Nadir Shahzad Khan of Sikandar Ka Mandar (SKM) fame, presently joined by fellow music cohort Mohammad Ali Suhail, is more than your average musician; he is also a promising filmmaker. A glimpse of his storytelling ways can be seen in a number of music videos he has directed in the last couple of years. Another glimpse can be found in the 2017 film, Chalay Thay Saath where he donned the role of first assistant director and music supervisor.
Karachi-based indie music group, Sikandar Ka Mandar, in its current incarnation includes Nadir Shahzad Khan, Zahra Paracha,
Mohammad Ali Suhail, Nasir Siddiqui and Raheel Paul.
MUSICMIX
Nadir Shahzad Khan and Mohammad Ali Suhail from Karachi’s premier indie music group discuss the pursuit of ideas and everything else in between.
Nadir Shahzad Khan of Sikandar Ka Mandar (SKM) fame, presently joined by fellow music cohort Mohammad Ali Suhail, is more than your average musician; he is also a promising filmmaker. A glimpse of his storytelling ways can be seen in a number of music videos he has directed in the last couple of years. Another glimpse can be found in the 2017 film, Chalay Thay Saath where he donned the role of first assistant director and music supervisor.
Currently sitting in Ali Suhail’s bedroom on a hot afternoon, I ask Khan about why CTS OST (featuring Bell, Mooroo, East Side Story, Bakshi Brothers, Natasha Noorani, Sikandar Ka Mandar, Abbas Ali Khan and Zammad Baig) is so refreshing and original while so many mainstream films soundtracks released this year have veered into clichéd, crude territory. Think Balu Mahi, Raasta, Yalghaar and you’ll get the drift.
Nadir Shahzad Khan and Mohammad Ali Suhail playing a show as SKM.
“When it comes to the big musicians, when you tell them that you’re doing a movie, they quote a huge figure,” begins Khan. “Even people who are sort of emerging, they’ll be like, ‘give me this much money’. I think mixture of lack of finances and just the idea to try to do something different sort of made CTS album the way it is.”
Expanding on the mission of CTS and the film scene in Pakistan, Nadir rightly notes, “I think we haven’t gotten over the idea that to be successful, you have to be Bollywood. What Umer was trying to do with CTS was to try and make a Pakistani film with a very Pakistani idea. I debate with my filmmaking friends about how as Pakistanis we have this idea that anything pre-1947 is not us. We’ve lost out on so much culture.”
Khan, of course, is not one to give in and is, in his own way, introducing ideas that showcase his vast imagination. One case in point is the song ‘Gehri Neend’, the band’s newest single whose video (featuring Mariam Saleem) is enveloped in the idea of a nightmare you simply cannot wake-up from.
The single is also special because with it the expanded SKM line-up has been unveiled. Apart from founding members Nadir Shahzad Khan and Mohammad Ali Suhail, SKM also includes, in its current incarnation, Raheel Paul, Nasir Siddiqui and Zahra Paracha.
Explaining the idea behind the song – a layered, haunting composition that has its own imitable identity – Khan tells Instep:”‘Gehri Neend’ is one of the happier-sounding songs on the album so we thought we should release it first. It’s about this person who is stuck in a dream and doesn’t know at first and is sort of dealing with a scenario where an animal is talking to him. The animal points him to go to a place where there is a Djinn and tells him to get rid of him. What happens is that he opens the closet where the Djinn is and the animal pushes him inside the closet and he’s falling in a space within the closet and is further stuck and can’t get out.”
Being trapped in a twisted nightmare is something that resonates with so many of us and the band has been creative with the sound which echoes this very sentiment.
While Khan is singing live, it’s a beautiful sight to see because he puts so much of himself in those performances. But music is one passion; filmmaking is another. As Khan tells it, he is a fan of Urdu literary master Ibn-e-Safi and wants to make films that echo sci-fi, fantasy and urban mythology.
“With the music video of Baaghi, for example, I wanted to explore the idea of what would happen if aliens came to Karachi or what if a random guy becomes a superhero.
I’m interested in stories about Subcontinental mythologies and folklore. I’ve been reading Ibn-e-Safi’s Detective Imran novel series and I really like how he (Imran) is this goofy, almost Ace Ventura type-character but deals with all these interesting real world cases. G. Willow Wilson’s Alif the Unseen is a book I give to all my friends. Those are the kind of stories I want to tell because they are culturally relevant stories and these are stories we should be telling in our films. I’m trying to educate myself as well.”
Mohammad Ali Suhail, the other backbone of SKM, sitting opposite me next to a PC, meanwhile plays a strong role in the audio production of SKM and to his own music created under his name. With Pursuit of Irrelevance, his last solo release that arrived earlier this year, Suhail has surpassed all expectations and has delivered an album that can withstand the test of time. He also plays with the very mainstream Umair Jaswal and produced Shajie Hasan’s captivating 2017 single, ‘Motorcyle’.
Ask Suhail about production and he says with a great deal of clarity, “If a song is fresh, then the production of it should reflect that. If there is any merit, it goes to the producer because it takes a bad producer to take a fresh sound and make it sound generic.”
I ask Suhail about tying up with a corporate and whether SKM would be open to it and he says: “If they take one of SKM’s songs and make it a jingle, it’s like okay I don’t see what the problem is. The problem is when they say you don’t know what sells, we know what sells. Add a dhol beat to it, that sort of BS is what I think artists have a problem with.”
While many things in the music scene remain a cause of concern, if there is one silver lining, it is the emergence of music festivals and for so many indie musicians, the birth and successive return of Lahore Music Meet is a sign of hope for the present and the future.
“This year Poor Rich Boy, Ali Suhail and Slowspin performed on the mainstage,” says Khan. “The only other mainstream act was Javed Bashir. LMM is an interesting scene because the people behind it are music listeners and not in it for the money. You can tell that they are listeners.”
While the second album has been in the making, and is slated to appear this November (tentatively), all five band members bring their own influences which makes for a very curious concoction.
Suhail agrees and says on a parting note, “I think all of us are coming from entirely different places musically so that’s really interesting. I’ve been listening to a lot of metal music again. He (Khan) reins me in when I go off-the-handle. I sort of push the envelope slightly further. This record is a lot more of us.”
With a live music gig (featuring SKM alongside Karachi’s other promising indie music group, ESharp) coming up later this week (September 9), it looks like the lead up to the release of SKM’s second album will be full of musical merriment and as music fans, we should all be elated and grateful.
