“I have to say, the re-imagination of Runaway was completely on Zoheb and Ali Hamza,” says Jahan Yousaf from the American-Pakistani band Krewella, during our little conversation over Skype about their recent performance in Coke Studio (CS). She, along with her sister Yasmine (and the other half of Krewella) are sitting on the breakfast table, coffee mugs in hand, sunlight streaming on to their fresh faces, devoid of any make-up. It was 9am in Eastern United States and 9pm in Pakistan.

There’s something very endearing about the girls — despite being around in the international music scene for over a decade and being quite successful — they come across as refreshingly free of any pretense.

Krewella burst on to the American — and international — music scene almost 11 years ago and took the electronic dance music (EDM) world by storm. Their debut album, Get Wet, was in the top 10 of Billboard’s Hot 200 list in its first week of release. Among their many accomplishments is an International Dance Music Award in 2012 for ‘Best Breakthrough Artist, Group’. This year, along with ‘Bad Liar’ they released ‘Runaway’ from their much-awaited EP New World Part 2. In their debut performance on CS this year, they decided to perform a stripped-down version of ‘Runaway’.

Sisters Jahan and Yasmine Yousaf are world-famous as an American-Pakistani electronic dance music band. They talk to Icon about their performance in Coke Studio and getting in touch with their father’s roots

“It was interesting to create the song on our own, with our producer, and then have someone create a new version of the song,” says Jahan. “It’s like starting all over again. And they completely overhauled it as if they’re creating a new song and I kind of liked that.”

The opening riffs on the sarangi by Gul Mohammad gives the introduction a beautiful, but slightly melancholic touch. It’s a very short, but very sweet East-meets-West interpretation of the song. The collaboration with folk artists Riaz Qadri and Ghulam Ali Qadri, not so much. The Krewella sections of the song are wonderful as are the sections sung by the Qadri duo, they just don’t merge as well together. While in parts, CS’s version of ‘Runaway’ is quite pleasing to listen to, to me it doesn’t sound like a fusion track.

Interestingly, until the day they recorded the song, the duo wasn’t familiar with Riaz Qadri and Ghulam Ali Qadri’s work. “It was really cool because before we actually went into film and record with Riaz Bhai, we were in the dressing room — for hours — getting ready to set up and he was just singing us songs,” relates Yasmine. “We had a little bit of a crash course in Riaz’s career,” she laughs.

Then I found out that the girls aren’t entirely fluent in Urdu. “We understand a little bit,” says Yasmine. “There were a couple of communication barriers, but then we sort of started miming things out with Riaz and his son.”

“And our Abbu was our translator,” chimes in older sister Jahan. “Yeah, he would pop in and help out a little bit,” added Yasmine. “He came with us.”

The duo has made no secret of the fact that their father, Sohail Yousaf, is a massive fan of the show. How did he feel being on set? “He loved it,” responded Jahan. “He was on set with us one day for 12 hours. He’s almost a 60-year-old man and he had amazing energy, he was like a kid in a candy store.”

Going through some of the behind-the-scenes photos, I noticed one in which Yasmine, Ali Hamza and one other person are standing with their legs wide apart in a position that reminded me of Taekwondo classes at school from back in the day. What was going on there? “This guy is Nathan, Krewella’s manager on the road,” explained Ali Hamza, while in the middle of finishing one of the episodes for broadcast. “He’s obviously teaching us some martial arts here. Yasmine and Nathan regularly practice martial arts. I was just trying to pick up on what they were doing!” he laughed.

Growing up in the United States, the sisters weren’t exposed to a lot of Pakistani music. “We definitely grew up on Nusrat [Fateh Ali Khan],” relates Jahan. “There wasn’t just Pakistani music specifically. We grew up on Arabic, Indian, Pakistani but mostly Bollywood music.”

“Our mother is of European descent,” says Jahan. “She was fully immersed in the culture — everything from cooking authentic Pakistani dishes, sewing us shalwar kameez, just pushing us to be a part of the culture and incorporating the culture to being a part of the household. Even when decorating the house, she was very drawn to Pakistani design.”

This was the first time they’d performed in Pakistan; the previous time they’d visited was when they were very young. Their Pakistani heritage, however, came in the way of them performing at a major festival across the border in 2016. That’s when I heard about them for the first time — the news became big back home: that Krewella was denied visas to perform in India. “We actually didn’t expect that at all because we had been to India before and played at the same exact festival,” says Yasmine. “It was pretty unfortunate because we had to cancel less than a week before it happened. We have a pretty strong fanbase in India. We’re working on getting visas right now. We don’t know if we’ll be denied or not. It’s a weird feeling knowing you’re not allowed in a country.”

Although they’re back in the United States and planning their upcoming tours around the world, the girls aren’t done with Pakistan just yet. In fact, they’re only getting started. “Yasmine and I have only been listening to a handful of Pakistani artists growing up, because we haven’t really been immersed in Pakistan,” says Jahan. “We’ve been talking about this a lot: that our upcoming project is bringing on more people who represent half of where we’re from — our father’s roots.”

Published in Dawn, ICON, September 16th, 2018