Haniya Aslam of Zeb and Haniya passes away

Haniya went away to study at Smith College while Zeb was at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. Both would get homesick and often get together and explore music. One day, they found an abandoned room in Zeb’s basement next to the laundry machines and began to jam there. This evening of song and talk resulted in Chup in 2008, the duo’s debut that had Pakistan sit up and notice their work. After their songs were played on the radio station, an invite to sing on Coke Studio came. The outing led to much popularity, especially across the border, in India, where the song and their album found an overwhelming reception. It had confident South Asian women singing and playing the guitar. It worked.

While Haniya toured with Zeb for some time after, she wasn’t comfortable with the life of a touring musician and left the band soon to study audio engineering in Canada. She returned to Pakistan some years ago and created Main Irada with Ali Hamza in the 11th Season of the show in 2018. The song was inspired by Maya Angelou’s ‘Phenomenal Woman’.