With every release, singer-songwriter and music composer Zeb Bangash is gaining new fans while remaining just as endearing to old ones who have been following her career since rough recordings of Zeb and Haniya tunes surfaced many moons ago through and across the interwebs.
Though originally Zeb found fame through Zeb and Haniya, a duo she formed with cousin and guitarist-songwriter-singer Haniya Aslam nearly a decade ago, which resulted in a stellar debut album called Chup and a number of appearances on Coke Studio across various seasons, she has since then expanded her repertoire significantly as a solo artist while Haniya Aslam moved overseas.
The group didn’t exactly broke up as was confirmed when they both released the song ‘Dadra’ in the aftermath of a terrorist attack on Easter Sunday in Lahore in 2016 that claimed dozens of lives. Conceived as a lullaby, it was penned by Zehra Nigah, with a video directed by Umar Riaz, and was meant to provide hope. Whether Zeb and Haniya team-up for another record remains to be seen, but as far as Zeb is concerned, her contribution as a solo artist to the local music scene remains enormous.
From film soundtracks (Manto, Bin Roye, Ho Mann Jahan, Verna) to television soundtracks (Noor ul Ain, Tum Mere Pass Raho, Diyar-e-Dil, Neelum Kinarey, Ek Thi Marium and Sammi) to across-the-border projects (Fitoor, Highway, Madras Café, Lipstick Under My Burkha) to solo Coke Studio appearances and front-ing Brooklyn-based music group Sandaraa, her body of work is both staggering and diverse.
Zeb’s latest release with Sandaraa titled ‘Farz Karo’ is based on a nazm by the celebrated Urdu poet, writer and icon, Ibn-e-Insha and not surprisingly has won over fans across the board.
Speaking to Instep, Zeb explained the philosophy behind this unique music unit. “Sandaraa comes from the same philosophy of bringing musical influences from different parts of the world together but we do it with an awareness and imagination that we’re not the firsts to do it in history,” she told Instep. “Given our regions’ intermingled cultural histories, these musical traditions must have interacted with each other and influenced each other in the past; I get goosebumps thinking about it. We’re not looking at it simply as ‘doing fusion music,’ we’re reimagining and reassembling erased connections in our own way. It’s much more intense and rigorous than fusion as I’ve known it. When we look at a song from some place that we don’t know, each musical choice is analyzed because as Michael Winograd, one of my band members, puts it, ‘These are all culture choices.’ It took us four to five years of playing together to come up with Sandaraa’s distinct sound – it wasn’t a fly-by-night course of action. And after receiving a grant from the Chamber Music America, we decided to now put out Sandaraa originals using the words of renowned Urdu poets and I’m beyond excited about this material.”
– Read Zeb Bangash’s extensive interview in the upcoming issue of Instep on Sunday
