Mekaal Hasan has always maintained a low profile and never sought the spotlight. In fact, he stopped giving television interviews around four years ago. However, last week in Mumbai, his band made the front pages when a press conference they were holding was interrupted by activists of right-wing Indian party Shiv Sena. The band, which hasn’t released an album since 2009’s Saptak, was supposed to announce a new beginning by incorporating Indian musicians into the fold. It was supposed to be one of the most promising Indo-Pak musical collaborations in recent times.
“If I had known this would happen, I probably wouldn’t have called a press conference, but I did because the Bombay press club is liberal. You have to consider that the Press Club is the centre for free speech in India, so if you can’t make press announcements there, that’s not good,” says Hasan.
“I think the press club did give a strong statement. They arrested 20 of these guys and they did say that India is a democracy and our musicians have the right to play with whoever they want to.”
Even with all the excitement surrounding Hasan’s latest initiative, he also inadvertently made local news following a comment regarding Coke Studio he posted on his personal Facebook. Hasan, who has been a staunch advocate of promoting the grassroots and working-class musicians in the country, said he was unapologetic of the statement.
“The article I was addressing had basically explained what a lot of musicians were feeling, there were big expectations when it had started, but it just ended in a rut, a lot of attention was given to superficial things,” says Hasan.
“Coke Studio also seemed to push corporate funding towards entertaining people just through TV or online. The whole idea of music is not so you can be on TV, it’s so you can play music in front of people. Coke Studio basically gave corporate funding the green signal to control entertainment,” adds Hasan.
The new Mekaal Hasan Band has been born out of Hasan’s own desire to expand his musical venture. The band includes flutist Muhammed Ahsan Pappu from Pakistan, drummer Gino Banks, bassist Sheldon D’Silva and vocalist Sharmistha Chatterjee from India. The band is now working on its third album Andholan, which is slated to be released in March by EMI India. After the release, the band plans to do both international and local tours.
“This band, for better or for worse, was getting more attention outside of Pakistan than in the counry, so it [the collaboration] made sense. So, from the record after the next, we will be working on things that [the new members] have studied or learnt. This will help the band evolve because we were previously stuck doing Sufi rock music. I hope to take it into another direction,” says Hasan. The band will maintain its local line-up in Pakistan and will turn into a more collaborative outfit, so that it becomes easier for them to tour and sustain themselves in the current musical environment.
The third album was initially supposed to have Javed Bashir on vocals, but due to his solo projects and other commitments, such a collaboration wasn’t possible. Hasan says the decision had to be made to move on and release the third album with Chatterjee on vocals.
The next album, he says, will be a more musically intense venture, which will still focus on Sufi poetry. The band’s previous album focused on Shah Hussain Inayat, while the upcoming one will comprise two kafees by Bulleh Shah.
“The third album is by far the most intense record that we have done. It’s got longer song structures and more sections in the songs. In terms of the poetry we have stuck with the Sufi poetry.”
The new line-up hopes to add to the musical fusion that the band has been known for. Chatterjee is a trained South Indian classical singer, who was part of the Louiz Bank’s World Music Project and D’Silva is a jazz player. This adds an interesting mix into the bands repertoire.
“Having Chatterjee on the vocals means that there is a whole range of stuff that we can do, which we were not able to get into before, simply because of where I was based. It will change the texture of the band without taking away from the style of writing, it will bring a certain kind of freshness and I think every band needs to, at some stage, reinvent themselves,” says Hasan.
Published in The Express Tribune, February 14th, 2014.
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