CokeStudio giving Pak music a new voice gets in Rabbi Shergill

For about three years now, a phenomenon called ‘Coke Studio’ has been changing the ground rules for both popular and traditional music in Pakistan. Through three series of highly successful TV shows, recorded at a studio in Karachi, Coke Studio has provided a forum for blending traditional, folk, pop and younger musical styles and poetry of Pakistan.

Now it has gone one, some would say logical, step further and invited talented Indian singer Rabbi Shergill into its fold. The singer who burst on to the scene six years ago with a very modern twist and sound to Bulleh Shah’s poetry with Bulla ki jaana mein kaun, flew to Pakistan on Saturday for about a week for what would be the first Indo-Pak collaboration by Coke Studio.

Without overtly saying much but, for example, by choosing and aggressively promoting Sufi music, getting together folk-style musician Arif Lohar with model and vocalist Meesha Shafi in the memorable Alif Allah, and having two sisters of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa descent — Zeb and Haniya — strum the guitar to Pashto tunes, the Karachi studio has become a symbol of the young and modern Pakistani and one that they are proud to talk about as an important modern cultural experiment.