– the full edition
by Madeeha Syed
The band
With whatever can be said about Sajid and Zeeshan — they arrived with a bang wowing media professionals and Pakistan’s music-listening audiences alike with their single ‘King of self’, they went further on to attain a cult-status with the release of their single, ‘Freestyle dive’, they are an English language band from Peshawar and yes, the latter bit of information set more tongues wagging then the break-up of the popular Pakistani rock-band Junoon, and they managed to make waves by signing up with the international record label EMI — with everything that can be said about Sajid and Zeeshan, one thing is for sure: they have a pretty loyal fan following.
Following their pre-launch gig in mid July, their album was supposed to reach markets by the end of July 2006. It didn’t, but their fans patiently waited. Their album was finally launched by the end of August 2006 and even then was only available in select stores in Karachi and Lahore. Yet their fans were willing to travel the distance and get their copies of the album while fans in other provinces impatiently waited for the album to reach their vicinities but to no avail. To this day, the album still isn’t available in certain provinces. Who is to blame: the record label or the artiste?
With Sajid Ghafoor on the acoustic and electric guitar, harmonica, who composed and wrote all of the songs in the album (save for one song, Deserts) and with Zeeshan Parwez on synthesizer, mouth-organ, arrangements and production, you have the eponymously named band, Sajid and Zeeshan.
The person(s) behind the persona(s)
One of the things that become noticeable while interacting with them is that at first, Zeeshan seems to be the more outgoing of the two: he is the first one to step forward and talk and will do everything he can to make people around him feel at ease. He displays a drive to learn and succeed, coupled with a curiosity and innocence not found in most individuals working within the same industry. On the other hand Sajid is at first, relatively quieter. He is observant and watchful without being intrusive. He opens up gradually revealing a sense of humor that becomes downright silly and has a great talent for imitation. In him you will see the wisdom of one who has seen much and is at peace with himself.
Zeeshan may seem to be the one in charge: he is constantly attending to phone calls, planning out their next move and scheduling their media-appearances and interviews, but Sajid constantly asserts his authority, albeit quietly. There is no power-struggle in this duo, their differences and similarities seem well-complemented.
First harmony
Sajid’s primary profession is that of a lecturer of law at the Peshawar University. He recollects that his earliest memories of listening to music were of listening to Bonnie M and Abba on his dad’s stereo sparking an interest in music from a very early age and picked up his first guitar in 1989.
“My mother presented me with a Russian acoustic guitar which she got from somewhere in Peshawar. The action was so high I could hardly hold the strings, so I used to just strum the guitar and make up songs. Crap songs”, he said. “I never learnt the guitar formally from anyone. Nobody taught me how to write songs or compose them; it was all through trial and error,”
“The other thing which helped me in expressing myself in a much better way (musically), was the fact that I was living in Peshawar”, elaborating on that he says, “In Peshawar, you have a life but you don’t have much of a social life. I had friends, but my friends were very limited. That left me with more time to pursue music. I had more time to think, to feel and bring it back into music”
Zeeshan Parwez on the other hand was living in Karachi around the time he started honing his skills on the keyboard. “I was very much influenced by my brother Salman who was very much into keyboards back then and made a song back in 1988 which ended up getting a pretty good airplay on PTV”, he said. Following that, he ended up going to an institute to learn keyboards and song notation for several months till his father passed away after which Zeeshan and his family had to relocate to Peshawar.
“After my father’s death I drifted away from music-making, drawing and illustratio
ns. I was in Peshawar doing nothing,” he says, “then I met Sarmad (Sajid’s younger brother and guitarist/co-founder of the band Rung) and he tried to help revive the music sense back into me because I was always into music and kept imagining different arrangements in my mind. I started coping up with new technology and familiarized myself with deejaying techniques and other production techniques. I met Sajid sometime in 1998 but when we actually decided to do something together (musically) was in 2003”. Further elaborating on how he met Sajid, Zeeshan says, “when I did get to know him was when these guys (Sajid and Sarmad) had their own band called Still and they needed a keyboard player for one of their concerts”.
The story begins…
Does Zeeshan mean to say there were music bands in Peshawar back then? “there were many bands back then in Peshawar but Still, the band headed by Sajid was one of the pioneers of the underground music scene there in Peshawar”, Zeeshan replied.
“The thing with Sajid is that he had lots and lots of songs and he showed them to me later on. He’s an excellent song-writer and composer and I was good with arrangements, so we mutually decided to get together and do something that might actually turn out to be something worthwhile”
“The way Sajid and Zeeshan started”, said Sajid joining in the conversation “is that we never made any commitment or anything initially. We just thought, ‘lets just do this, lets see what happens’”
So, what happened? “What happened was that people started appreciating the song (King of Self) and we kind of liked the appreciation” said Sajid, “and we thought we should have some dozes of it every now and then”
The process
Now Peshawar is not a place known for being very music-savvy or playing host to any activities related to anything as godforsaken as music, so how did they go about recording a single, let alone an entire album? “I have my own studio”, said Zeeshan in response, “a very informal and lightly equipped studio”
“We only had the bare essentials” emphasized Sajid. “There was no vocal booth and I had just padded a little bit of the walls in order to eliminate room reverb”, said Zeeshan, “Sajid, I believe, recorded his vocals in a dressing room” and Sajid nodded his head in agreement.
“There was an attached dressing room with my studio where Sajid would record his vocals and guitars”, explained Zeeshan, “once that was done I would spend a lot of my time in mixing and matching and also laying out other things”.
“What happens with a lot of artistes nowadays is that they mix around with ready-made drum-loops and just add it in the song and get away with it”, said Zeeshan, elaborating on how he works he says, “That’s not the way I do it. I make sure each and every part of the sound is original. I either basically modify it or totally change it”
How long did it take to record the entire album? “It took one whole year”, said Zeeshan, “the reason why it took that long is that we used to work in intervals and we enjoyed it very much. We didn’t have a forced agenda or a schedule that we were going to follow. When it came to recording, we made sure that we ‘felt’ like recording first”
“It was more of a mood thing,” added Sajid.
The visuals
King of Self
Talking about music videos, what do they have to say about the one that launched them, King of Self? “I’ve said it on and on again that King of Self is not an anti-smoking video”, replied Zeeshan, who has directed all of the Sajid and Zeeshan to date, “in the words of Nadeem Farooq Paracha, ‘it describes the pitfalls of a person whose signed to a sponsor’ which ends up affecting his art. That’s what the basic message was with King of Self. Also, if you listen to the lyrics, they go somewhat in between”
My Happiness
“My Happiness was just a small performance”, said Zeeshan about their second video, “it was basically Sajid’s idea and he wanted a performance-based video where you have different objects lying around on the floor, which reminds us of all the times we had spent back then (in the past).” “Which is a source of happiness because nostalgia leads to that in some form”, said Sajid.
“Like (in the video) the guitar that was lying at the end of the hall room was Sajid’s first guitar,” added Zeeshan, “we emphasized on it and we went back to 1989. I have a keyboard magazine with me in the video so we zoom into it and we have ustaad and shagird (relating to Zeeshan’s keyboard learning days)”
“Let me add that it was really hard to build that time machine which took us back to 1989 because we had to have some shots of 1989, when I was a kid”, added Sajid.
Freestyle Dive
Most people are under the misconception that Pakistan’s first animated music video was Freestyle Dive when in fact it was Mujo mein by Evolution (directed by Ali Kapadia). However, these two videos differ in their technicalities in the sense that Mujo mein was a “stop-motion” animated video whereas Freestyle Dive consisted of 2D animations. Nevertheless it managed to blow quite a few people away and reinstated Sajid and Zeeshan’s place in the music industry’s A-list. It also earned Zeeshan the title of a ‘revolutionary’ director. “Freestyle Dive was a concept that I had written about and because it took seven months in-the-making,” said Zeeshan, “Sajid provided another ending for it which I really liked and for which we had to alter the song as well. When we initially released Freestyle Dive on websites, that was another version, we had to alter it and you’ll get to hear the change in the album as well”.
“Before he started working on the video of Freestyle Dive,” said Sajid, “he wanted to know what I had in my head for these lyrics. He understood the concept behind the lyrics and that’s where he took off with the video and I think he did justice to both”
Have to let go sometime
After a moment of silence Zeeshan said, “There is another video by the way” “and the song is called Have to let go sometime”, added Sajid. “It’s one of the simplest videos that can ever be made”, continued Zeeshan, “with both of us in a room with seventies and eighties retro effects” he paused for effect, “and German subtitles”
“So this video is dedicated to all the Germans”, punched Sajid, inviting laughter.
Stereotypes and music
Did they ever feel stereotyped against because they were from Peshawar? “No, we have our own stereos”, Sajid quickly replied, laughing. Becoming a little more sober he added, “No, not in Karachi”. So are there any more Sajid and Zeeshan types in Peshawar? “There is one thing I know for sure: there is amazing talent, it just needs motivation”, said Zeeshan.
“We don’t want another Sajid and Zeeshan”, replied Sajid, “we want someone who can do this better then us, that’s the only way our music can grow otherwise there is no point” going further he said, “and talent, it’s everywhere. You have to understand that Pakistan is a place where music is still very very young. You also have to look at the political system as well and the way it works in these different provinces. We do have talent but we don’t have the tool that can bring this talent into the limelight, so lots of people are suffering. You never know, there could be lots of people out there who are way better then all of the bands that you have ever heard in Pakistan, but then you can never be so sure because they’re not there”.
Desi English
Being primarily an English-language band, what kind of listeners are they hoping to attract? “Hopefully everyone,” replied Zeeshan, “we do recognize that we have a niche market but I’m saying with complete honesty that we also get a lot of emails from people who are hard-core Urdu music listeners as well, they appreciate the work that we do. We would like to attract everyone but even if we get a portion of the total market and got away with it well, we’d be happy,” elaborating further he says, “say if we had a three percent market from the whole of Karachi and they genuinely liked our music, then why not? We’d be happy with that”
At the end of it all…
© Qasim RazaThe other unique element that they posses is that their songs are in English; where many argue that in Pakistan, there is no mass audience for English music, one feels the need to counter that argument with one basic question that most fame-hungry music newbies seem to ignore: is music created as means of marketing an artiste (the product) or as a means of self expression? It is the latter that I feel that Sajid and Zeeshan are aiming for.
What in undeniable is that their greatest asset (unique music) may prove to be their greatest undoing. But then, legends are not made by playing it safe and pioneers (as they were labeled by Alamgir) in any field have had to face obstacles before being considered ‘revolutionary’. Whether Sajid and Zeeshan can truly be considered revolutionary is what their second album will display: hopefully a level of growth and maturity.
Hopefully, if the ineffective distribution of their album that EMI has displayed so far isn’t resolved soon enough, the debut album of Sajid and Zeeshan will become part of a ‘limited edition’ and subsequently a ‘collector’s item’. Other then that, everything else looks pretty good.
Note: due to lack of space and inadequate timing this interview could not be published in it's full version.
Date of interview: July 16, 2007 – a day before their pre-launch gig.
The interview was first typed in September 2006.
Photograph credits: All of the photographs (except the one explicitly mentioned) were taken by Fayyaz Ahmed
