Pulling the Strings… again

The Twitter account of Strings the Band had been running on throwbacks until recently a very unexpected development took place. On the morning of March the second, the group dropped a hashtag laden tweet accompanied by a short, mysterious little twenty-second video that suggested that the veteran music act is set to come back into action – one whole decade after they went missing from the Pakistani pop scene.

Rewind back to 1988.

Pop music in Pakistan is at an unprecedented high, despite efforts to curb the same by the Islamist dictator, Zia-ul-Haq. The brother-sister duo, Nazia and Zohaib have been popular in the country – and, indeed, throughout the world – for a fairly long time, having cemented their reputation as the best ever independent music act produced by Pakistan till date. The Bengali singer, famous for his playback singing for the motion picture Albela Rahi (1977), known by the name of Alamgir, has, by now, achieved the status of a veteran. And so has the Iranian, Shehki. A few young faces, some chaps named Ali Haider and Sajjad Ali, have recently hit the pop music scene, and a bandful of young university students who went by the name of Vital Sign have recently released an insanely popular single called Dil Dil Pakistan. Music, indeed, is on the rise in the country – especially after the demise of the country’s president.

Inspired by the rise of pop music in the country, four young students at Karachi’s reputable commerce institute, Government College of Commerce & Economics, plan to fuse a music band together. Their youth and education appear not to hold them back, playing catalysts, instead, in their surge through to the prominent stage of popular music. They must have taken heart from the fact that some of the best musicians in the country had turned to music while attending some of the best universities in the country. Was not the “Pakistani” King of Pop, Mohammed Ali Shehki (in reality an Iranian by birth nationality) studying engineering at the prestigious NED University when he auditioned as a singer for the first time, and spotted by Sohail Rana? Were not Vital Signs’ Rohail and Shahzad students of Peshawar University, and Junaid that of Lahore’s UET? Even the new kid on the block, Ali Haider had attended NED, just like the veteran Shehki.

It so happened, then, that the young and optimistic quartet of Faisal Kapadia, Bilal Maqsood, Rafiq Wazir Ali, and Karim Bashir Bhoy got together to form a pop-rock band which they only accidentally ended up calling Strings.

Two years later, on Sunday the 13^th of May, the band released their mildly noticeable, eponymous debut album, Strings. Another two years later came another album, 2. With singles such as Sar Kiye Yeh Pahar – written and composed by Bilal Maqsood who clearly inherited the talent for lyricism from his father, the legend Anwar Maqsood – brought overnight fame to the young quartet, granting them the coveted rock star status.

And then, one fine day, all of a sudden, just like that, completely out of the blue, the band broke up. The fame went back the way it came, and so did the band members – back to school. The fairytales of Shehki, Haider, Ali, and Junaid seemed not to be for Strings… until they were.

Forward to 1999.

It’s the Holy Grail of all Pakistanis: the Cricket World Cup. Seven years since their disbandment, Strings have long been forgotten by all but a few of Pakistani music enthusiasts. The long stretch of time coupled by the rise and fall of bands like Junoon had led to the band’s untimely archiving. Since their band’s disbandment in 1992, Faisal Kapadia has completed his degree in business from Houston, Texas, while Bilal Maqsood has finished his in arts from Indus Valley School of Art & Architecture. Both are married, both have children, and both are working white collar jobs at the same advertising agency. Music is nowhere to be seen on the horizon – at least apparently.

And then, Pepsi decides to release a music album especially for the World Cup and the Pakistan Cricket team. Among the myriad of artists that featured on this album – Vital Signs, Awaz, Karavan, Junaid Jamshed, Hadiqa Kiyani, Najam Sheraz, Shehzad Roy, Fakhr-e-Alam, and Nadeem Jafri – are a blast from the past. Strings return to the stage after seven years with their new number, “Dil mein ik khwaab”. The song, along with the album, becomes a part of patriotic musical history.

Six months later, on the twenty-first of January, 2000, the band releases their third album, Duur. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Duur, of course, was then (and, to some, even now) their most popular album, with each of its twelve songs classified as a masterpiece. Who can forget the goosebumps that Faisal Kapadia’s deep voice gave us in the song “Duur”, and the first-of-its-kind message given by the music video of the song “Anjane”? Or relaxing to Bilal Maqsood’s soft vocals in “Main ne Tujhe”? Or the melancholic melody of the composition of “O Jane Wale” and “Jaane Do”?

The success of Duur and its successor Dhani, brought Strings international acclaim, which led to them hitting it off with music composers at the next door neighbours’. The band’s first of many hits across the border was a collaboration with the Indian pop band, Euphoria, called “Jeet Lo Dil”, which was released in 2004 for the Indo-Pak cricket series. The band was thence called by the higher ups in Bollywood to record numbers for their movies and Strings did not disappoint at this front either, producing hits like “Yeh Hai Meri Kahani” for the Sanjay Dutt-starrer, Zinda and “Aakhri Alvida” as well as “Ganpat” for Shootout at Lokhandwala. At the pinnacle of their fame, also in 2004, Strings was called by Hollywood to record the official soundtrack of Spider-Man 2 – which they did in the form of “Najane Kyun”.

After Dhaani’s release in 2003, there was a hiatus of five years before Strings released their fifth studio album called, Koi Aanay Wala Hai. The adverse effects of what most people termed success had begun to show. After the two masterpieces, Duur and Dhaani, Koi Aanay Wala Hai was, to put it lightly, a disappointment. A disappointment that shoved the turtle back into its shell seemingly forever. Except that it didn’t.

Despite barely making any original music of their own in the six years that followed Koi Aanay Wala Hai, to their credit, Kapadia and Maqsood did not give up. After the six-year hiatus from the Pakistani music scene, in 2014, Strings made their second reappearance in the Pakistani music scene – or maybe the third? – by joining the production team of the popular music show, Coke Studio, after Rohail Hyatt resigned. In 2015, the band produced the music for the Pakistani film, Moor.

And now, three years later, a decade since they last released a music album, nearly two since their first resurrection, and three decades since their initial formation, Strings have promised their fans the release of a music video and eight new singles. It’s been a long time coming – and they better not disappoint.