As solo artists reign supreme and more music groups dismantle - with long-standing Strings co-founders Bilal Maqsood and Faisal Kapadia following different paths being the best example, Sounds of Kolachi, better known as SOK and spearheaded by Ahsan Bari, continue to make music together, merging eastern and western instruments with what is always a strong idea.

Their newest single, ‘Jaag Karachi’ is an effort to reflect the life in the maximum city as it is – without painting it with a brush of what would pass as a scene from a Karan Johar film. The gentrification Karachi is going through and how geographical boundaries create divisions are clear to the band. This interpretation is not untrue, well, not exactly.

As SOK note on their YouTube, “Through ‘Jaag Karachi’, we have dug deep into the flaws of this city.” It goes on to say that the song is about, “authoritarian corruption” and the “blind” or “ignorant” attitude towards it; ‘Jaag Karachi’ is an effort to showcase a “detailed picture of what it is like to experience this city and the hardships,” that those residing in the city by the sea face.

Karachi may be our answer to Mumbai or New York, but this is also a city that is decaying, with glaring class divisions. To address some of these desperate issues pertaining to the city and its people, SOK have shot the music video against the backdrop of a dilapidating Karachi. Shot and directed by Adeel Wali Raees, the single opens almost like a lament and goes into a drastic change in sound to rap (killer stuff). This is SOK running with the times but keeping its own identity intact.

The backdrop displays the lack of a sewage system with garbage lying about, an overloaded bus (a means of transport for most in the city), as the strains of Nimra Rafiq’s transcendant vocals open the audio structure. The imagery Karachi’s uglier truths and what greets daily life, makes ‘Jaag Karachi’ both forlorn and impactful. It is a sonic surprise that visually creates a narrative akin to a short film.

Faisal Kapadia meets Chris Martin; Alamgir passes the baton of music to Bilal Maqsood

After their last album, Thirty, followed by a series of shows, Strings co-founders Bilal Maqsood and Faisal Kapadia may have disbanded but their solo careers are approaching new horizons. Bilal Maqsood has been far more prolific – from producing Velo Sound Station sans Faisal Kapadia to the Lipton commercial and a song for Quetta Gladiators in 2022 - in addition to his role as producer for a song for the LSAs as they celebrated 20 years. But Faisal Kapadia is not looking back either. His upcoming debut on Coke Studio 14, most likely a collaboration, is one of the show’s most talked about points since the news first emerged. A visibly happy Kapadia had another interesting moment when he met Chris Martin from Coldplay in Dubai and shared the image with words of gratitude as well as just how much of a fan he was of the British band. They also talked about the usage of a late Amjad Sabri’s qawwali embedded briefly in the Coldplay song, ‘Church’ from their album, Everyday Life.

Meanwhile, right here at home, Bilal Maqsood – who has solo music in the pipeline and could drop it any minute – was floored when Alamgir passed on the baton of the future of music to him. Maqsood, who sang at an event that was meant as a tribute to the legendary artist, later confessed to Instep that it meant a great deal to him given that it had come from a pioneer such as Alamgir. A video featuring this acknowledgment is on Instagram and can be seen by Bilal Maqsood fans and while at it, do check out his Quetta Gladiators tribute to Shahid Afridi. We may not be fans of Afridi, but the song is slick and suits Bilal’s voice.