No it's not called Dhoop. The next Strings album is tantalizingly called Koi Aanay Wala Hai. It's an apt name for the most anticipated album of the year.
Strings, as one music aficionado put it recently now fall into the category of "classic". This Strings fan is well into his 50s. With their melody, lyrics by Anwar Maqsood and a signature style that they have never veered from, Strings have become a listening habit in Pakistan. And they've penetrated so deep into our consciousness that they're not going anywhere.
If Ali Azmat is about radical experimentation and newcomer Atif is all about hype, Strings are all about consistency and a mellow attitude that they have made uniquely their own. They are not about 'Garaj Baras' and are definitely not scratching their heads and wondering 'Hum Kis Gali Jaa Rahe Hain'? Faisal Kapadia and Bilal Maqsood are self assured, co-pilots of the enterprise that is the Strings and they're cruising along hitting all the right notes and that too all over the sub-continent!
Faisal Kapadia and Bilal Maqsood have long been the most chilled out guys in the music industry. They occupy their own world. Both are happily married to the women they fell in love with years ago and have children; Bilal, three and Faisal, two. And they have never been into making statements. They don't take up political causes. They will do a 'Beirut' but they won't tom-tom the fact all over the place. They do what they do and they do it well, but they do it very quietly, so at the end of it, all you hear is the music.
Faisal and Bilal are voyeurs. They observe the milieu and resolutely figure out a way of doing their thing their way. Sitting with them in Bilal's gorgeous home within the Maqsood family compound in Defence Karachi, the vibe is easy to pick up on. There is a sense of calm to both of them. They share an easy energy, as mellow as the music they make. They are both excited about their new album, which is being mastered at Yashraj Studios in India, in the heart of Bollywood itself and yet the sound is distinctly Strings.
'Koi Aanay Wala Hai', the song starts off from where the excellent 'Aakhri Alvida' left off. This album sees a reinvention of the Strings. There are breaks between rhythm and melodic bridges that reach to a crescendo and then goes around for another spin. It's a definite departure from Duur and Dhaani. The music is more rocking, the sound is definitely edgier, but it doesn't sound like a whole new band. Faisal and Bilal know the Strings signature well and they stick to it.
"I look at us as a brand like Nike," says Bilal. "Strings are a brand and there is a philosophy behind it. We know what we have to do."
Like what?
Faisal easily takes over from Bilal and launches into the story of the shooting of the 'Aakhri Alvida' video. "We were shooting on the sets of the film and you remember the scene with guns on display?" he asks unassumingly. Who would forget the 'Aakhri Alvida' video? It was a breakthrough lesson in how Pakistani musicians can use Bollywood for their own advantage.
"Well originally Sanjay Gupta, the director, wanted us to play with the guns, load them and stuff," continues Faisal in that husky baritone. "I was very excited by the idea, but Bilal stopped me saying, 'Do we really want to send out the message to our fans that the Strings are into guns?' I thought about it and decided he was right. Guns are not what Strings are about at all."
Bilal smiles. There is an easy awareness between them. And music producer Rohail Hyatt who has known them for ages says that they are very easy. Part of their charm he attributes to the "nice boys next door syndrome, which is how they are." Yet he sees them as two separate entities. "They are very different people," he tells Instep. "Which is why when you ask me about them as a unit, I can't answer because I look at them as two very different individuals." According to Rohail, Bilal is the creative mind, while Faisal has the capacity to be very real and the skill to deliver. And the success of the Strings, Rohail attributes to their difference. "They compliment each other very well."
He echoes how Faisal and Bilal describe their relationship. "When one is slipping, the other brings him back on track."
Faisal and Bilal are their own professional comfort zone. And it doesn't come easy. Yet here are two guys who dreamt a dream together and formed Strings way back in the day and came out with the albums Strings in 1990 and Strings 2 in 1992. 'Sar Kiye Ye Pahar' from their second album became to Strings then what 'Aadat' was for Jal and Atif Aslam at the turn of this century. However, Pakistan wasn't then what it is now and being a musician seemed to be a fool's dream. Faisal and Bilal were respectively in love with the women who would be their wives and they finished their education and worked, got married, had children and became 'normal' people. But the call of music was too strong and they came back with Duur and the rest, as they say, is history.
New media is capable of catapulting stars to the stratosphere. The plethora of music channels in Pakistan, the launch of new newspapers and magazines and the emergence of awards shows have ensured that the music industry is more prolific than ever before and the Strings love it.
"We loved it when Instep Today was launched," says Faisal recounting how excited they were that entertainment news was being covered daily in Pakistan. "That is the way it is in India."
India is a barometer for both of them. It is the land the Strings went to and found fame tenfold the size in Pakistan. They are regulars on the Indian concert circuit and having made inroads into Bollywood, they regularly perform with Bollywood stars. And we at Instep found it rather infuriating when they did a string of concerts with Saif Ali Khan and the Indian band Parikrama and didn't keep us updated at all. Readers would have been so interested in that.
"Look," smiles Faisal. "When we first went to India and performed with Bollywood stars for the first time, we told you about it. It was exciting for us, but now we keep on going there and we keep on performing with them. We can't call up newspapers and say, now we're performing with Saif, and next week Akshay Kumar will be singing with us or that John Abraham is coming in our video. It's become regular now."
Both Faisal and Bilal strongly believe that too much hype can kill and artists. "When you keep reading about someone everyday, see them in interviews on every channel and see there videos all over the place, it kills it. You don't like it when anyone is shoved down your throat," they both agree.
There it is again, the subtlety that has become a trademark of the Strings. It's in their music, it's in the way they talk and it's in the way the way they view the scene and how they choose to play their game. From videos to concerts to music and interviews, it's done with a dignity and grace that's hard to find in the rat race that the burgeoning music scene in Pakistan has become.
And nowhere does this remarkable trait of theirs shine through as clearly as when they give interviews to Indian papers. The quotes attributed to the Strings are fantastic like one they gave to The Hindu in October 2007. "While listening to film music, you visualise the particular actor in the song. In independent albums though, the listener pictures himself in the situation. The listener relates to the singer even more," they were quoted as saying. Or the one that they gave to Rediff when they first went to India where they advised any band who couldn't make it big in India to come to Pakistan which has more of a band culture. They tell it like it is and take a stand for what they believe in. They have taken the Strings signature to India and have refused to compromise on it even if they have been made an offer by the likes of Karan Johar and Madhur Bhandarkar.
An offer came from Karan for them to sing for a film, but they refused that.
"We're open to collaborations, but we're not interested in being playback singers."
And when Madhur Bhandarkar asked them to compose the soundtrack for his upcoming film Fashion, they turned him down preferring to work on their new album Koi Aanay Wala Hai.
"We don't want to be Laxmikant-Pyarelal."
Bilal Maqsood and Faisal Kapadia realize that they are the upholders of the entity that is Strings and they treat it as sacrosanct. They worked with Sanjay Gupta because he understood what they wanted to do and was willing to let them do that for the film. They speak very highly of John Abraham who will appear in their first video for their upcoming album because he gets them. They think highly of Sanjay Dutt because they get along with him. Faisal and Bilal are not starstruck, which is why they deal with Bollywood on their own terms. A lot of music industry insiders attribute their success to Anwar Maqsood's Indian connections, (Bilal's poet father has many fans in India) but as Rohail puts it, while connections do help, it is what you deliver at the end that makes or breaks an artist.
Recently, it was pure pleasure to see the Strings perform at Coke Studio, Rohail's upcoming project that pits our biggest pop stars alongside classical and folk musicians. Right before the show, Faisal and Bilal were speaking with Rohail about how to introduce the lewa musicians who were going to accompany them on 'Sar Kiye Yeh Pahar'. They had heard of lewa dancers and wanted to know if lewa musicians was the correct term. Eventually they pointed to Abdul Lateef and his gang of men and said, "So here's 'Sar Kiye Ye Pahar', lewa style," right before Bilal launched into the most haunting reworking of the first ever Strings classic.
Ustad Hussain Buksh Gullu, the most seasoned classical musician roped into Coke Studio was paired with the Strings. He accompanied them on Duur. At rehearsals where they met for the first time, Faisal sang the opening strains of Duur to him and then said 'Please enter wherever you have the space to and take it wherever you have to." And Ustad Gullu worked his magic, taking Duur to places you couldn't imagine like only a vocalist trained in Eastern classical can. When he stopped, Faisal jumped in front of him waving his hands upwards as if to say, "Carry on sir, it's sounding wonderful." Ustad Gullu smiled and complied.
There is a tameez to dealing with classical musicians, who are a part of an old tradition that does not work well in today's go getting, cut-throat world. Yet, reaching out to them makes popular music richer. Strings realized this a while ago, which is when they teamed up with Hari Haran for the duet 'Bolo Bolo' in India and they manage to work well with classical musicians which is not an easy feat for the proverbial 'popstar'.
Another reason why their performance to an intimate audience at Coke Studio remains memorable is because one hardly gets to see them perform anymore. It seems rather unfair that their Indian fans get to see what their Pakistani fans remain deprived of.
"We've gone on to another level playing at stadiums for thousands of people with great sound and great production values," says Bilal. "After doing that, we can't play for a two hundred people, with either bad sound or fake it on stage."
"We feel ridiculous doing it," agrees Faisal.
It is a tragedy for our music industry that while musicians move ahead, the industry doesn't move with them. The Strings tried to change that when they went to the city government with the idea to do concerts all over the city. This plan resulted in the Hamara Karachi Festival in 2006, which became a hit, but while the Strings performed, they felt that the purpose wasn't fulfilled. The city government took the project in an entirely new direction and so many things happened that the festival lost all focus. The Strings wanted to give public concerts in open spaces where people could just come and listen and they still carry that plan which they hope will materialize one day.
"All colleges need to hold concerts," they say, pointing out that the bulk of their concerts in India are at student festivals. "A college has a concentration of people who listen to pop music and if colleges across the country hold concerts regularly, then we can have a great concert circuit," they believe.
Meanwhile offers keep rolling in from across the border and the sky is the limit for them in India, but Faisal Kapadia and Bilal Maqsood are holding back. It is more important to be Strings than to be big in Bollywood, which is precisely why they'll manage to do both. It's better that the destination be Duur for two musicians who hold the journey above all else.
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