Three-day Karachi Music Festival starts at Arts Council today

A three-day music festival stretching over November 25 till November 27 gets going on Friday (today) at the Arts Council, Karachi. 

Coming right on the heels of the Karachi Theatre Festival, the music festival is going to be a tribute to film music composers of Pakistan, past and present, dead or alive, from 1947 all the way to the present day.

Addressing a press conference in this regard at the Arts Council on Thursday afternoon, Ahmed Shah, chairman of the festival committee, said the real creator of the music was the director, rather than the singer, and said that it was them we should pay homage to and remember.

“The numbers to be presented will be just as the directors intended them to be,” said Shah.

The music directors will include those who worked in pre-partition India in Bombay, such as Rashid Attre and Khurshid Anwar. 

The festival will also feature the works of Muslehuddin, Robin Ghosh, Nisar Bazmi, Nashad (not to be confused with Indian maestro Naushad Ali), Baba Chishti, and more recent ones like Karim Shahabuddin and Sohail Rana.

The numbers will be presented by professional vocalists such as Ghulam Abbas, Zafar Ramay, Ishtiaq Bashir, Karam Abbas, and others and young amateurs like Savera Ali, Aroosa Ali, Nida Saleem, Huda Sohail, Nimra Rafiq, and others.

“Nobody remembers what these masters looked like,” said Ahmed Shah, and continued, “This is our cultural heritage.

We have lost track of our rich cultural heritage and this is an attempt to salvage it.”

Professor Ejaz Farooqi, president of the Arts Council, also addressed the media. He said, “Those who are in the background must be given due credit.”