Irtiza Shafaat Bokharee<\/p>\n
In November 2017, I played session ukulele and bass guitar for Mehdi Maloof at two concerts at LUMS and Alhamra, Gaddafi Stadium. The audience knew every lyric and sang along without hesitation, carrying songs that had never belonged to the mainstream. It was hard not to admire that intimacy between artist and audience. But another thought stayed with me long after the final chord. Why has \u201cindie\u201d music in Pakistan historically found its most devoted audiences in elite universities, caf\u00e9s and cultural spaces? The question is not meant to diminish those audiences. It is an invitation to examine the social world in which \u201cindie\u201d music, once synonymous with independent music, has come to flourish.
\nThe confusion begins with language. We often use \u201cindie\u201d and \u201cindependent\u201d as though they mean the same thing. They no longer do. Mehdi once told me at a jam session that \u201cindie music is music that is authentic\u201d. There is something compelling about that definition, but it belongs to an earlier moment. Today, \u201cindie\u201d has acquired a life of its own: a recognisable aesthetic as much as a way of making music. Bedroom pop, lo-fi production, catchy intro hooks in the first nine seconds, and curated visual identities have become signifiers of \u201cindieness\u201d, marketed to an urban, English-speaking middle and upper class. Indie has become a genre and a consumer identity in South Asia. Independent music is something different. It is not defined by how music sounds but by the conditions under which it is made: who finances the recording, who owns the masters, and who exercises creative control. There can be an overlap between the two. But one concerns taste. The other concerns power.
\nThe irony is that independence is rarely accessible to everyone. Making music requires time, instruments, equipped studios, and the ability to survive periods with little or no income, none of which creative work in Pakistan is institutionally supported to provide. Much of the industry operates through informal markets where contracts are inconsistent and legal protections remain weak: no meaningful unions, no minimum wage, and little recourse when agreements collapse. Independence therefore depends on forms of economic and cultural privilege that remain invisible and carries risks that audiences seldom see. We celebrate originality while paying far less attention to the unequal conditions under which it is expected to emerge.
\nThe emergence of corporate music platforms in 2008 altered this landscape. Their contribution to Pakistani music is undeniable: they expanded audiences and revived forgotten repertoire, producing a few recordings of remarkable quality. But more importantly, they became institutions that conferred legitimacy. Appearing on one of these productions increasingly became shorthand for artistic success. A generation of musicians grew up believing that the highest measure of achievement was no longer simply to make great music but to appear on one of these platforms.
\nThat assumption deserves scrutiny. Some musicians consciously chose not to enter the corporate ecosystem even as it became the dominant route to recognition, uncomfortable with how much creative authority producers and commercial partners were acquiring over the music itself, or unwilling to compromise their self-respect by networking in sycophantic bubbles. The issue is not that producers exist; every recording benefits from thoughtful production. It is a question of how much authority they are given before the musician has even imagined the work, and of how much access then depends on proximity to influential circles rather than talent alone. Independence sometimes means declining opportunities that others regard as indispensable.
\nPerhaps the most enduring consequence has been symbolic rather than commercial. Corporate platforms have become so central to the public imagination that many listeners struggle to believe an artist would willingly remain outside them. If a musician says they declined such opportunities, the claim is often met with scepticism. Institutional recognition has become so tightly bound to artistic success that artistic autonomy itself appears implausible. But this scenario is rapidly evolving, with Coke Studio not being released for the last two seasons, and the last Velo Sound Station and Nescaf\u00e9 Basement seasons not gaining any sustainable momentum, barring sponsored views and listens on social platforms. Have the technical formats of these staged shows sapped their potential and become saturated? The audiences are not passive; it must be kept in mind.
\nThis assumption also misunderstands the ambitions of many musicians. Not everyone seeks maximum visibility. Bill Withers and Chitra Singh walked away from successful recording careers because the public life attached to fame no longer appealed to them. Others have chosen to remain deliberately low-profile, valuing privacy over celebrity accentuated by social media frenzy.<\/p>\n
The writer is a freelance columnist and a social scientist.<\/p>\n
Courtesy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Irtiza Shafaat Bokharee In November 2017, I played session ukulele and bass guitar for Mehdi Maloof at two concerts at LUMS and Alhamra, Gaddafi Stadium. The audience knew every lyric and sang along without hesitation, carrying songs that had never belonged to the mainstream. It was hard not to admire that intimacy between artist and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[13645],"class_list":["post-560929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-article","tag-irtiza-shafaat-bokharee"],"yoast_head":"\n