The Lux Style Awards 2018 have certainly concluded but the Mein Bhi movement, founded by Frieha Altaf and launched at the prestigious award ceremony earlier this year, is far from over. It is also more than a snowball effect of Hollywood’s Me Too and Time’s Up movement.
The Lux Style Awards 2018 have certainly concluded but the Mein Bhi movement, founded by Frieha Altaf and launched at the prestigious award ceremony earlier this year, is far from over. It is also more than a snowball effect of Hollywood’s Me Too and Time’s Up movement.
At the LSAs, over 32 musicians and a 40-piece orchestra recreated Shehzad Roy’s song ‘Kya Darta Hai’ as part of the Mein Bhi segment.
The origin of the movement: the horrifying rape and murder of seven-year-old Zainab Ansari from Kasur, which not only became a national headline and sparked protests with the likes of Mahira Khan, Shehzad Roy and Sanam Saeed among others asking for justice, but it also prompted prominent names to speak up about their own stories; amongst them were Frieha Altaf, Nadia Jamil and Maheen Khan.
Since then, the Mein Bhi movement has been growing. American DJ Diplo’s Mad Decent Block Party 2018, that was held in Islamabad last month, raised 1 million rupees for Sahil, an NGO that works exclusively on the issue of child sexual abuse.
And presently, a new song called ‘Mein Bhi’ that is produced by Frieha Altaf is in the works. The teaser of the song was unveiled by Roy – who has remained on the forefront of activism for several years now – on social media and it is both thought-provoking and poignant.
Against a monochrome setting, the video begins as pictures of Zainab Ansari, Shahzeb Khan, Mukhtaran Mai, Qandeel Baloch and Malala Yousafzai emerge and disappear. We see Roy singing in the studio and soon Kashmir’s front-man Bilal Ali also appears.
While sharing the track, Shehzad explained on Twitter that it is about “human rights” and “creating awareness on education, child abuse, women’s rights, honour killing and gender inequality.”
Altaf, while sharing the video on Instagram, revealed that it features 36 artists and a 40-piece orchestra. Watch out for the full-length song, releasing later this week. This one will be for the history books.
