About

Music Chaat is my latest in understanding and appreciating Pakistani music. It is envisioned as a music channel featuring a menu of regular shows delivered over video. Along with these, I will hope to share background thinking and behind-the-scenes content on this website (also served as a newsletter) to build community not just around Music Chaat’s message of paying close attention to Pakistani music but also creating Art. Thank you for reading, I am excited for you to join me on this journey!

I am Shahan Shahid Nawaz and I have had an almost lifelong association with Pakistani music.

In school, I once accompanied my brother to an essay competition as a supporter and since I had no purpose to be there, I joined school staff to hold onto personal belongings including phones and iPods. There, outside that examination room by the Lahore Canal, I plugged in an iPod and felt that guitar strum on Sohniye from Strings’ 2003 classic, Dhaani, in a way that I hadn’t before, like it pulsed through my body.

That may have been after I was due to dance to Awaz’s Ae Jawan to the school though I don’t remember that happening despite practice. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s Koi Tou Hai Jo and Adnan Sami’s Ae Khuda are fresh in my memory as morning starters before a long motorbike commute to school.

My father primarily listened to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan Qawwal and Sher Ali (Late) and Mehr Ali Qawwal; Indian classical music (deeply admiring Shafqat Ali Khan); Punjabi folk (both from across the border in the shape of Harbhajan Mann and our own including Sain Zahoor who we saw live once at Lahore’s Race Course Park); and bhangra music.

It is no wonder that he played a masterstroke sending Sukshinder Shinda’s kitsch yet timeless “Balle” (2005) my way with a new cassette player on our loaned White Mehran. I love that album’s foundation and it is one we will consistently return to in Music Chaat: “Balle” is the kind of music created in evolution though more as a survival jump from classical form–increasingly being rolled around in time’s big trash compactor–to pop also known as Light Classical or Neem Classical music. The result is sometimes timeless as with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s Night Song (1995), Faisal Latif’s Beqarari (1999), Mekaal Hasan Band’s Sampooran (2004), Amanat Ali’s Kohram (2009), and Rustam Fateh Ali Khan’s Meri Dharkan (2014).

My mom drew musical inspiration from The Benjamin Sisters, Musarrat Nazir, Shazia Manzoor, Fariha Pervez, and Humera Arshad whose “Was We Dhola” was a significant favorite. It also features on Music Chaat’s flagship playlist, “Music Jaisay Koi Sheeera Ho Kanon Main“, along with other favorites.

I minored in Sociology and cowrote a short film at LUMS (2012-2016), picked up a love for the newspaper from my father (who mostly read Daily Awaz), and to write in school mostly to tease my brother, the essay competitor. So far, I have also had the opportunity to write about:

Finally, I worked at Patari—my most direct involvement with Pakistani music—from October 2017 mainly to do numbers but also write video scripts, manage artists (including Abid Brohi), and offer on-the-ground support till July 1st, 2018. The October 2017 shooting of Shoaib Mansoor-directed Verna OST, Paisay Di Game’s, music video featuring Mahira Khan (but not directed by ShoMan) in a Guru Mangat Road warehouse stands out as particularly memorable for generously offering humor in the company of friends.

My work transcribing and annotating music on Genius (where I have been active since 2020) is now also renamed to Music Chaat. If you are curious about upcoming shows and episodes, please view my Discogs Wantlist and my SoundCloud.

*I must offer credit here to Asim Fayaz, Fahad Sultan, and Hamza Hamayun. As an intern at the Technology for People Initiative, I explored cricket statistics as a side-project which my peers helped me envision into a data-driven selection strategy for the Pakistani Men’s cricket team. “StatCric” was presented to the Pakistan Cricket Board in 2016 through friend Imran Ahmad Khan’s support. Blogs produced in July 2014 while exploring StatCric are the dawn of my writing career and accessible here. 

**I have mixed feelings about this piece in retrospect because I could not do justice to Ashiq Hussain Qawwal’s talent. In him I will always remember such a beautiful personification of music. His great talent made it look so banal that he could sing, play the harmonium, and the tabla all with great skill and personality. His two-finger snap sounding like a finely tuned click to ash his cigarette has stayed with me for granting art even in that tiny moment and marking presence in life’s disco. His stamping down of an invisible sword into the ground to mark the fall note was similarly spectacular. Anyway, I had promised to publish Ashiq Hussain’s work which I did through Patari but failed to stay in touch. I have been very happy to see Pakistani contemporaries such as friends at Honi Unhoni and Daniyal Yousaf bring the balanced energy this relationship requires.