Mehdi Hassan’s son passes away

KARACHI: Tabla player and promoter Arif Mehdi Hassan passed away in Karachi on Saturday. Arif was the eldest son of Ghazal maestro Mehdi Hassan.

His funeral players were offered after Asr and was laid to rest in the Muhammad Shah graveyard in North Karachi beside his father’s grave. A large number of people from the artist community participated in his final rites.

He was a tabla player and an organiser in his father’s ensemble. He was the founding president of the Mehdi Hassan Foundation which was created after the death of Mehdi Hassan to provide support to the art of classic singing.

According to his family sources, Arif has left behind two wives. They said that he was recently planning a show to pay tribute to his father. For his classical renditions, Mehdi Hassan was dubbed as the “Shehenshah-e-Ghazal” in Pakistan and India.