One Song, One Voice

Playback singer Shilpa Rao on being the only Indian on Coke Studio Pakistan, and how barriers collapse at the sound of music.

Shilpa Rao

Almost four minutes into Coke Studio Pakistan’s Season 9 version of Paar channa de, disse kulli yaar di (Across Chenab lies my lover’s hut) — an age-old Punjabi ditty that has Sohni of Sohni Mahiwal talking to her ghada (clay pot) — there was more than just a surge in the waters of Chenab, which flows through the two countries.

While foreign policy teams were getting nowhere with their talks, last week an interlude on a sagar veena by Noor Zehra was pulling off an unlikely coup. Based in raag Desh, she sat in the industrial town of Karachi, dressed in white, strumming with one hand and sliding a crystal ball over the strings with the other, accompanying playback singer Shilpa Rao — the first Indian to be a part of the popular series since its inception — and her sons Ali Noor and Ali Hamza of popular Pakistani band Noori. The inhabitants of this space on Friday, unshackled by concerns of genre or nation, sang the famous tale of Sohni Mahiwal, the tragic love story that finds a note in India and Pakistan. The 11 minutes of music — in which Rao sings the part of Sohni while Noori, of the ghada — brings something reflective into the living rooms of India and Pakistan, prompting people of the two nations to sit up and take notice, creating a new first by including an Indian in the popular show. “I hope there is more of this to come, for other artistes as well. Coke Studio Pakistan was a beautiful experience not just because of the brilliant music but also because of the fact that it breaks barriers in our heads too. It didn’t feel like being in a different nation. Be it Hamza, Noor, Zebunissa Bangash or Quratulain Balouch, we all discuss similar things — what clothes to wear, what jewellery to match. I had done this before, and I was just doing it again,” says 31-year-old Rao, who was also a part of one of the episodes of Coke Studio @MTV Season 3, with music producer Karsh Kale at the helm.

What, however, isn’t similar is that Coke Studio, for Pakistan is a liberal and slightly-indulgent philosophy, causing a kind of social revolution in the times when the country has and is going through a lot. In these times, it becomes a sort of musical balance on the larger spectrum of politics. Rao agrees. “That commercial aspect we have here, exists there too. But there is also 150 per cent from the musicians. Not that we don’t have it in India, but there it acquires more importance because of what it means to the people of Pakistan,” says Rao, who had to work a little on her Punjabi diction for attempting the song, which was also sung by Pakistani singer Arif Lohar in the film Zinda Bhaag (2013).

Rao met Hamza and Noor in Delhi, where the Pakistani band had come for a gig. They all found themselves at Parikrama frontman Subir Malik’s residence — jamming, chatting, and munching on Dilli’s delicacies. “They had no idea of my work in Bollywood or otherwise. During the jam session, they asked me to sing something, and liked what I did with it,” says Rao, who attempted an Ambuwa tale, an Awadhi folk sung by Javed Bashir and Humaira Channa in one of the episodes of Coke Studio Season 8. “Noor said, you are coming to Pakistan,” says Rao, whose versatile voice comes from modulating the texture and pitch of her voice to deliver a versatile sound.

But even then singing at Coke Studio wasn’t a part of the plan. Rao was invited to speak to students at Hamza and Noor’s grandfather’s music institute in Lahore, the famous Sanjan Nagar Institute for Philosophy and Arts, a place where Zehra’s father Raza Kazim developed the sagar veena. “I was there for a week and everything came together. Even today, after the song, he has no idea of what work I had done in India,” says Rao, a Jamshedpur girl, who grew into prominence after crooning Tose naina lage in director Manish Jha’s Anwar (2007). Then came Khuda jaane in Bachna Ae Haseeno (2008), Mudi mudi in Paa (2009), and Manmarziyan in Lootera (2013).

Trained in Hindustani classical music under her father, and the aegis of Ustad Ghulam Mustafa Khan, Rao says that she is away from the ways of Bollywood playback singing where many singers are made to record one song and there’s uncertainty on whose version would be kept. “Unlike a lot of singers, I get to sing one song a year. In that case, most composers understand what I bring to the table.” The Coke Studio high, she says, will stay for a bit. For now, she is back to work in Bollywood.