LAHORE: From starting a music class for children in collaboration with the Lahore Arts Council, to recording a music video focusing on ragas, to launching an NGO for kids addicted to drugs, famed vocalist Shabnam Majeed has a lot of plans up her sleeves.

Ms Majeed, a distinguished voice in playback, semi-classical and ghazal singing has recently joined the Lahore Arts Council as a music tutor for children of 10 years of age. The class will begin next month at the Alhamra Art Center, The Mall.

“Our children in performing arts have less opportunities to learn and perform as compared to adults for there is a great dearth of dedicated platforms for them”, she told this scribe while sharing details of some amazing projects the singer is about to undertake.

“Music is imperative to the aesthetics of soul, learning music at a tender age paves way for a child to become a singer of some substance. The grownups have plenty of opportunities to hone their skills and talent in every field, but the children have far less openings. So I think it’s a great beginning by the council in which the children can see some silver lining at least in music when it comes to learning its basics,” Ms Majeed said while reasoning that why after all she and the council decided to go for children’s music classes.

The singer will also join hands with Alhamra Films—the fully equipped music recording studio of Alhamra -- where she will record an audio-visual track focused on identification of different Ragaas. The track will be explanatory of various Ragaas, it will be written, composed and directed by Ms Majeed herself.

Since Bol -- her last flick as a playback singer -- Shabnam Majeed hasn’t been lending her voice to silver screen in spite of many movies being made in Pakistan. What are the reasons?

“Look, I have sung a lot as a playback singer, starting from my debut movie as a playback singer Jo Dar Gaya Wo Mer Gaya, but now things are different for a singer like me who has properly learnt singing. The new Pakistani movies don’t seem to have a long life at cinema screens, most of the films just are replaced by the new ones just within a few weeks, the big time spice and commercialism has marred the films, so I am not sort of interested in such films as a playback singer. Secondly, in most of the new film projects, producers usually strike a deal with the music composer who tries to save as much money as he can by hiring young singers instead of the seasoned ones.

Why she is striving to establish an NGO for the children addicted to drugs? “Children are like raw pearls of a nation, they have to be worked upon to shape them up for a better future. Having seen many of our children being lost to drugs, and other such menaces, I have decided to work for betterment of children in every sphere of life. At least I can try. I am planning to establish an NGO dedicated to my son Lucky Ali who left me at a tender age of seven after a fatal fall from the stairs back in 2010.

Published in Dawn, January 15th, 2016