ll things bright and beautiful, you’d think, as you look at the international moment Pakistan’s pop culture (mainstream and counterculture) has been enjoying. A golden hour.

Not entirely.

The views on Pakistan’s international moment have been reduced to the old rhetoric of how our artists are looking for validation from the West and are oblivious to how it is just ‘American not international’.

If you go back just a decade, the same was said about Pakistani artists going to India to work. A lot of it was directed at musicians because they won Indian favor, working in a much bigger market, and catering to a larger audience in addition to Pakistan-based fans. Before playing concerts in India, they played shows in Pakistan, but India had more cities and venues. The world is a stage and an artist cannot be shackled to one territory based on personal geography.

However, while Indian market is no longer the big, bad evil (or maybe it secretly is?) an iteration of a similar view is now being shared by certain naysayers.

In a YouTube video released last month, once again the tired old line of criticizing local artists finding global glory was taken. The success of many hard-working artists was described in the severest terms.

It was an “argument against cultural imperialism against seeing cultural globalization as an unadulterated good, and in favor of the local and the specific”.

It notes that the success of Arooj Aftab (Grammys), Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy (directing a Star Wars film), Ali Sethi and any artist who is successful in the West is a token win. Some critique suggests that Aftab’s success began with ‘Mohabbat’ and how no one even knew who she was before 2021.

That’s not Aftab’s problem, to be fair. Pakistan didn’t exactly pay attention to her work as she released two other records before Vulture Prince (from which ‘Mohabbat’ went international). It is on us for not embracing Arooj’s music in its entirety before it was former-POTUS-approved. How can you not be floored by that voice?

The video goes on to clarify what exactly do the Grammys mean and how they are American, not international, followed by the Academy Awards, also giving most prizes to its own artists. It felt like a skewed lesson in history, which may or may not be redundant based on which side of the argument you are on.

It takes Grammys – considered music’s biggest night in the world – and says how we know their stars and artists while they, The Americans, don’t know ours.

If we were to really pick apart how someone gets nominated, and then wins an award like a Grammy, we would learn that any recording by any artist is scrutinized far more than it would be in Pakistan. For anyone to steal a song and win for it at the Grammys would be quite the stunt, and a grave oversight on the Grammys part.

Take, e.g., Arooj Aftab’s Grammy win. Many have noted that the song that won Barrack Obama’s heart wasn’t original, and Aftab didn’t once acknowledge the origin of the song in her acceptance speech.

Research tells us that the poet, the real poet of ‘Mohabbat Karne Waley’ is Hafiz Hoshiarpuri. The version by Mehdi Hasan is a cover. He, too, did a masterful job but it isn’t his poetry.

It would be reductive to make the argument against any Pakistani artist’s success on an international scale about America and imperialism. It is reductive because industry standard is regulated; for instance, an artist has to feed specific credits into the DSPs (digital streaming platforms) and see them get printed behind the vinyl. You cannot pass off someone else’s work as your own and win a Grammy for it. 

Songs are credited and a body of work is made and those are called recordings. Those specific recordings require credits.

The credits pertain specifically and only to that recording so in the case of ‘Mohabbat’, it is actually an Arooj Aftab recording. The credits are specific to those recordings such as who played which instrument. Yes, there is a known composer of a song who owns the rights of the song and even if there is a known composer for a song, then, yes, you have to reach out to them, share credit, license it, give them a percentage – depending on a recording.

There are songs in our history, not documented correctly. We may know the poet but back in ‘50s and ‘60s, there are many prominent and iconic singers who have sung ‘Mohabbat Karne Waley’ such as the greats including Iqbal Bano, Farida Khanum and Mehdi Hasan. Even Abida Parveen has sung it.

A famous composer of many Mehdi Hasan songs is Rashid Attre or Asghar Hussain (for example) but back then, we had even more limited understanding of copyrights and credits. But when a recording is not correctly recorded, it becomes public domain.

Public domain sounds cold and technical, but it allows a recording to become a traditional song, a folk classic, and in such an instance, whom do you credit? The answer is: no one.

An artist has to feed specific credits into the DSPs (digital streaming platforms) and see them get printed behind the vinyl. A lot of this traditional music – when released on a cassette back in the day – had names of composers.

All over the world, the music industry standard when someone says writer, is a reference to who wrote the music. It is a broad term, sure, but it is how things are. Here’s the clincher: there is no slot for a poet in the meta data. And you can’t take a global industry standard and criticize Arooj Aftab as an artist for “stealing credit”.

To credit the poets, artists like Arooj Aftab use the press or interviews to mention them and that’s what Arooj Aftab has been doing.

It would be reductive to make the argument against any Pakistani artist’s success on an international scale about America and imperialism. It is reductive because industry standard is regulated. You cannot pass off someone else’s work as your own and win a Grammy for it. There is also the fact that there are South Asian scholars who are well-aware of how things work. In the West, they do their due diligence, and they have the resources to look into it including all data of recorded music.

In some ways, it makes sense that counterculture movement often flies under the radar. Imagine what would happen if Boiler Room – Pakistan edition was a prominent, prime time level event.

To reduce an Oscar win, a Grammy win, a Coachella performance to tokenism essentially propagates the idea that Pakistani artists shouldn’t go further than anyone has in the past. Is it enviable? Yes. But is it also worth celebrating? Yes. In the battle between misguided Pakistaniat, and appreciation for the wins of the individual, the latter is simply the path of grace. We’d advise for adopting it.