Make love, not war
Strings went from being the boys next door to becoming international rock stars, getting international acclaim and becoming UNICEF Pakistan’s National Ambassadors for HIV and Aids in just a little more then a decade. With each successive album they released, their sound matured and their lyrics became more meaningful. Their songs had a knack for reaching out to a mass audience. Strings grew on all of us in such a way that their songs became what we hummed day and night, the sound of their kind of music became more and more familiar —to the point of it becoming easy to predict a typical Strings song from any other. It just might be about time they do something about that.
Their latest offering, Beirut, written by Anwar Maqsood, although primarily based on the recent bombing on Beirut, is about the implications that a war has on a society and its people. According to Bilal, who was speaking for himself and Faisal, “This song is not just about Beirut. It is about what is happening in the world around us. It’s an anti war song” he went on to elaborate how Faisal and himself, being fathers, were concerned about the younger generation growing up in an increasingly hostile world and the need for them to be more socio-politically conscious. He stresses that, “we didn’t want to promote us. We wanted to promote the subject”.
When questioned about writing the Beirut song, Anwar Maqsood replied, “Actually Faisal forced me to write that song. He had already composed the music for it and needed the lyrics. I based it on the movies on Beirut that I used to watch when I was younger. Around the same time, I was also doing a project on Lebonnen, so that also helped”. He also added that, “Overall the entire song took around two days to write”.
Having already written several popular Strings songs already, he is expected to be the sole lyricist for their upcoming album leading one to wonder: why him? “We are comfortable working with him. He understands our concepts and our music” replied Faisal, “being an artist himself, the way he writes songs tends to produce a very graphical picture of the concept we have in mind. Plus, he writes prose in a way that doesn’t make the language difficult to understand to anyone”.
Strings upcoming album is due sometime in the end of February, beginning of March, right after Moharram. The status on the album is that they have already composed all of the music and are currently spending time in the studio recording it. The lyrics for most of the songs still need to be written, but they have already come up with concepts for each of their songs. There is no particular theme that dominates the album, however, they have composed some songs that touch upon socio-political issues, not unlike Beirut.
One of the songs they are working on is based on terrorism, the lack of security and uncertainty that surrounds it. It is about a man who leaves his house not knowing whether or not he will be able to come back home. Being the official UNICEF Pakistan’s National Ambassadors for HIV and Aids, it comes as no surprise that there is also a song on Aids currently in the making. Strings hope to launch the song on December 1st, World Aids Day.
They are currently undecided as to which label to sign up with in Pakistan but will definitely be signing up with Sony BMG in India. They are currently touring between Nepal, the United States and Switzerland.
One has to credit them for taking the initiative to ‘talk’ about issues that are currently affecting the greater world. The video of Beruit, although not entirely a piece of art, seems to be inspired by that of Sarah Mc. Lachlan’s “World on fire”. It graphically depicts the impact of wars, making it more ‘real’. Since time immemorial artistes have used their power and influence to generate attention and focus towards issues and events that had a major impact on certain groups of people. Wars have been stopped and people have been saved as a result of those efforts.
Photo: A screen shot from the video of Beirut, Strings latest anti-war song.
First Published:
Images
October 29th, 2006
