A Pakistani singer’s international success story

LAHORE: Mahmood Khan, a first ever Asian artiste in Australian music history, who scored a number one song on the mainstream pop charts, and received Australian citizenship in recognition of his contribution to Australian music industry, is working on his solo tour of Pakistan very soon.

Recently Mahmood announced that he has found 'lost tapes' of the Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's recordings. He is determined to bring the legend back into mainstream 20 years after his passing.

This soon to be released new album is called "Meherban' and contains never-before heard melodies and tracks. Usually, Pakistani talent goes to India in hopes of making it big but rarely do we see a success story of a Pakistani musician making it big at an international level.

In the past, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan was the only Pakistani artiste able to get recognition from the West and now another name joins him and coincidentally both have worked together. Mahmood started his career in the recording industry at an early age and worked at a Black music production company in Los Angeles as a sound engineer, writer, and producer for over 14 years. He is considered a pioneer in some circles of the hip hop world.

In 1996, he released his first solo album which was written, produced and performed by him and brought his work in front of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. In 1996, Nusrat and Mahmood met in Los Angeles and soon they were collaborating on a new album. Mahmood paid a humble fee for Nusrat's vocal renderings but before the album could be completed Nusrat passed away leaving behind a wealth of recordings with Mahmood.

In 1998, Mahmood's 2nd solo album was released in the USA by Solid Records and in India by Magna Sound. This high energy futuristic sounding album of its time became a huge success all over the world and the title track 'Teri yaad' was pirated in Sanjay Dutt's film Kartoos.

Following this big success, Mahmood then released another album called 'Panah' with Magna Sound. This album was recently released again by Sony music which confirms the timelessness of Mahmood's work.

For the next few years, Mahmood settled in Pakistan to develop a new sound named 'Modern Folk'. This was Mahmood's experimentation of fusing sounds of eastern instruments with Black Funk music song formation. The song "agar' came into prominence from these recordings and enjoys a niche following worldwide.

During this time, he also produced a video song called 'Tere Baghair' dedicated to Quaid-e-Azam. He also wrote and produced a video song dedicated to Sadiq Public School, Bahawalpur. Mahmood studied at SPS for 12 years.

He then wrote and produced two songs for Pakistani singer Fariha Pervaiz called Panah and Mujey Lai Kay Chal. Another of his notable projects was the writing and production of the music for the opening and closing ceremonies of the SaaF Games held in Islamabad.

Mahmood decided to study film-making formally and got him enrolled at Sydney Film School. He completed his film degree and seized the opportunity of creating a new all Australian band and became the first Pakistani/Asian artiste to record a live album at the Iconic Sydney Opera House.

One of the songs from this live recording called 'Like the river' was released as a single in Australia. In October 2009, Like the River climbed the top of the Australian pop charts.