A year ago on a visit to London from Berlin, sitting in a living room on Brick Lane, I heard ‘Dil Dil Pakistan’ by Vital Signs. It immediately appealed to my obsession for ’80s music. I didn’t understand a single word, but this exoticism was part of the appeal. Thanks to online videos and music sources, I embarked on a new journey through music produced in the ’80s.

A few weeks later, I was DJ'ing in a bar in Berlin’s multicultural district Kreuzberg. I played ‘Dil Dil Pakistan’ and surprisingly, it fit very well with the rest of my selection. By the way, it was the night of August 14th, but this was a coincidence, I promise.

My curiosity had only just been sparked. I did more research, taking advantage of the widespread use of English in Pakistan. I tracked down further records of Vital Signs, vintage tape compilations of EMI Pakistan and many more artists. I was surprised to find that even German music websites had some of them in their catalogue.

I became obsessed by the song ‘Dil Mein Tum’ by the singer Bunny, ‘The Exciting Crooner,’ as his first record is entitled. It is a catchy, danceable and slightly cheesy love song. I bought Bunny’s album in an online music store, but couldn’t trace any other information about the artist. Friends with Pakistani backgrounds had never heard of him. The scarcity of information on Bunny only made my search more intense.

It didn’t take long for me to understand that ‘dil’ means heart, and is one of the most important words in Urdu pop music. My next discovery, the brilliant Nazia Hassan and her brother Zoheb proved the point. ‘Disco Deewane’ was the starting point from where I went to ‘Lekin Mera Dil’ and ‘Dil Mera’. All wonderfully-produced pop and disco music. Sometimes they remind me of the Village People, sometimes of Grace Jones. However, the Hassan siblings always sound unique and never outdated.

I discovered that they became icons all over South Asia and also produced a couple of soundtracks for Hindi films. This led me to discover the Indian Bollywood music director Bappi Lahiri, who produced marvelous soundtracks. Most notably the one for ‘Disco Dancer’ from 1982, whose hit song ‘Jimmy Jimmy Aja’ was covered by British artist M.I.A. earlier this year. Hindi disco seems to have its advocates, but I want to return to Pakistani pop music.

I got to know about Ali Haider, Sajjad Ali, Awaz and Alamgir. Among others, Nahid Akhtar and Ahmed Rushdi have been re-discovered by British record label ‘Finders Keepers’ and put together to form a compilation of rare electronic pop from Lollywood. Bit by bit my collection grew. Not only did I learn about the pop songs themselves, but also about the circumstances of the time, and the relations within a more globalising music industry.

This 20- to 30-year-old music is remarkably refreshing in the context of how Pakistan is represented in the German media. An image composed of terrorist attacks, natural disasters and, to a minor degree and only for a short time, exploding mangos.

I gained further insights into the deliberating role of pop music in Pakistan by reading Kamila Shamsie’s short story ‘Pop Idols.’ This was published recently in Granta’s issue on Pakistan where she traces the emergence of pop music alongside political developments in Pakistan.

But back to the beats; last week it was time to put on another musical evening and this time I decided to only play Urdu (and some Hindi) pop music. The bar occupies a small part of a massive concrete social housing block from the 1970s. It is secretly located between a passage and a dead end street, but nevertheless quite popular. The audience was an amalgamation of locals, tourists, students, artists, workers, and the typical Berliners, who are a bit of everything.

As colorful as the audience was, so was the location. A huge central bar was lit by satellite dishes converted into lamps that comment on the appearance of the building itself. Mirror balls and deer heads go hand-in-hand with all kinds of art work. It was just the right place to revive Pakistani pop music from three decades ago.

And the sounds weren’t that strange at all. I was glad to see that the audience loved the music. I did not get tired of answering which language this music was in. A group of international visitors graced the dance floor and I received a note beseeching me to play ‘Aap Jaise Koi.’ A couple of South Asian expatriates were among the audience and couldn’t believe their ears – ‘Disco Deewane’ had finally arrived in Berlin.

Sebastian Juhnke is a sociologist and an occasional disc jockey based in Berlin.

* Photograph by Khaldoon Ahmed The views expressed by this blogger and in the following reader comments do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Dawn Media Group.