Punjabi Song 'Pasoori' Symbolising India-Pakistan Conflict Echoes At Coachella Festival
The song "Pasoori" by Ali Sethi, which tells a story of forbidden love and has a catchy hook, has gone global and become a phenomenon. It combines lyrical tradition with world beats to boost the popularity of the Pakistani singer.
With over half a billion views on YouTube, the Punjabi song with the roughly translated title "difficult mess" was the most-searched song of 2022.?It offers a melodic metaphor for conflict between India and Pakistan in the form of a passionate love song with an eminently danceable flow. The song was recently performed at Coachella; have a look.
Ali Sethi performs Pasoori at Coachella?
The idea for the song first came to Sethi when he was approached to write a song for the well-known Pakistani television programme Coke Studio. This came about shortly after an Indian broadcaster backed out of a creative collaboration because the 38-year-old was Pakistani.?
The singer recollects hearing the statement, "You're a Pakistani, and India and Pakistan are at war, so now we can't really put up a billboard saying we're working with you because extremists will set fire to our building,"I was raised hearing, "Oh you can't do this because it's forbidden, yada yada," as a Pakistani.?
"Of course the theme of prohibition is such an eternal theme in South Asian love songs; all true love is prohibited," he told AFP after an electrifying performance at the Coachella music festival in the United States, the icing on the cake of his remarkable year.
Sethi continued, donning a wide-brimmed hat and a black button-up with colourful embroidery that alluded to styles of the American southwest. "So I wanted to write a song that was sort of a flower bomb hurled at nationalism and heteropatriarchy," he said. "With all the fun innuendos and this camp energy."?
He claims to have drawn inspiration from the puns and double entendres in the lyrics of his childhood Punjabi folk songs, which he describes as "a nice way to slip in and subvert orthodox views without really appearing to be out beyond the veil."?
Sethi was astounded by the global response to the song??
Shae Gill, a vocalist from Lahore who was born into a Christian family, and Ali Sethi performed the song together. The song, which features Turkish strings, flamenco-style claps, and four Latino reggaeton beats keeping rhythm for much of today's ruling pop, has the improvisational framework of a traditional South Asian 'raga' mixed with the region's contemporary sounds.
Sethi was 'astounded' by the global response to the song. "I thought it was going to be this like, indie, niche thing that a bunch of my nerdy fans were gonna like," chuckled Sethi. "I'm just amazed by how many people loved it and embraced it all over the world, especially in India," the author said.?
Ali Sethi, a published novelist and the son of politician Jugnu Mohsin and writer Najam Sethi, started his official instruction in Hindustani classical music after receiving his bachelor's degree.?
He studied ghazals, a form of lyricism that can be traced to ancient Arabic poetry, and Qawwali, a type of Sufi devotional song. He now resides in New York and is making use of this city's "fertile frontier" by collaborating with musicians from a variety of musical genres, including jazz, reggaeton, hip hop, and salsa, and doing things that are outside the parameters of his schooling.
Raja Kumari, a rapper and singer from the United States who was born in California to Indian parents, joined him onstage for his Coachella performance on Sunday. He will return to the prestigious festival the following weekend.
After their enthralling "Pasoori" duet, he grabbed Kumari's hand and stated, "What we can't do over there, we can do over here." "Today, there are many different types of forbidden love represented."To thunderous acclaim, he declared, "If you forbid it, we'll do it."?
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