Hamayoon Khan simply steals the first episode of Coke Studio Season Five with his highly appraising “Lar Sha Pekhawar” with a saccharine Pashto accent and splendid vocals.
It’s a love song that depicts true feelings of a girl who is asking her beloved to go to Peshawar and bring her a black shirt and a three or four flowers for her. The mere beauty and magnificence of the song lies in its rich and intense lyrics that truly represent and inculcate a feel of rich Pashto culture and language. The song “Lar Sha Pekhawar” has been performed by numerous Pashtu and Afghani artists. The same song has been sung by Pashto legend Gulnar Begum and was a part of Pashto film “Naway Da You Shpay”. It was picturised on actress Nimmi and music was composed by legendary musician Munir Sarhadi. The song has also been sung by Pashto singer Noor Jehan in a different style. The tune of the song has been copied to Urdu version of Shehzad Roy’s song “Tujhko Qasam hey Meri Na Aana hath Khali” too. Afshan Zebi from Hazara has also sung this song, but one would find a lot of Hindko language trace in her singing of this song. Pashto singer Nadia Gul has also sung the same song in one of her performances. With some altered lyrics like “Lar Sha Nangarhar Ta”, the legend Ahmed Zahir has also sung it but in a bit gloomy style.
The beautiful song belongs to a genre of most popular and most ancient form of Pashto poetry known as “Tappa”. This form of Pashto poetry is very famous and one would find thousands of Tappas in Pashto language with diverse themes of love and severance. Most of these Tappas have been sung and composed by many Pashto speaking singers. Originally, Tappa was composed without musical instruments, but today a lot of experimentation with different musical instruments has made it even more popular with some more aura and charisma.
The CS song starts with some western music and in the middle some beautiful Rubab played by Sadiq Sameer is also heard. One would also see Babar Khanna on Dholak, Farhad Humayun on drums, Zoe and Rachel as backing vocalists and Asad on guitar too. The Coke studio version of this Pashto song is a soulful and poignant melody with a totally innovative and novel western fusion. It is difficult to compare the same song sung by many singers, but the CS version remarkably captures an intimacy of Pashto music, and marks a modern day rhythm that truly embarks the subtlety of Pashto music, by adding more instrumentation and dimension to it, with an alluring and tempting performance.
Keep it up Coke Studio!
Image Courtesy: Coke Studio
Can we have the Coke-studio version of Lar sha Pekhawar ta?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwb793n2kDs&feature=relmfu