any dancefloor — it is music to dance to and I’ll be spinning a few of these musical nuggets at my next DJ night. Highly recommended. The compilation is part of series of releases from the EMI Pakistan’s vaults, and is available in both vinyl and CD formats. More information from www.finderskeepersrecords.com.
Sadly, not everyone in Pakistan appreciates music. Qawwali singer Amjad Sabri, the son of Ghulam Farid Sabri, one of the founders of the legendary Sabri Brothers, was gunned down and killed earlier this year. Qawwali is Sufi devotional music, sometimes called “the music of the shrines”, and it features the words of Sufi saints set to music. The Sufi tradition has millions of followers in Pakistan.
The aim of the music, as explained to me by the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, is to bring listeners closer to God; the music is a lyrical expression of devotional love and is set to handclaps, harmonium and tabla drums.
At the time of his untimely death, Amjad Sabri was at the height of his career and was one of the most popular of the younger qawwali singers along with stars like Faiz Ali Faiz. The Sabri family’s musical roots go back to the 17th century and it was his father Ghulam Farid Sabri who helped to popularise the Sabri Brothers ensemble from the 1960s to mid-1990s; Amjad was the only family member to carry on the tradition. He quickly established his reputation as an interpreter of his father’s songs and as an experimenter with more modern interpretations of the qawwali traditions.
Thousands of devotees and fans turned out to his funeral on June 25, showing just how important and well loved this musician was to his followers and devotees. RIP Amjad Sabri, your music will live on.
This source first appeared on Bangkok Post Lifestyle.