Ali Sethi and Quratulain Balouch’s ‘Mundiya’ comes from a film featuring Babra Sharif but this ‘Mundiya’ is the result of a jam session.
The recovery in episode 6
What went wrong in episode 5, including a complete lack of balance with the likes of great(s) such as Hadiqa Kiani and Fariha Parvez lumped in one episode as opposed to different episodes, has been corrected in episode 6 that serves as the finale of episode 12.
Featuring a collaboration between Ali Sethi and Quratulain Balouch, a solo Atif Aslam rendition featuring poetry by Faiz Ahmed Faiz, a collaboration between the much deserving Nimra Rafiq and Kashif Din and Harsakhiyan singing ‘Tiri Pawanda’ in Sindhi – it is a good end to an otherwise mixed season that trudged in its initial days.
Ali Sethi and Quratulain Balouch’s ‘Mundiya’ comes from a film featuring Babra Sharif but this ‘Mundiya’ is the result of a jam session. The recording of the song was done in 1988. The Coke Studio version comes in 2019, connecting threads we didn’t know existed.
The Punjabi song, weaved in Coke Studio format, comes off as a love song more than anything else with Ali Sethi leaving behind raags, surs and almost simply just responding to Quratulain’s verses. It’s playful, it’s romantic, and there’s an element of folksiness that is hard to displace.
It presents Ali Sethi like you’ve never heard before and Quratulain Balouch in such great form that you wonder why she is not heard of more often in films or TV shows, etc.
Harsakhiyan, a three women troupe who presented ‘Tiri Pawanda’ manage to capture the soul of the poetry – penned by Sheikh Aziz and others – and their presentation is absolutely beautiful just like their voices. You can’t write them off. There is grit there.
Kashif Din and Nimra Rafiq join forces for a song called ‘Bo Giyam’ with Burushaski language mixed with Urdu verses (penned by Sahir Ali Bagga). They complement each other.
Faiz Ahmed Faiz belongs to us all. And if that belief is true, Atif Aslam attempting a Faiz Ahmed Faiz poem is not the worst thing in the world. As for the text, ‘Wohi Khuda Hai’ was far more dissenting in pointing out what divides us rather than what unites us and felt more religious than spiritual.
In that sense, this poem is not a bad choice at all. First sung by Mehdi Hassan, Atif Aslam attempts something far reaching and still sounds pretty good.
Verdict
Since the last time Rohail Hyatt, Coke Studio co-founder returned to produce the latest season of the music series, season 12 – after producing the first six seasons - a great deal has changed.
Several producers have come and gone, each bringing their own method to the madness – with Strings holding the reigns of the show for the longest period after Rohail Hyatt’s departure and taking the show to greater heights of success even amidst criticism.
But perhaps the biggest change is the voice of social media that can dictate what is working in a season and what isn’t and its disproportionate response to songs, one example being 2018’s ‘Ko Ko Korina’ that earned co-singer Momina Mustehsan vile threats for some godforsaken (read misogynist) reasons.
In its formative years, Coke Studio was not designed to care about numbers it generates on social media but it must care now, particularly as other shows have emerged. Someone, if not the producer, then the brand must care. While those were not considerations in the past, they must be now, to a degree at least but that’s not the main and only observation.
The tectonic shift is that Coke Studio has gone from a place where ideas – both rock ‘n’ roll to covers to Sufi presented to the producer by artists - have now developed into a space that is viewed by artists as sacred and the result is every other artist opting for Sufi efforts. And, while it suits some like Hadiqa Kiani, who has been on a sacred journey since Wajd, it doesn’t suit every artist. Some artists no longer relinquish control, which means the producer is simply delivering what was required. A sense of trust needs to return for the show to rise.
The folk artists (Banur’s Band featuring Chakar Baloch, SM Baloch and Usman, Barkat Jamal Fakir Troupe and Shamali Afghan) on the other hand, have been the saving grace of the season thus far because they relinquished control. Note the difference.
Others like Atif Aslam and Fareed Ayaz – irrespective of whether you agree with the text or not – carry their respective songs like power houses. And some tracks, even with complete collaboration, just don’t sound good enough to be a Coke Studio track like the Zoe Viccaji-Shahab Hussain number or ‘Billo’ by Abrar ul Haq (what’s wrong with the original?) and particularly the underwhelming ‘Roshe’ by Zeb Bangash and the extremely unnecessary Sahir Ali Bagga, Aima Baig and Rahat Fateh Ali Khan songs.
Fortunately, after some enormous musical disasters throughout this Coke Studio season, the finale episode does recover in steadfast fashion giving viewers some hope that season 13 could be more, coherent, balanced and original if Rohail Hyatt is involved in some capacity and begins to take the commercial with the experiments.
