“We are the children of the night/We won’t go down without a fight/Our voice is strong/ our future’s bright/And thanks to what we learned from you/We’ve grown into the children of the night.” – ‘Children of the Night’ by Richard Marx

In all the years that I’ve known Bilal Maqsood, our interviews have usually taken place in studios. As we meet for this interview at his residence, he is mildly surprised to learn this detail. During a morning hour as we walk inside, Bilal points out how the place is divided into various portions where his father, (Anwar Maqsood) and aunt also reside. Sunlight greets us through the trees, feeling like a sigh of relief in a city seemingly imploding upon itself.

Having shown up early, Bilal is professional enough to still sit down for the interview but not before being hospitable as always. The room is avant-garde, and I look around while Bilal is away and I’m parked on a comfortable sofa. It consists of a variety of books including one that insistently jumps out at me: the Karachi Biennale catalogue and a painting that Bilal started that his son added to before his father finished it.

After literally setting up a table for me and serving black coffee, we sit down to talk about how Bilal Maqsood went from pop music to nursery rhymes for children. It’s certainly true that content for children on television is not exactly the kind that we grew up to like Ainak Wala Jinn or Kaliyan featuring Uncle Sargam and his gang. But then along came Barney, and Baby TV, followed by streaming for babies online becoming the norm, and the God-awful Baby Shark becoming a potential children’s anthem. In other words, children’s content in Urdu has been sorely lacking.

Enter Bilal Maqsood.

Growing up, when he and his sister would be on their way to school and Arshad Mahmud would be over, they would ask him to sing a song and during evenings when his father’s friends would be over including Arshad Mahmud, they would ask him to sing a song. There was also programming on television for children including (but not restricted to) Sohail Rana’s show for kids, Sung Sung Chalein, out of which Bilal Maqsood watched at least two shows. “Children’s music, therefore, had a huge impact on me,” begins Bilal Maqsood. “That’s why you have those two songs in the early albums of Strings and that was necessary…”

Like a lullaby, I interject…

Bilal agrees and continues, “During Strings days, I would tell Faisal, let’s make a show for children but obviously with the rigorous Strings schedule, it wasn’t possible to give it the designated time it needed.”

Bilal’s own children, while growing up, were hooked onto Barney and Friends or Sesame Street. “I tried ‘Akar Bakar’ just like Arshad (Bhai) played for us. But they had better options; they were watching colorful, animated things as opposed to the choices we had because back then you had to get VHS tapes.”

During a conversation with his wife, Tina - Bilal introduced me to his wife between our interview after learning I had never met her - he realized that there’s no Urdu content for children. It was also something that was in the back of his mind for a long time. As Bilal recalled, while the idea was appreciated, no one wanted to invest in it, because it wouldn’t bring the same kinds of profitable returns. But as luck would have it, Peak Freans called Bilal Maqsood and they wanted to do nursery rhymes and, “I felt as if my prayer had been answered”.

However, creating content that caters to children that isn’t typical, senseless but each rhyme imparts a subtle message that may impact a child in a larger sense is what Bilal Maqsood has most recently released. A slew of nursery rhymes, in collaboration with Peak Freans - available on all major platforms.

“I said I will leave everything else to do this project, because it was something that was close to his heart. The most beautiful thing about the brief was that they said we want this in Urdu.”

As he started working on it, Bilal began researching Urdu literature for children, and his mother reminded him that as a child, he was well-acquainted with the works of Sufi Tabussum, and though he no longer remembers a lot of those, researching meant looking at nazms and pretty much every nursery rhyme that he could find (in Urdu).

“I realized that all those poems are very irrelevant now like an elephant wore a suit and cooked. I mean what do kids gain from this? This is basically rhyming words but they make no sense in real life.”

Bilal Maqsood, therefore, decided to create nursery rhymes that cater to children on a conscious level with a message, but also on an unconscious level with an element of fun. “A 3-or-4-year-old may not grasp what he is listening to or what he is looking at but when he looks back, he will then realize that ‘oh I learned this’ and this actually means this.”

Rejecting the pattern of current nursery rhymes, Bilal Maqsood sat down to make rhymes of eight animals. That was the brief he was given. Explaining in Urdu, just how restrictive typical nursery rhymes can be, Bilal went onto talk through his approach to the rhymes.

“Every animal has a characteristic and some of them are cliches like a Lion is king of the jungle and every is afraid of him or a tortoise walks very slowly and so on. An elephant is a big and heavy. But similarly human beings have characteristics as well. So, I thought, what if we could apply these characteristics to human beings?”

Sounds difficult? But it’s it the reason why parents, mothers and fathers are responding to the rhymes so well that they’ve been messaging Bilal Maqsood with words of praise and gratitude.

Here’s how Bilal actually did it.

“I started building stories around those characteristics. I found the moral in the antithesis and I realized I can make them intellectual, interesting and fun. Musically speaking, I knew I’ll make it. But the content behind it needed strength as well.

So, for instance, a turtle is known for walking slow but when he enters water, he will walk fast (the actual rhyme is available on all major streaming platforms). The moral of the story is that when you give someone their space to perform, they will perform. We are very quick to judge people. Today if a kid is bad at math, he will be written off as a lost cause, without looking at the other things he is good at. Everyone is different.

“You can’t judge anyone. So, in the case of the turtle give him water and see how he runs. Give him his space and he will swim nicely.”

As for performing these nursery rhymes, each with a message embedded within, Bilal Maqsood has been receiving requests to perform, in spaces such as schools, book groups, etc.

“I can do it, but I have to prepare properly, rehearse, and then do it and I will have to design the show because the rhymes are out as recordings.”

There are, for now, two sing-along versions as well so that should allow children to get some musical activity as themselves.

“Take me to the magic of the moment/On a glory night/ Where the children of tomorrow/dream away/ In the wind of change.” – ‘Wind of Change’ by Scorpions

Even though a solo career is in the offing and Bilal played me some new music in a house he has rented right across his house where a studio is set-up, it is yet another sign that he won’t be leaving music anytime soon. Playing a series of solo music, the thirst in Bilal Maqsood to be a musician and performing artist is obvious. By the time, this article comes to print, he has gone on stage for his first solo gig. But while Bilal admits he is happy following a solo career for now, it isn’t something he will pursue as strictly as making content for children. The likes of Arshad Mahmud and Sohail Rana on television may have been replaced by dramas, news and corporate shows but Bilal Maqsood is convinced that there is space for his children’s content as well. The rest, as always, could be anything from a pop show that might return to a newer sound as Bilal goes solo and well-earned self-assuredness instead of the desire to prove that he still is one of the brightest musicians in the music scene.