Arshad Mahmud is one of Pakistan’s most prolific and talented composers, the man whose music launched singing sensations like Nayyar Noor and Tina Sani.
He made his debut with the children’s television show Akkar Bakkar in 1972, along with Nayyara Noor and the pioneering puppeteer Farooq Qaiser, produced by Shoaib Hashmi, then an economics professor at Government College (now University) Lahore.
Behind ustad (teacher) Hashmi’s booming voice, gruff manner and handlebar moustache was a brilliant writer and satirist who went on to write and produce the groundbreaking, now legendary satirical television shows Such Gup and Tal Matol.
We would use these as the titles of Shoaib Hashmi’s columns for The Frontier Post later and The News on Sunday that I edited in Lahore, starting in the 1990s. His daughter Mira Hashmi has uploaded many of the videos to her YouTube channel.
Lord Clive
Dodging censorship and restrictions, the team tackled all kinds of themes. Mahmud remembers that for a Tal Matol session on history, Shoaib Hashmi asked actor Samina Ahmed – who played the grandmother in the Disney film Ms Marvel (2022) – what character she’d like to be. “Lord Clive,” she said. So Lord Clive she was, and when she appeared on set in costume, everyone cracked up.
“We were a bunch of crazy idiots,” laughed Arshad Mahmud over a phone call. I’d called to ask about his YouTube channel MoUSICi. The bilingual name plays upon the English word “music” and the Urdu “mousiqi”, which means the same thing.
After the military dictatorship of General Ziaul Haq shut down Shoaib Hashmi’s creative endeavours on television, Such Gup and Tal Matol re-emerged underground. They did skits at private functions and went on road shows, including one that I organised for Fauji Fertiliser in the little town of Ghotki in south Punjab, in 1987, in cahoots with my uncle Brig (retired) Mohammad Ahmed who headed the company.
Since MoUSICi’s first song was posted on October 1, 2023, Mahmud has shared a composition on YouTube on the 1st and 15th of every month, with a description and explanation of the poetry.
The compositions are mesmerising, the videos simple and cleanly produced. I’m reminded of Nayyar Noor’s songs in the Such Gup and Tal Matol series – no frills, no fuss. The writing that accompanies the videos is compelling – and important, particularly for the younger generation and those seeking more context.
When we spoke on New Year’s Day after his latest offering pops up as a message in WhatsApp, Arshad was jetlagged. “You won’t believe the travel I’ve just done,” he said.
De-marketing music
He has just returned to Karachi from an international trip starting with London where he’d registered MoUSICi as a music company. A series of unplanned trips took place. Friends in the US flew him over to San Francisco. Then the respected Islamic scholar Javed Ghamidi invited Mahmud to his new base in Dallas – turns out Mahmud was his senior by a couple of years at Government College.
In a departure from their norm of interviewing scholars, the Ghamidi Centre of Islamic Learning in Carrollton, Texas featured a conversation with Arshad Mahmud. He talked about uplifting the quality of life through culture, and the importance of the journey and process behind any venture. To produce quality music, “we need to ‘de-market’ it, get away from trying to get ‘likes’ and ‘clicks’.” Hear, hear. The interview is available with English subtitles.
He then flew to Baltimore, then New York to meet with old friend, journalist Masood Haider, then London to catch his flight to Karachi.
“So you can imagine how exhausted I am,” he says, a smile in his voice. “Acha, let me go now, I’m sitting with a lot of people” – his ‘bachas” as he calls the young people working with him were visiting.
When I first met Arshad Mahmud in the 1980s in Karachi, he worked with the record company EMI. After the National Academy of Performing Arts was formed in 2005, he joined as Programme Director. He left in October 2021, after 16 years of steering the ship headed by the late great actor Zia Mohyeddin.
President Pervez Musharraf had given NAPA the use of the colonial-era Hindu Gymkhana, a magnificent, disused sandstone building in the heart of the city. Karachi’s Hindu community has been demanding it back.
A dictator can override legalities. Musharraf was a lover of the classical arts, unlike his predecessor Gen. Zia ul Haq who had banned them.
Mahmud launched the MoUSICi YouTube channel in October 2023, two years after leaving NAPA. The keynote speaker at the launch at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture was the artist Salima Hashmi.
Daughter of the iconic poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz, married to Shoaib Hashmi in 1965, she is also a founder member and advisor to the Southasia Peace Action Network or Sapan, launched in March 2021. Mahmud too is a Sapan supporter.
The younger generation
Mahmud started MoUSICi because he wants to “involve the younger generation” and get them to appreciate classical poetry and music, to popularise Urdu classical poetry – poets like Faraz, Faiz, Ghalib, and more. He plans to release a “Trilogy of Romance” series featuring Parveen Shakir’s poetry in February. Compositions for Kishwar Naheed and Fahmida Riaz’s poetry are also in the works.
It is the young people he works with who pushed him to add translations of the lyrics in the YouTube descriptions.
The second aim is to provide an option for “another kind of music”, different from the Coke Studio and Pepsi Battle of the Bands that have been popularised, or the London-based Sufi Score – all entailing expensive productions.
“But that’s what’s popular,” said a well-wisher who tried to prod him to do similar work. “That’s what sells.”
“So do white shirts,” he had responded. “That doesn’t mean there’s no demand for other colours.”
“Did you know that 70% of men’s shirts that are sold are white?” he asks me.
He got that figure from a salesperson at Macy’s in London recently. “But I don’t want to sell white shirts! Why can’t I sell blue shirts?”
Another motivation is to produce “a genre embedded in Southasian traditional music.” For example, the song released on New Year’s Day, Mere Dil Mere Musafir (My Heart, My Traveler) is composed in Raag Des, backed only with guitar. He chose the raag primarily for its reference to “des” (homeland). It is a poem in which Faiz expresses his pain about being separated from his des.
Written during exile in London in 1978, it is “a poignant reflection on the struggles of exile and the enduring connection to one’s roots, even when far from home,” commented Arshad in the YouTube description.
He composed it in January 1985, soon after Faiz’s passing, in response to a request from Salima Hashmi. She wanted it as a narrative underlay to accompany her visual presentation at a commemorative event in honour of Faiz on his birthday, February 13, in Lahore.
The song marked Tina Sani’s debut singing Faiz’s poetry. “Her rendition added flavour and emotions to the presentation, leaving an enduring impression on all who attended,” writes Arshad.
In the new version, Nigel Bobby, a young singer Arshad has been working with, soulfully renders Faiz’s timeless classic.
The third motivation behind MoUSICi is in fact to give a platform for upcoming talent like Bobby.
Arshad Mahmud has been doing this work for decades now, including under two military dictators. Today, as political agitations and unrest continue to rock Pakistan, he continues with dedication, good humour and drawing in more and more people, like his ustad Shoaib Hashmi.
In the final analysis, in the midst of all that’s going on, perhaps that’s the best that anyone can really do.
Beena Sarwar is a journalist and peace activist from Pakistan based in the Boston area. She is the founder editor of Sapan News and co-founder and curator of the Southasia Peace Action Network. This is her occasional Personal Political column.
This is a Sapan News syndicated feature.
