Three years ago, this music video of Lahore’s Sachal Studio Orchestra reinterpreting pianist Dave Brubeck’s classic jazz tune Take Five spread around the world faster than the swine flu. Next week, some of those musicians will tour India, giving free concerts in Mumbai and Bangalore, in addition to performing at the NH7 Weekender festival in Delhi.
The Sachal Orchestra are unlikely sensations on the global music scene. Over the past couple of years, they have sold out London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall and collaborated with the acclaimed Lincoln Centre Jazz Orchestra in New York.
Like the charming members of Cuba’s Buena Vista Social Club, Sachal’s musicians were brought back from obscurity years after they’d lost their livelihood in Lahore’s film studios. The band was assembled by Izzat Majeed, a London-based Pakistani businessman who had earned his fortune as a fund manager and adviser to a Saudi oil minister. The son of a movie producer, Majeed made it his mission to recreate the Lollywood sounds he grew up with in the 1960s, which were stifled by the Islamism of the dictator Zia ul-Haq in the 1980s.
“I had taken at an early age to jazz, symphonies, ragas and all kinds of musical instruments,” Majeed told Scroll in an email message. “Eastern and Western tunes immerse in tunes and arrangements.”
Early in the last decade, Majeed started to track down the most talented performers: he found one man selling vegetables; another was a tea vendor. “They were getting on in age, they’d stopped teaching their children how to play, and they were surviving however they could,” Majeed told one interviewer. “They’d just given up, because they didn’t see any future in music.”
In 2005, he put in two million pounds to build the state-of-the-art Sachal Studios in 2005, and the ensemble hasn’t looked back since.
Especially noteworthy has been its collaboration with New York’s Lincoln Centre Jazz Orchestra, fronted by the legendary trumpet player Wynton Marsalis in 2013. “Wynton is my brother and teacher,” said Majeed. He “is a great musician with a wonderful spirit of collaborations. Sachal Jazz learnt from him to play with each other.”
In 2011, the Pakistani group release its first album, Sachal Jazz, with a lush version of Brubeck’s Take Five. The song that year, and the video went viral. Said Majeed modestly, “My arrangement made iTune’s Top Ten jazz charts in the US and the UK of Dave Brubeck’s Take Five was a joy for the Sachal Orchestra.”
Here's another Sachal Orchestra classic, a poignant reinterpretation of REM's Everybody Hurts.
And here they are with the Lincoln Centre Jazz Orchestra.
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The Sachal Orchestra are unlikely sensations on the global music scene. Over the past couple of years, they have sold out London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall and collaborated with the acclaimed Lincoln Centre Jazz Orchestra in New York.
Like the charming members of Cuba’s Buena Vista Social Club, Sachal’s musicians were brought back from obscurity years after they’d lost their livelihood in Lahore’s film studios. The band was assembled by Izzat Majeed, a London-based Pakistani businessman who had earned his fortune as a fund manager and adviser to a Saudi oil minister. The son of a movie producer, Majeed made it his mission to recreate the Lollywood sounds he grew up with in the 1960s, which were stifled by the Islamism of the dictator Zia ul-Haq in the 1980s.
“I had taken at an early age to jazz, symphonies, ragas and all kinds of musical instruments,” Majeed told Scroll in an email message. “Eastern and Western tunes immerse in tunes and arrangements.”
Early in the last decade, Majeed started to track down the most talented performers: he found one man selling vegetables; another was a tea vendor. “They were getting on in age, they’d stopped teaching their children how to play, and they were surviving however they could,” Majeed told one interviewer. “They’d just given up, because they didn’t see any future in music.”
In 2005, he put in two million pounds to build the state-of-the-art Sachal Studios in 2005, and the ensemble hasn’t looked back since.
Especially noteworthy has been its collaboration with New York’s Lincoln Centre Jazz Orchestra, fronted by the legendary trumpet player Wynton Marsalis in 2013. “Wynton is my brother and teacher,” said Majeed. He “is a great musician with a wonderful spirit of collaborations. Sachal Jazz learnt from him to play with each other.”
In 2011, the Pakistani group release its first album, Sachal Jazz, with a lush version of Brubeck’s Take Five. The song that year, and the video went viral. Said Majeed modestly, “My arrangement made iTune’s Top Ten jazz charts in the US and the UK of Dave Brubeck’s Take Five was a joy for the Sachal Orchestra.”
Here's another Sachal Orchestra classic, a poignant reinterpretation of REM's Everybody Hurts.
And here they are with the Lincoln Centre Jazz Orchestra.