Industry insiders consider his career to be over… but is it?

The industry, and most importantly those working in it, work in mysterious ways. Ali Azmat, perhaps the only functioning musician known on the most global level and Pakistan’s own rock icon, launched his much-anticipated second album, Klashinfolk, without the expected hoopla and noise.

There was no album launch concert, let alone a press conference to announce its release. What’s even more interesting to note is that Ali himself, along with his guitarist Omran Shafique from Mauj, weren’t even in the country at the time of its release. All we have to vouch for it is the availability of the album in stores and the circulation of the latest music video, Gallan, on the tube. One would expect, out of all the albums being launched this year, Ali’s album to arrive with a bang. So where is it? Why this deafening silence at its launch?
Cynics are of the opinion that this wild child of Pakistani has now grown up, and he proved that with Social Circus; that he’s grasping at the last vestiges of his career; that he’s too old to be a rock star — his career is over. My response to that is: Take a look at Kiss, Rolling Stone, Nevarro and a plethora of other middle-aged rock stars who still manage to hold their own in music today. Interestingly, a member of the music industry who works more on the business side recently commented that the age of rock is over. Yeah, well, that’s what they said back in the late ’70s. And it didn’t.

My last trip to a local music outlet, which is often cited in different sections of the press as the place from where they get their stats on which album is selling is the most, revealed that right now Shahzad Roy’s Qismet Apnay Haath Mein is proving to be more popular than Azmat’s Klashinfolk. According to them, the wildly-popular Strings album (Koi Aaney Wala Hai) and the relatively newer act, Zeb and Haniya’s album (Chup), faced a much better response on their release. There wasn’t even a visible poster of the album outside the outlet where most of the space was crowded by advertisements for Roy’s Qismet… and other albums. Considering that Musharraf’s resignation happened three days after the launch of the album, do we blame the relative lack of response to the political condition of the country, lack of promotion or do we admit that yes, Ali does not have the same ability to appeal to listeners as he once did?

Set apart from Junoon, Ali’s own music has been a product of introspective songwriting — he isn’t afraid of expressing his more vulnerable side, mind you, only in music — and laced with a combination of music tastes and influences developed, practiced and carried forward from experiences throughout life. Whether he still caters to a pop market or not is another question altogether. Ali’s music, though to a certain extent listener-friendly, isn’t what one would call easy listening. ‘Rich’ and ‘mature’ are words that describe it more accurately. The only problem is that music listeners today are still very young and according to cynics, hardcore Azmat fans have aged with him. But they don’t constitute the bulk of the concert-going crowd, the main bread and butter of most musicians.

On the other hand, music tastes amongst the younger generation have also evolved. They listen to acts such as Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, the Mekaal Hasan Band and Ahmed Jehanzeb with as much interest as they do to the oft-hyped Atif Aslam. With the diversity of listening tastes that have sprung up amongst the youth, I wouldn’t be surprised if Ali manages to extend his reign in the Pakistani pop industry for several more years. Having said that, Klashinfolk is a solid piece of music. I have yet to meet someone young or old who, after listening to the album, has yet to find a song that doesn’t appeal to them.

The global music industry is increasingly turning towards nostalgia for lack of better quality music being produced by current pop stars. The return of the Eagles, the on-going popularity of Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash and an upcoming, currently-in-the-works album of Aretha Franklin are a definite sign of numerous acts making successful comebacks this year, and with lots more to come. With record labels releasing more and more ‘best of’ albums, and considering the lack of well-rounded music that most current pop ‘stars’ are releasing right now, we still need musicians like Ali to stick around for a while.

– Photo by Waheed Khalid