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Wednesday July 16, 2025

Sherry Khattak from Karakoram on collaborating with Hasan Raheem

By Maheen Sabeeh
June 01, 2022

Karachi:Different people know Sherry Khattak for different reasons. Some recognize him for his neo-alternative rock music group, Karakoram, with hits like ‘Toofaan’, ‘Fanaa’, ‘Bekhudi’ and ‘Raasta’. Others know him for his contribution to the resurrected Pepsi Battle of Bands or Nescafe Basement. Both shows are behind him as Sherry entered the most prominent music show in the country, Coke Studio, in its fourteenth year, produced by Zulfiqar Jabbar Khan, aka, Xulfi for the first time.

As featured artist, Karakoram appeared on the national platform with the song ‘Ye Dunya’ and in the show’s collaborative spirit was joined by rappers Faris Shafi and Talha Anjum. The single wasn’t from their album, Ailan-e-Jang (2021) but a new concoction and it was ferocious, melancholic and hopeful – all at the same time – leading to new listeners who, as Sherry admits, then went back to their previous work.

Hot on the heels of success of ‘Ye Dunya’ – their song in Coke Studio 14 – Karakoram has collaborated with Hasan Raheem for ‘Kyun’ who is hot musical property as well with his Coke Studio 14 debut ‘Peechay Hutt’ landing in the Marvel universe, for Disney Plus series Ms. Marvel, featuring a Pakistani superhero, set to release later this month.

Karakoram and Hasan Raheem’s collaboration’s ‘Kyun’, is for one thing a smart tactic because it couldn’t have released at a more optimum time. Nonetheless it does make you curious that out of all collaborations that could’ve happened, how did Karakoram and Hasan Raheem end up working together on what is an edgy, crunchy new song ‘Kyun’- even as it carries that melancholic vibe Karakoram is known for.

Speaking to Instep from Lahore, Sherry Khattak, who co-wrote the lyrics with Hasan Raheem and Bilawal Lahooti and produced the music for ‘Kyun’ explained how ‘Ye Dunya’ from Coke Studio 14 influenced this collaboration. “Both Hasan and Karakoram were featured in Coke Studio 14 respectively,” says Sherry, “I was also a part of the audio-production team so I interacted with a lot of artists.”

As Sherry recalls, Karakoram were deciding whether they should do another album following Ailan-e-Jang or release singles. But after Coke Studio 14, they were adamant about collaborating with other artists.

Having interacted with a slew of artists during Coke Studio 14 run including Hasan Raheem, Sherry says the conversation began from there and culminated in the darker, edgier ‘Kyun’.He convincingly quashes the notion about the band’s immediate plan to add a rapper to their line-up post ‘Ye Dunya’. Reminding us that there are five people in the band as it stands - Bilawal Lahooti, Omair Farooq, Zain Peerzada, Annan Noukhez and Sherry Khattak - the singing rock dynamo says, “Right now in a five-person band, adding a rapper would be a little suicidal, to be honest, but we’re open to collaborations and that’s something we can look upon for now. As a band though, we feel ‘Ye Dunya’ is done and we have to move forward and it could be working with another artist or doing our own thing.”

As for the response to ‘Ye Dunya’ notes Sherry, “To be honest, it was very overwhelming for us. Coke Studio has the highest number of eyeballs so for us to be there and being a part of it for just one song meant a lot.

We gained fans. It was a very positive experience for us. We did a lot of shows during that period before Ramzan break followed. It was very fruitful for us as a band and it has fuelled us to do more, which is how ‘Kyun’ was released just a few months later.”

Karakoram has changed gears. Instead of releasing one song per year, they are hooked to the idea of releasing singles every month. “We’re pretty much on track with ‘Kyun’ which will be followed by two songs in June. It’s a good thing for us.”

“For ‘Ye Dunya’ we had a large team from lyricists to producers and we made a mood board, music board and the peg was there. It’s just Karakoram does tend to go dark, it’s not exactly deliberate. Adnan Dhool (Soch) was there (Coke Studio 14 team) and helped with the lyrics and it was very apt for what I and the band were going through. It’s a non-stop cycle that’s been happening and the sooner we realize the better it is because the idea was that the world doesn’t stop for anyone. It is up to us how we utilize the time we have. Talha wrote his parts and Faris wrote his parts so there was this other side to it as well.”

After ‘Ye Dunya’, Sherry admits that he started working on ‘Kyun’. “But my process had changed after Coke Studio. Instead of picking up a guitar and figuring out parts, I started using more sounds to expand the soundscape. Hence, I was experimenting. And there was this song which we thought was closer to Hasan Raheem’s territory and with that in mind, I wrote a few lines for ‘Kyun’ and got the ball rolling. It was an idea I had in mind, something we all face. The rise of mental illness and how its increasing. ‘Kyun’ is about the walls we have in our minds and how we have to break them down. Hasan has a counter narrative but there is this void, an emptiness that is not fulfilling so we have to break our own mental entanglements.”

As pioneering music groups, from Junoon to Strings out of the picture as a band and Noori on a hiatus, there is space for music groups. Entering and filling that void would be a dream for Karakoram. In Sherry’s own opinion, audiences have been responsive but the aforementioned lost the frequency of music coming out. “We’re not competing with anyone. We just know that we have to give our fans content as much as we can so that they’re happy. They’re the ones for whom we’re making this music, right? The only source of energy we get is through them and the time we take between releases is something we’re targeting. We want to feed our audience with music and if it leads us to a point where people are happy with us, that’s the best thing. We want to be consistent.”

Sherry explains that they’ve done the album bit with Ailan-e-Jang and now it’s time to release singles with music videos. “To compile an album takes time and after Coke Studio, we want to put out more songs and we can’t take months for an album.”

Karakoram isn’t talking a good game. Among upcoming songs, there is ‘Awaz’ and ‘Zindagi’ but until then, put ‘Kyun’ and pretty much everything Karakoram has done on repeat. You won’t be disappointed.