Michael Jackson in Pushto

Adil Najam

I thought a fair bit about whether I should put this up or not. Its corny. But so very funny. So, here goes. [Thanks, again, to Adnan Siddiqi's blog for alerting me to this].

Call me what you will, but I laughed out loud when I first saw this. The song selection really fits well with the video … in some cases, eerily so (for example, when Jackson magically appears just as he should ‘Laila’). After about a minute or so the humor of the video wears off but you are still left with a really catchy Pushto pop song.

More than that, it also gives me an excuse to talk about the revolution in pop-music in regional languages going on in Pakistan. Rahim Shah (who is singing this song; new post on Rahim Shah with new video here) is an absolute phenomenon in Pushto pop music (he is of Afghan descent, born and raised in Karachi, and he also has a number of hits in Urdu, especially including Jhoola). Similar trends are seen in Sindhi pop too. Not sure about other regional languages, though.

Click on arrow at center, or view it directly here