The comeback of Umar Anwar

At Kashmir’s album launch concert earlier this week, director Umar Anwar could be seen in the audience, cheering the group on. It was there where we first met after more than a decade. Umar Anwar had been on a self-imposed hiatus from music videos, choosing to work on advertisements until Kashmir happened.

The music video of ‘Dhoop’, which was also revealed at Kashmir’s album launch, brought Umar Anwar back to music videos as director.

Umar Anwar is the man who directed several music videos including the mighty ‘Aadat’ by Jal (original ft. Atif/Gohar); ‘Mera Bichra Yaar’ and ‘Kahaani Mohabbat Ki’ for Strings; ‘Bachpan’ for Kaavish and said goodbye to the world of music videos in 2006.

However, if you watch the music video of ‘Dhoop’ – shot in Thailand – you realize that it is not just like a lucid dream but it is almost as if he never left.

The video opens beautifully with Vais Khan against a backdrop that feels it has come straight out of a Charles Dickens winter, while Bilal Ali is behind a wooden grilled door where the sun shines on him, but barely.

The camera moves on and away from all band members, depicting a sense of melancholy and this happens often in the video, the result of which is the mesmerizing ‘Dhoop’.

In his work suite, I can’t help but notice a copy of Man in a Bowler Hat by Rene Magritte (1964) and a scene from The Godfather, blown up and framed. It is the suite of a filmmaker.

‘Dhoop’ is everything this song needed. It is Kashmir’s best video and they have quite a few to their credit. Part of the reason is you never quite figure out what you picked up or what you missed. So, you keep going back to it.

As Vais Khan told me, when they first saw it, they were unbelievably quiet, completely awed and stunned by what Umar had accomplished. One of them had tears (I won’t say whom) watching this video that took two and a half years of collaborating. Their camaraderie comes out naturally. To Kashmir and Umar, the video of ‘Dhoop’ holds a very special place. Kashmir lads place the video ahead of the song while Umar maintains the opposite, i.e, the song is the crux that holds the video together.

This is how the story goes….

As Umar Anwar recounts, though he’s been making commercials, his last music video prior to ‘Dhoop’ was ‘Nahin Hai Ye Pyaar’ back in 2006. “Two years ago, when Kashmir won the battle of the bands, Pepsi asked me to see the boys and see what music video could be made. At that point, the talk was that it would be something that would be branded.”

Umar continues: “I met them and they sat down and played a bunch of melodies on their guitar. When we came to ‘Dhoop’, I told Bilal to stop and asked what this was; he responded that it was a melody they had made. We stopped there. I told them that we should do this song but the lyrics were not there. Bilal and I sat right there and wrote the lyrics together.”

Umar reminisces to the day and says that Shahi Hasan, the music producer, was also in the room while this creative process was taking place. Once the lyrics were written, Shahi, notes Umar, produced the song. “I told him, ‘you’ have to produce the song.”

“The instruments they wanted to use were very analogue; I, too was clear I wanted something akin to the eighties, you know those proper rock ballads. Shahi did a marvelous job. While writing the song, Bilal and I had become attached to the song and there were many feelings to it.”

As Umar goes on, he admits that it was then decided that due to the closeness to the song, what Kashmir and Umar wanted to depict and how they wanted to do it meant not giving up this song to a brand. But that also meant coming up with the financial means to do so. “We decided we would make the video only when we were absolutely ready to do it, when the band was ready financially and we waited two years.”

As for the visuals, Umar notes he had already made a rough sketch for it. “For such a creative process, I need to be clear in the head and in that zone. I told them last year that within three months, we would go and shoot it.”

It took four months to etch out the details.

As for the concept, while Kashmir are far too reticent and emotional to put it to words, Umar as director explains: “They didn’t know too much because it wouldn’t have been good for them. The concept is about feelings in a sense; we revisit our experiences whether good or bad – whatever happens in life, as you revisit, you’re happy with it.”

“I would get stuck,” interjects Kashmir’s Bilal Ali, “in a phase and he would transcend the idea that when you look back, it was a learning experience, good or bad. It’s not always a good memory or bad memory. That balance was created by him (bhai).”

Eventually, the song was shot, and the post-production was not easy because there is a lot of fading away. Some might call it ghost stories. Umar Anwar says further: “It can get taken in two ways. One, the generic story, which is they came, they performed and went. Two, I feel they their music is mature for their age. I’m a huge fan. I quote them in daily life. So, it started as a conversation about international videos and how when someone like Radio head is making a music video, you’d never see them get dressed up with gel in their hair. No, they are who they are. So, to put it in very basic terms, the idea was let’s get your personalities out. The ghost feeling is just an analogy; it could be feelings.”

To end the conversation on a final note, states Umar, “Our natural tastes incline. Those who listen to good music make good music. There’s something very weird about them; they’re haunting. We tried to improve the Shahi mix for two years. We couldn’t do anything to it. I feel once they make something, that is it. And they are it.”