First published in Aurora’s May-June 2001 edition.

AURORA: How did your music career begin?
Arshad Mahmud: On PTV. Possibly I was the first person to sing and play the guitar there. When Akkar Bakkar started, I was 21 and I had no ambition. I just wanted to be a regular, normal kind of person. Until one day, Shoaib Hashmi asked me (he used to see me in college playing the guitar and trying to impress the girls by singing film songs), “Are you going to spend your entire life doing this or are you going to try to do something else that will tax your mind a bit?” So, this is how I started. The first song I wrote for a programme was Rawalpindi Se Aayee Rail, Naam Hay Iss Ka Khyber Mail. Everybody liked the song, so I got into a routine. As Akkar Bakkar came on weekly, every week we would do one or two new songs. The programme ran for about four quarters, and I must have written about 50+ songs for children. Then we started Such Gup, a version of Akkar Bakkar for adults. The programme ended with one serious song by Nayyara Noor. That was the Such element. The rest was the Gup. In 1975, we started Taal Matol. Shahid Toosi and I worked together on it. Well, he would do more and I would do less, but when he left, I had to do the composing. That was when I began doing serious stuff, and my friends and my team started taking me seriously.

A: Why did you join EMI?
AM: I have to make a confession. In those days, like most youngsters, I was of the mind that I had to choose a field and have a proper job, and that music was not a field, just a pastime. So I joined Prestige Communications as an account executive. Then Mansoor Bokhari, the Managing Director of EMI offered me a job as sales manager. At the time I thought, “I’ve done it!” So I joined EMI and stayed with them for 17 years. Then in 1993 I realised it was all a waste of time, that I should have been more serious about my music. I resigned in 1993 and started doing music and music alone.

A: Wasn’t that a big risk?
AM: Yes. I usually don’t consult my family about anything. This time I did. I talked to my children and told them things would be harder. When you work in the corporate sector, you get all sorts of perks and benefits, and you get used to that. But I was lucky. What sustained me throughout those years was the advertising world.

A: What were the campaigns you worked on?
AM: I still remember fondly how I xeroxed Boney M’s songs for a construction company because the owner loved Boney M. He thought there couldn’t be any music better than that. So I did a lot of Boney M work and made commercials out of those songs. When Candyland was introduced, it had a kind of style, which it still retains, and I still enjoy listening to the soundtrack of those commercials. The last piece of commercial music I enjoyed doing was with Orient McCann Lahore, where we worked out the musical logo for Nestlé Milkpak Khalis hee sab kutch hay. Although I must say that most of my good stuff has been projected, in my view the musical aspect in our commercials isn’t well thought out.

A: Why?
AM: Music is a medium of expression. Music is my medium; I express myself through my music. You can make any statement through music, provided you know the craft. It’s just like copywriters who can develop great lines because they know how to get to them. There are important ideas expressed so badly they have no effect, and then there are frivolous ideas that, when well expressed, have communicative quality. They touch your mind or your heart. Music has the same kind of power, but we don’t use its power. For instance, there was a commercial for a toaster where the toast pops out. You can actually create music for that, but because that wasn’t the case, the visual was bland. It’s one of many examples of commercials where the visual is well thought out, but the soundtrack isn’t. Once I was working with an advertising agency on a campaign that was liked by the client. Then, one of those global tie-ups took place with a foreign advertising agency, and the account shifted to another agency. The new agency felt they had to produce their own work, rather than use the previous agency’s, so the work I did was lost. It’s a frivolous reason but this is how it works. Now with multinational affiliations, the themes are developed elsewhere and you just have to make a kind of Pakistani version of it. They will adapt the visuals, but most of the time they will use a music track developed elsewhere.

A: Do you feel that clients give music its due or do they tend to underrate it?
AM: The power of music as a medium of communication has been, by and large, ignored. Sahira Kazmi and Schahzad Khalil are two directors I’ve worked with very closely, and I’ve enjoyed doing it. The same goes for Hameed Haroon. They make a kind of a musical image in their mind, and if I can’t get to that, then I don’t know my craft. Unfortunately, it is a collaborative art. We have to work together like a well-oiled machine. When this happens, then you come up with something really good. Take the recent Dawn commercial for example. We had a long discussion about how the longer version of the track should end. As it ended on a very high note, Hameed wanted to change it. I said “don’t”. That is the surprise element because you are expecting something to happen and it doesn’t. We had a long discussion, but I stuck to my guns. But then there were certain suggestions he made, which I thought were very good. It’s a collaborative art. Everyone has to believe in each other and trust each other’s judgement. Many composers prefer to say, “Okay, thank you, goodbye. I’ve got the brief; see you tomorrow.” I love having people around me when I am composing and I never discourage suggestions because, you see, nobody can steal my glory. Only I can accept what I feel is right, and if I feel it’s not, I try and convince the person who has made the suggestion that it isn’t right. It’s not a question of trying to lead but of the whole team thinking and developing something together.

A: Do you find your commercial work satisfying?
AM: I’ll tell you what. When you say that Khalis hee sab kutch hay, it is a line that has a totally different kind of a feel. You see, you are driven by a thought, which may or may not be expressed in words. For instance, if you want people to dance to your music, then you try and do things that will make them dance. But when you are trying to make a serious statement, the music for that must have a totally different kind of feel. I don’t find that my commercial work clashes in any way with my more serious work because the thought process is there in both. What I do is to try to illustrate the feelings in my music, whatever the feeling is. So if it is Khalis hee sab kutch hay then I try and bring that out, and if it is serious poetry then I try and do that.

A: What needs to be done to encourage a better quality of music in commercials?
AM: I don’t know how to convince people to do this. I have tried to convince people in the industry to increase their rates, because if you’re paying Rs 10,000 for a soundtrack, that reflects how much importance you attach to it. If the client is paying Rs 100,000, then the people working on the project will make sure that the end result is the right thing for the commercial. Unfortunately, advertising in Pakistan is not a quality-driven market. It is a price-driven market. Anything that is cheap will sell more than quality. In my days at EMI, pirated cassettes were cheaper than the ones we produced because ours were of a better quality. We imported the tape and took extra care in the quality. Yet, people would buy the cheaper cassettes; they didn’t mind if the sound quality was not that good. This attitude basically pervades the overall market. Multinational and corporate executives may be very pompous about what they are doing, but at the end of the day, they may settle for the cheapest thing available, which does not really reflect very well on them, but unfortunately it’s like that.

A: What training do young musicians get?
AM: Many youngsters ask me about how to go about becoming good musicians. The most important thing is to have an aptitude for music, and that doesn’t come easily. It’s rare to have that kind of talent, where one can really become something. Yet, musical aptitude alone will not ensure that you will be a great musician, because in our field one has to be the best; there’s no place for second best. I’ll give you an example of a friend of mine. He’s an excellent singer, but because Mehdi Hasan was there, there was hardly any place left for him. It’s like applying to join the air force. You’re sent to Risalpur for training. After six months you receive a letter saying you don’t have a flying aptitude and you are sent home. In spite of this, there are probably about 500 pilots in this country who can fly an F16. But there is only one Mehdi Hasan. Young musicians need to be told that they have to do it for the joy of it, initially. I’m not trying to scare them, but this is how it is. One needs to have more people in this field, from where outstanding musicians may emerge. But the training system we have has not worked really.

A: What exactly is the system?
AM: The ustaad. There are many people I know, at least in Karachi, who are getting formal training in music, but nothing is happening. Not many musicians have come up because talent has to be identified at a very young age, at the school level, so that the child can be placed in the right environment. When I was young, I didn’t think of music as a career to be pursued. It was only after 17 years of wasting my time at EMI in marketing that I realised I had to make music. We have to somehow elevate this field. Music is a segment of the liberal arts, but painters are not looked down upon as much as musicians are because of the two schools, the NCA (National College of Arts) and the Indus Valley School of Art & Architecture (IVA). Parents are proud when their child gains admission to the NCA. More and more people are going into graphic design or painting or sculpture or architecture, because these fields have been elevated. Unfortunately, in our country, music has not been elevated.

A: Has PTV played a role in trying to elevate music?
AM: PTV could do a lot but it has fallen flat on its face. PTV has not been able to encourage new talent. Although you see new faces, not all of them deserve to be there.
There is only one reason why an artist will go to PTV. To become popular because his or her face will be seen. The ones who are already popular want to go further, but PTV doesn’t give them that opportunity. After a while, they’re ignored. For instance, if you’re a ghazal singer, well, that’s the end of it. There’s no room for development, and you don’t even get to see too many ghazals on PTV. You don’t see Alamgir anymore. PTV created Alamgir and others like him. Mohammed Ali Shehki, the Benjamin Sisters, Humaira Channa. All were created by PTV. But after PTV has created you, it ignores you; it doesn’t follow or go along with you for the longer distance. Now, there are newcomers entering, but once they become popular, PTV will ignore them, and this has continued to be the practice over the years.

A: Unless you’re an Iqbal Bano or Farida Khanum?
AM: That’s precisely it. Iqbal Bano, Mehdi Hasan and Ghulam Ali were artists long before television came along. They were there because of a totally different discipline. Now what was the system that produced these people, and what is the system that has not produced even a single person of the same calibre? There has to be something wrong somewhere. Certainly, the main body of the music-listening public is teenagers. But this doesn’t mean that a person who is 30 has stopped listening to music. One has to think of those segments, which I wouldn’t call small because that segment is huge in its own right, but yes, it’s not as big as the teenage market. It seems PTV has stopped thinking about that segment, yet these are the people that will rush for tickets to an Iqbal Bano concert, which means there is a market and an audience out there.

Interview conducted by Reema Abbasi.