“A crowd has gathered in black and white/ Arms entwined, the chosen few/The newspapers says, says/Say it’s true, it’s true/And we can break through.” – ‘New Year’s Day’ by U2

After six albums, countless live shows, a slew of singles, two stints on Coke Studio as featured artists and four years of producing Coke Studio, Strings co-founders went their separate ways.

Faisal Kapadia’s return to music (‘Phir Milenge’ from Coke Studio 14 onwards) was an unforeseeable entrance back into the music world post-Strings. He maintains he’s going with the flow.

Bilal Maqsood, on the other hand, explored and carved a solo identity as an artist in an individualistic fashion. Even before Strings officially called it a day as a band, Maqsood helmed Velo Sound Station in 2020, a topic we will come back to in a different article.

Once the Strings chapter was closed, Maqsood found different ways to contribute to the pop culture scene. In addition to Velo Sound Station, he went on to recreate a very longstanding jingle and did a decent job. The three songs Bilal Maqsood released in 2022 (‘Naya Naya’, ‘Zaalima’ and ‘Thak Sa Gaya Hoon’) showed us what an authentic path he was willing to share with the audience as a solo musical artist.

Among the things he realized (and consequently began working on) was how content for children, particularly in Urdu, was sorely lacking. It first started with an album catering to children where Maqsood composed, wrote and sung eight nursery rhymes in Urdu, culminating in an album that was released in 2022.

Therefore, it makes complete sense that in 2023, collaborating with Peek Freans Gluco, an EBM brand, Bilal Maqsood unveiled Gluco Kahani Rhymes at an engaging session during Karachi Literature Festival, 2023. The idea behind the book is how those rhymes could be converted into a book format, adding to children’s literature.

Maqsood is also in the limelight for his new song, ‘Dheem Tana’. Meant to promote Red Bull’s latest endeavor Off the Roof with the premise being that artists will be performing on the roof of a bus and coming to different cities, it is also a series that will make its way to YouTube (if it hasn’t already). Maqsood enters the story in an intriguing way. He was part of the launch show in Lahore and performed as well. More significantly, he has done a promotional song for Off the Roof called ‘Dheem Tana’ with Zohaib Kazi directing the music video.

‘Dheem Tana’ - unlike the vulnerable, one-take and magnificent ‘Thak Sa Gaya Hoon’ – offers a significant shift in audio and visual design.

Watching the music video is an interesting, almost non-linear experience because it captures an audience looking forward to Bilal Maqsood on stage and cheering for him. But those frames enter an entirely different realm where we’re witnessing Bilal Maqsood (without an audience), with a group of musicians and an astonishingly different demeanor. There are quick pictures of him as a child, a cut back to him as an artist in the present, where he is playing a piano, but with chutzpah. Another scene is the artist performing with his band and being on the mic, solo and full of energy. Frames within frames, and full shots – if seen as a performance music video, it is a step up from typical, performance-based music videos. Performing at a venue that almost feels like an abandoned warehouse (perhaps?) to singing inside a bus, Bilal Maqsood is refreshing because the sound fits his musicality in this electronic age. You will find ferocious guitars and not a song based entirely on loops and samples and autotune.

That Bilal has written the lyrics is why the song pops. If Kazi as a director has delivered (and he has), ultimately it is the song that will find space in your best of list.

At one point, Bilal throws a chair, but he is alone in that shot and it is a spirit we haven’t seen before.

There are also dancers, akin to the classical field perhaps, who perform as the song goes on and they end up giving the visuals a luminous quality.

It’s like Bilal Maqsood in 2023 is a different artist except he is the same person and ‘Dheem Tana’ is a sign that the man who stole hearts with ‘Sar Kiye Ye Pahar’ is going all out in 2023, sharing his experiences along the way.

Apart from the song and appearing at the Lahore launch event of Off The Roof, Bilal Maqsood has no part to play in any sort of production capacity with the respective initiative.