Adil Najam
This post was originally posted on October 19, 2006. It is being reposted with the addition of some new Qawali video clips.

As I was driving back from work tonight, I had an old Sabri Brothers cassette playing in my car. The window was down, the sound was loud. As I stopped at a red light, my head still nodding to the rhythms, I noticed that the American woman in the car parked next to me was staring at me with a rather perplexed look (Bostonians don’t often get to hear the Sabri bradraan!). She shouted over the music to ask me what type of music this was and from where. I smiled and told her. I am not sure if she heard what I said over the noise because the light turned green just then and we went our different ways.

I guess she left wondering what the beat and sound was about. I left wondering what has happening to qawalli in Pakistan today? Who are the big names out there? Are there any? Is there any Ghulam Farid Sabri, Aziz Mian, Nusrat Fateh Ali equivalent out there? I know of Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, but he seems to be mostly re-rendering Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s work. Who else?

Owais Mughal

This photo is from flickr.com and shows a wheel barrow at a construction site in Lahore.

I’ll let our readers enjoy the photo details but I do want to point out a keyboard in the photo. That single detail is like an icing on the cake.

Adil Najam

A new television comedy (sitcom) series called Aliens in America premiers on the CW channel tonight across USA. One of the two central characters in the series is a Pakistani ‘exchange’ student who comes to a small MidWesters town High School and there has to deal with all sorts of issues of prejudice, stereotying, etc. All this in a humorous sitcom medium where (we are told) he helps those around him to discover that their prejudices and stereotypes are misplaced and learns to overcome some of his own stereotypes.