Touching base with Hamza Malik

Having started his career almost five years ago, Lahore- based singer-songwriter, Hamza Malik, has a number of singles to his credit including ‘Tere Bina’, ‘Dholna’ and ‘Aye Khuda’ among others. It was just last year when he sang the soulful rendition of ‘Aye Rah e Haq Ke Shaheedo’ on Defence Day (6 September) and went on to release ‘Umeed’ for the political party, PTI, before the General Elections 2018.

His most recent effort includes releasing the video of his latest song ‘O Jaana’ - in collaboration with music maestro Rahat Fateh Ali Khan. ‘O Jaana’ is a mellow romantic song, which has been penned by Asim Raza, composed by Sahir Ali Bagga while the mixing and mastering has been done by Shiraz Uppal.

“Actually, I am a big fan of Rahat Fateh Ali Khan sahab and what happened was we made a song and requested RFAK to come on board. He listened to the track, liked the whole concept and said yes,” Hamza Malik told Instep in an exclusive interview.

As Rahat Fateh Ali Khan has very strong vocals, we asked him if at any point he thought that Rahat sahab’s singing would over shadow his, to which he responded, “Well, the basic concept behind the song is mine and it has been composed in a way where Rahat bhai is doing what he does best, i.e. classical singing, while I am a very soft, mellow singer and that’s exactly what we’ve done.”

He added, “I believe nobody can match Rahat Fateh Ali Khan’s powerful vocals, hence I was not bothered about his vocals overpowering mine. In fact, I think I have sung my part pretty well and I am quite satisfied with how everything has come together.”

A student of Musicology at NCA, Lahore, Hamza has released seven singles so far and has also lent his voice to a number of commercials and OSTs such as ‘Khidmat Guzar’, ‘Paimanay’ and ‘Bohtan’ amongst others.

Coming back to his latest number, the music video of ‘O Jaana’ marks singer turned actor Farhan Saeed’s directorial debut and features actor Iqra Aziz along with the singer.

On choosing Farhan Saeed to direct his video, the artist shared that he has known Farhan for a very long time and considers him a really good friend. “After the song was recorded, Farhan and I were listening to it while going to a jam in Lahore. He came up with a few interesting ideas for the video, which I thought went well with the theme of ‘O Jaana’. I just asked him why he doesn’t try his hand at directing and he agreed. I think he has done a great job and I’m one hundred per cent satisfied with the end result.”

The musician takes inspiration from artists like Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, Atif Aslam and loves listening to Arijit Singh, Maroon 5 and Linkin Park.

Though Hamza is an advocate of producing original music, he thinks that it is difficult to make people listen to original songs and this is one of the many reasons that now most singers focus on covers, rather than coming up with something original. “I believe that releasing original music after every two months or so is quite a task, as it has to be built up, making music videos and then releasing teasers, etc. While covers – live or recorded – are a good way to fill up your social media and people especially the younger lot are more interested in improvised covers,” he shared.

Talking about corporate backed projects, Hamza revealed that ‘O Jaana’ has been launched via Bollywood record label Zee Music Company, which makes it much easier to find the song online. He has also recorded a song for a Bollywood movie that will hopefully release by the end of this year.

As for his upcoming projects, he has recorded a number of singles for movies that he can’t reveal much about and plans to produce more singles with good music videos backed by good audio quality. However, Hamza says he doesn’t plan to release an album as he thinks he won’t get anything out of it.