Some seventeen odd years ago, I discovered the then new-fangled streaming service Spotify, and was immediately blown away by the wealth of music available there. Since Spotify was then unavailable in Pakistan, I posted a guide to accessing the then nascent streaming service by methods which could charitably be described as less than legal. In my naivety, I had announced back in 2009 that Spotify held "almost the COMPLETE EMI PAKISTAN CATALOGUE !!!!", in all-caps and with four exclamation marks. Little did I know that the Pakistani music available on Spotify and other streaming sites was but a fraction of the catalogues of music recorded by EMI Pakistan and other Pakistani music companies. What I was to discover later was that in addition to the music released in by record companies, there exists a massive treasure trove of unreleased music stored in the archives of Radio Pakistan, Pakistan Television, the Pakistan National Council of the Arts and other national cultural organizations.
Radio Pakistan especially, has remained the repository of Pakistan's sonic heritage for the last eight decades, broadcasting music from all parts (and before 1971, both wings) of Pakistan. Through its Transcription Service - later christened the "Central Productions Unit", Radio Pakistan also preserved recordings of a significant proportion of its broadcasts on tape and occasionally released selections from its archives in collaboration with EMI Pakistan. The vast majority of the Radio Pakistan archives however, remained stored in its vaults, often in very precarious conditions. A few years ago, thanks to the efforts of an enterprising producer, Radio Pakistan launched a YouTube channel where they began uploading some of the music from their archives, and we were treated to such gems as Aniqa Bano singing a Mus'hafi ghazal to the tune of a Pahari folk song and Ali Bakhsh Zahoor singing an actual folk song my grandmother used to sing when I was child. In addition, scattered recordings from the Radio Pakistan vaults could be found in the archives of collectors like Irfan Gabol, or the legendary collection of Luthfullah Khan Sb, curated on Khursheed Abdullah Sb's YouTube channel.
Sometime last year, on one of my frequent trawls on the internet, I cam across something extraordinary, a new set of recordings by one of my favorite Qawwals. After overcoming my surprise (and joy), I did a fair bit of digging on a number of streaming sites and found out something that I'd lime to announce today, besting my previous record, this time in all-caps, bold, and followed by five exclamation marks. Here goes: RADIO PAKISTAN HAS BEGUN RELEASING ITS CATALOGUE ONLINE !!!!!
In the last six months, over a thousand albums, EPs and singles have been released on streaming by Radio Pakistan. Per usual, this has been done with very little fanfare, in an extremely arbitrary and haphazard manner, and with multiple labeling errors. The Hafiz Atta Muhammad Qawwal release features Ustad Naseeruddin Saami on the cover, the Fateh Ali-Mubarak Ali albums can be found under the image and name of the classical vocalist Ustad Mubarak Ali, the Hamid Ali Bela albums feature the Patiyala Gharana vocalist Hamid Ali Khan, while the Salamat Ali Khan releases comprise a hodgepodge of tracks from Ustad Salamat Ali Khan of the Sham Chaurasi Gharana, Ustad Salamat Ali Khan the flautist and Ustad Salamat Ali Khan the ghazal singer. Be that as it may, the fact that gems from the Radio Pakistan archives, most of them unheard since their original broadcasts, are being released digitally in high quality audio recordings, is, to reiterate, a "Really Good Thing". Credit is due to the Radio Pakistan administrators and the powers that be, and I hope this project continues till most, if not all of the Radio Pakistan archives are available to the public again, thus fulfilling an important part of it's mandate as Pakistan's public broadcaster. Now if only someone would do the same with the issues of the Radio Pakistan magazine 'Ahang', we'd have access to a wealth of images and printed material charting the histroy of Pakistan from it's inception till today.
A veritable feast of Pakistani music is now available online, and it's staggering diversity reveals that in it's heyday, Radio Pakistan was exposing the Pakistani listening public to wonderful music from the length and breadth of the land. Now, for your listening pleasure are available recordings from erstwhile East Pakistan, Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa , featuring ghazals, geets, kaafis, qawwalis, hamd and na'at, with reliable sources informing me that releases from the Classical music archive are soon to follow. I've been scouring streaming sites almost every day for the last month or so, gleefully listening to the various new releases as they roll out. Since most streaming sites don't allow you to search for music by record label, my go to search tools have been the brilliant (if buggy) lbl.fm and the search page of Qobuz.com. Most of the recordings have been released under the generic title "radio Pakistan Hits" and can be found on YouTube Music as well as Spotify. There's a mindbogglingly vast catalogue to explore, and if you're like me, hours upon hours of happy listening. To whet your appetite, I'll end the post with five of my current heavy-rotation favorites from the Radio Pakistan archives, tracks that left me slack-jawed in admiration and became immediate all-time favourites.
1. Ze Bedaade Tau Harf e Mehr Ra Naam o Nishaan Gum Shud - Ustad Fateh Ali Mubarak Ali Khan
When I first stumbled on this erroneously labeled album, I let out a yelp of excitement that startled half my neighborhood. This Nazeeri Nishapuri ghazal is one of the most beautiful Qawwalis I've ever heard, and that's saying something.
2. Kuja Boodi Ke Imshab Sokhti Azurda Jaanay Ra - Ijaz Hussain Hazravi
Another Nazeeri Nishapuri ghazal, this time by the ghazal singer who was one of Munshi Raziuddin's favorite musicians, and after listening to this recording, one can see why. Hazravi Sb was the pre-eminent young ghazal singer in Pakistan before Mehdi Hassan's ascendancy, and remained a deeply soulful voice till the end of his career.
3. Mere Dil Ko Shauq e Fughaan Nahi - Rasheeda Begum
One of the many "Radio Singers" I discovered via these recent releases, Rasheeda Begum's voice is a mix of Suman Kalyanpur and Mubarak Begum with a sweetness of tone and purity of talaffuz that made me an instant fan. Here she sings a ghazal of the 18th-19th century poet Khwaja Haider Ali Atish.
4. Jind'ri Lutti Tain Yaar Sajan - Basheer Ali Mahi
Basheer Ali Mahi was already one of my favorite singers. Listening to the half-a-dozen new recordings of his has deepened my admiration for him immensely. Here he sings the quintessential kafi known in my neck of the woods as the 'Rohi', imbuing it with his beautiful murki's and zamzamas. If that wasn't enough, he adds an extra verse at the end that I've never heard anyone else sing.
5. Kabeera Bhala Hua - Manzoor Ahmed Niazi Qawwal Aur Hamnava (The Badi Party)
There is something almost unbelievably brilliant about the fact that this 37 minute magnum opus of classical, khanqahi Qawwali was actually broadcast on Radio Pakistan. I can gleefully imagine an impressionable listener somewhere, tuned in to radio, completely oblivious to the fact that they were about to get their head blown open by the Badi Party in it's prime, firing on all cylinders, performing to an appreciative and animated audience.
There have been 1233 (!!!) singles, EPs and albums released so far on the PBC Music label, with a couple of dozen new releases every week. There have also been rumblings of a similar release program for the Pakistan Television musical treasures, which, if true, would mean another series of sleepless nights while I gorge myself on further musical delicacies. All in all, not a bad time to be a fan of Pakistani music.
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