Identity can’t be compartmentalized. You can’t divide it up into halves or thirds or any other separate segments. I haven’t got several identities: I’ve got just one, made up of many components combined together in a mixture that is unique to every individual.” – On Identity by Amin Maalouf

When did your musical relationship with Slowspin start? Did it begin when she released her first EP called Nightfall’s Reverie on a local indie label called Mooshy Moo nearly a decade ago? Or, was it afterwards with the various EPs that she continued to release following her debut effort? Did it start with watching her performance at Women of the World’s first Karachi edition or did it begin purely with her work as a sound artist who creates vocal sculptures?

No matter what your answer, it is the right one.

In my musical interpretative map, all those EPs that Slowspin began releasing since 2013 as well as her live music performances, and work as a curator, installation artist and development as a sound artist was meant
for this moment: the arrival of her latest LP called TALISMAN, which was dropped earlier this year, in May.

If there was ever any doubt about the contribution of South Asia to a global melting pot of cultures in its many forms, the recent release of Slowspin’s TALISMAN plays a strong role in disabusing any such notion.

Why?

Because TALISMAN by Zeerak Ahmed, who goes by the stage name Slowspin, has added to the treasure trove of South Asia through her first collaborative album where the other artists featured in the album will make you pay serious attention. They include executive producer Shahzad Ismaily (Yoko Ono, Laurie Anderson, Love in Exile with Arooj Aftab and Vjay Iyer), co-producer Grey Mcmurray (Gil Scott-Heron, Tongues in Trees trio, Beth Orthon, Ali Sethi), Aaron Roche (Kjartan Sveinsson, JFDR, Sam Amidon) and Greg Fox (Liturgy, Z’s) from NYC.

Now for the backstory.

Slowspin spent three years in the USA, where she was busy recording and producing TALISMAN, impressing foreign publications and earning strong reviews.

But it is also a song that rescued her from a profound sense of what must have felt like lasting loss. If you pay close attention to the words in this single, some familiar phrases will stand out.

“I learnt this Thumri, Kanhaiya, from Saami Saheb (Ustaad Naseeruddin Saami) and Rauf Saami Bhai when I started my training at 15. I still vividly remember this evening Riyaaz, sitting next to Khalajaan (my mother’s sister) and choking up, feeling the intensity of the song. For over a decade, Khalajaan and I sang this Thumri together. Though most days she would hold space for me to lead: I would sing, watch her eyes well up and we both would try to hold back the over pouring emotions.”

“As a Muhajir family from U.P (Uttar Pradesh), I had grown up with some understanding of Purbi [as a] language but it felt like I was connecting with something more than that. I recently asked Rauf bhai why he thinks these songs have such an overwhelming effect. He said, ‘bibi aap ko yeh sur, yeh ehsasaat (of longing) virsay may milay hain.’

Ethereal and minimal, soft and textured, fragile and full of longing, minimalistic musical architecture creates space for music and lyrics, a story of a heart in turmoil channeling grief and memory, love and loss, there are no words that can truly articulate the beauty of ‘Hamari’.

In 2018, Khalajaan left us and somewhere along there I stopped singing. My voice ached and my heart felt unbearably heavy. I’d lay in bed exhaling notes (sur) to help me release the pain and re-align myself. A few months later, Shahzad called me to his studio in Brooklyn, where Grey, Aaron and Greg had joined. An hour in, as we were swimming through seas of sound, I once again found the words at my lips…”

So, this is not just a song, it has historic value, a language of arts that some of us have forgotten or never realized why some phrases feel so familiar and for those who know the larger trauma and tribulations of partition and what personal geography means to each who left something behind. There are many ways to look at it. A heritage passed on from one to another and a beautiful one at that. An interpretation of a thumri in a modern instrumental context.

What you choose to take is up to you as a listener. What can be said truthfully that as Slowspin begins the vocal harmony with the words: “Hamari...

Yaad Hai Kuchh Bhi Hamaari?

Binti main kar kar bamna se poochhi

Pal pal ki khabar tihaari” – the words don’t seem foreign.

What is it, then?

Ethereal and minimal, soft and textured, fragile and full of longing, a minimal musical architecture with space for music and lyrics, a story of a heart in turmoil that is channeling grief and memory, love and loss, there are no words that can truly articulate the beauty of ‘Hamari’ or box it into any genre or subgenre. Hints of many appear from shoegaze to ambient to North Indian classical and yet no instrument or arrangement is done in a manner that isn’t befitting of the song.

Can you make out all the words on first listen? Maybe, maybe not. But what does push you to put it on repeat is its sheer depth, intensity and a sense of aching and healing working in tandem with each other.

‘Hamari’ is more than a song; it is a meditation of yearning, vulnerability and healing power. What really depends is when you listen to the song, what emotion is dwelling in your heart.

To call it a sad song or a happy one is taking a binary approach. It is beyond binary. It is both and it is neither. Think of it as a sonic abyss of love, memory, and the human condition.

The song is not just excellent but it so compelling that it might bring you to tears one day and a smile the next, echoing a spectrum of human emotions.

To learn more about ‘Hamari’s accompanying (and enthralling music video) that has released as well as the second music video coming from the album, ‘Trails’ (releasing on July 21), keep watch this space for more.

– Album artwork: Photography by Alyse Nelson & Chrome Typeface by KCR Studio