The Pakistan America Peace Through Music Project
A Musical Journey to Peace, Freedom and Understanding
(A Collaboration of The Sonic Peace Makers and SHINE HUMANITY)

Background:

Mention Pakistan today and what comes to the minds of most Americans is terrorism, poverty, and hopelessness. That’s all they see in the news. But Pakistan also has one of the world’s most diverse and rich cultures, equaled only by its spectacular natural beauty as home to part of Kashmir, the Khyber Pass and high mountain peaks like K2. Once upon a time in the not so distant past, Texan gun enthusiasts brought their prized antique revolvers to Peshawar’s gun smiths to make copies, actor Robert DeNiro posed for pictures with restaurant owners while vacationing in Chitral, and Mick Jagger tested his dance skills with Lahore’s most well-known Mujra dancers. And many of Pakistan’s greatest musicians and singers like Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan regularly collaborated with their counterparts in Europe and America such as Peter Gabriel and Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder. {Read More…}

Best Artist:

Maryam Kizilbash
Mekaal Hasan Band for Saptak
Overload for Pichal Pairee
Rahim Shah
Shiraz Uppal

Singer of the Year: {Read More…}

By Amar Ayaz

[Originally Published in Instep Magzine]

To most people Louis J. Pinto is known as Gumby, a musician on his way to cementing his name in our entertainment industry’s music history, if he hasn’t done so already that is. When he was starting out as a wee lad dreaming about thrashing his drums amongst the best of them, he couldn’t have imagined that he was going to become a household name and considered as Pakistan’s top drummer by most, if not all. {Read More…}

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See All Coke Studio Season 3 Pictures

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All Photos are copyrighted by Coke Studio, Kohi Marri and Rizwan-ul-Haq

See All Coke Studio Season 3 Pictures

Pictures from the complete season 3, HQ images for each performance will be added in a day or two.

Click on the image to see all pictures

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See All Coke Studio Season 3 Pictures

A rich fusion of culture, tradition and history, Pakistani music is derived from diverse elements and various musical influences. Within this dynamic musical environment, Coke Studio has emerged as a musical fusion platform of exciting elements and influences, ranging from traditional eastern, modern western and regionally inspired music coming together to form a distinctive Pakistani sound. Bringing alive the magic of live recordings and performances, Coke Studio prides itself on providing a musical platform which seeks to bridge barriers, celebrate diversity, encourage unity and instil a sense of Pakistani pride. Coke Studio is indeed an inspired step by Coca-Cola for having created a platform where renowned as well as upcoming and less mainstream musicians from various genres can collaborate musically.

Join the Coke Studio journey, as we broaden our horizons to encompass a wider circle — an expanding sphere of diversity, culture and tradition. Central to our third edition is the need to explore the intricacies of inspiration, creation and evolution, and to discover how the elements of reason, will, resolve and form come together and culminate in the realization of dreams and goals. True to the desire to retain and revere individuality, Coke Studio’s wings span the entire breadth and length of our soil: from the rugged custodians of the Sufic tradition to suave urbane men and women, from indigenous ballads to universal kalams. This season as the wheel rotates, a growing palette of unique colors, flavors and sounds come together and contribute to enrich the Coke Studio circle. Come and be a part of the sea change as once again we connect distinct and varied styles, ethnicities and identities and link them with that one common denominator — Music.

Featured Artists:

Abida Parveen
Amanat Ali
Arieb Azhar
Arif Lohar
Aunty Disco Project (A.D.P)
Entity Paradigm (E.P)
Fakir Juman Shah
Karavan
Meesha Shafi (Overload)
Noori (with parents Ali Kazim and Noor Zehra Kazim)
Rizwan and Muazzam
Sanam Marvi
Tina Sani
Zeb & Haniya

House Band: {Read More…}

Download Video

The Coke Studio team proudly introduces the expansion of the live music platform to encompass and introduce a series of exclusive ‘behind –the- scenes’ web blogs in 2010, due to popular demand. Through these blogs Coke Studio looks to share with its fans the passion, creativity and sheer joy behind these sessions thereby endeavouring to bridge the gap between the studio and its fans. Indeed while Rohail Hyatt and his team gear up for a third season of electrifying collaborations and improvised fusion music to air later this year, Coke Studio’s ongoing web blogs bring you right on to the studio floor and into the red room for a sneak peak into where the magic first started. {Read More…}

By

Madeeha Syed

Just when you thought it was all over, the music industry is abuzz with plans of album launches, collaborations, soundtracks, creative projects, the potential for solo projects by the likes of Rohail Hyatt and Co. In 2010, the music industry is slated to make a comeback with a vengeance

Rahat Fateh Ali Khan working on not one, but two albums!

The albums are slated for a late 2010 release but chances are that it could take till 2011 for his work to come out. One of the albums titled Koi Umeed will have four qawwalis, one of which – the title track – is a whopping 30 minutes long! It will contain poetry and bandish from Mirza Ghalib’s selected works. The selection of poetry and composition has been done by Mian Yousuf Salahuddin and those close to Rahat expect that this album will land him a place with the great maestros. {Read More…}

Best Music Album
Qismat Apnay Haath Mein by Shehzad Roy

Best Music Video Director
Ahsan Rahim for ‘Laga Reh’ by Shehzad Roy

Best Music Director
Rohail Hyatt and Faisal Rafi for Charkha by Rahat Fateh Ali Khan

Song of the Year
‘Khwabon Key Rishtey’ by Najam Sheraz

As Overload and Mekaal Hasan Band release their records without the backing of a record label and pull it off without a glitch, Instep takes a look at the burgeoning music scene, record label battles and how the Internet just might be the way out

By Maheen Sabeeh

Throwing out the blame

Internet. The inescapable term that has become an intrinsic part of our lives. We tweet through our phones; share pictures and at times send pointed (albeit indirect) messages to people on Facebook… and that is just one small example. According to the CIA Fact Book, Pakistan had an estimated 17.5 million internet users in the year 2009. So if music sales are going down at stores, which they very much are, we can guess that fans are downloading and sharing albums online instead. {Read More…}

We all know about the legend Rohail Hyatt for the services he has provided to the music industry of Pakistan since the times of Vital Signs. The Vital Signs which gave us one of the best patriotic songs of the world, Dil Dil Pakistan (ranked 3rd in BBC Top ten list) and Rohail Hyatt which gave us Coke Studio, another reason to be proud of Pakistan. The son, Danial Hyatt continues what Rohail had started. We had seen Danial Hyatt doing the animations and visuals for Coke Studio but this is the first time the music by Danial is coming out and that too for Pakistan. Slackistan is a film by Hammad Khan & Shandana Ayub to  revive the image of Pakistan. The film will be featuring tracks by Mole, Kominas, Adil Omar and Uzair Jaswal. OST of the movie is going to be “Pink Moving Objects” by Mole, a band by Danial Hyatt, Faizan Riedinger, Amman Mushtaq and Habib. The track is amazing and goes to one of my all time favorite tracks. I am trying to get the track for you folks really soon.

We recently published an article on how fire records is trying to claim rights on coke studio content. We concluded the article saying, hypothetically, Fire Records is the composition rights owner of some of the content, but is it playing fair in ethical terms? We asked these questions to you in the form of a survey, which has been concluded today. To remove biases and to spread the word, we took support of other portals to present the survey to their audience, so better results may be compiled. I thank Alam and Danish for being kind enough to help me out with this.

Logically, Fire Records has all the composition rights. It’s beneficial for their business to claim rights on each and every content that they have “bought”. So, if we think Fire Records isn’t making efforts for music but being greedy, we need to realize it’s running for business and not for betterment of music. I don’t blame Fire Records for claiming rights on the content they have “paid for”. Musicians are at fault here for selling their composition rights. I am sure musicians do respect Mr. Rohail Hyatt and would care to listen to his words about it. They are allowing the record labels to act “only” as business firms and not the firms for the betterment of music. In the end, it’s the audience that gets hurt when they even have trouble downloading the “free content” just because musicians had sold the composition way before. {Read More…}

Earlier this month, a certain bulletin caught my attention. ‘Zeb and Haniya, Pakistan’s first female duo, visit India.’ The Times of India was one of the first to feature them in their daily… after which every tabloid I turned to had them covered. Their names, place of birth, education background… and the inevitable questions about their plans in Bollywood (!) had indeed taken our media by storm. {Read More…}