In addition to founding True Brew Records and the music platform True Brew TV, music producer, guitarist, audio engineer Jamal Rahman has an extensive repertoire. As a solo artist, having produced music for Manto - Sarmad Khoosat’s theatrical feature on Urdu literature giant, Saadat Hasan Manto - and another feature that was released online-only, Jamal has moved on to his third feature film, Saqib Malik’s upcoming 2019 film, Baaji. The social-drama features Meera ji, Osman Khalid Butt, Amna Ilyas, Mohsin Abbas Haider, Ali Kazmi and veterans Nayyar Ejaz and Nisho in key roles.
Speaking to Instep about his involvement in what is his third feature film, Jamal Rahman said, “Currently, I haven’t seen any of the movies; they’re still in post-production phase and I think some of the shooting is still left.”
He adds: “What I’ve done so far is one song, which I can’t speak about and I’ll be doing the score for the film as well.”
Speaking about the film itself, Jamal commented that Saqib Malik has managed to keep a balance between art and commercialism within the film despite it being a prolific one.
“You’re right that it’s a high profile film,” says Jamal, “but Saqib has kept a nice balance between art and commercialism, like he’s got some of the bigger names from the industry but the story is actually quite unorthodox for Pakistani cinema. He’s made sure he’s done it his own way and there’s no corporate agenda so it’s purely his own vision. It’s not like a full-on masala film. Saqib is very astute in the way that he knows what’s viable in the market but also what is artistic at the same time. And that’s why I came onboard because he knows that I don’t do regular commercial music even though most of my stuff is very mainstream now but my sound is still different.”
On the subject of Jamal’s other projects, one includes a collaboration with Ali Sethi, with whom he also worked on the beautiful soundtrack of Manto.
“I am producing a song for [Ali Sethi] independently of True Brew TV,” revealed Jamal. “He’s done a lot of work with Coke Studio, other producers including Saad Sultan, he’s worked on Cornetto but he came to me a month or so ago and he’s just been abroad and recorded with Narcos producer. He’s in this place where he’s open to trying new things. When he approached me, he wanted to do something similar in vein to ‘Aah ko Chahiye’ – that sparse kind of arrangement, openness, it’s more about the vocals than other instruments. We’re working on something that is new even for me because we’re going in this ambient space. That’s really exciting and it should be out very soon. A video is being worked upon as well.”
