KARACHI: Melodies Club held at a local hotel on Monday evening a music summit on the theme ‘Music industry: amidst the pandemic’ to highlight the challenges faced by the local and international music industries.

Ghazal singer Salman Alvi was the keynote speaker on the occasion. He said the pandemic has affected all industries and not just the music industry, although the latter has suffered a bit more. The reason is that the music industry thrives mostly on “events”. Television channels don’t pay [the musicians]; they take them to a place from where they can earn money. A lack of events affects all members of the music fraternity.

He said unfortunately music hasn’t been considered as a profession in Pakistan. “With all due respect, we are a little hypocritical about this. We ostensibly like musicians but when we meet the artist in person, we ask him, ‘what do you do [for a living]’? In other parts of the world, you don’t ask this question of an artist. Music is their profession.”

Mr Alvi said according to a rough estimation, the global music industry is worth $50 billion. Pakistan’s share is less, and it has reasons. We can’t compare Pakistan to India because the latter’s canvas is huge. Also, in India they are not hypocrites when it comes to music.

He raised the question: what have we done about our music? Answering it he said in the beginning big labels came, supported the industry a bit, and release houses were formed. But in the last 10 years all release houses closed down because “piracy had stopped”. Unfortunately, the release houses used to earn from pirated material. They couldn’t do that with local music. Piracy should be checked but the moment release houses were shut, artists were left with no platform.

Mr Alvi said Coke Studio was promoted because it had Coke behind it; Pepsi Battle of the Bands was promoted because it had Pepsi behind it. “We need to run the music industry in such a way that brands should come to us and say we want to promote your material.” One advantage of Coke Studio is that it had all kinds of genres — thumri, qawwali, pop etc. Otherwise when you go to a sponsor, he pointed out, they’re only willing to promote a single spot [genre].

Coming to the point as to what can be done now he said we need to look ahead and create our own path. “Let’s assume that in the next year the big events will not take place … The entire world has converted to digital. An American band Dropkick Murphys recently through an online event attracted 10m viewers. We [our musicians] may not attract 10m but can get 0.5m views. Can we go there? How will it be achieved? It’s not musicians’ job [to learn how to go digital]. That is where society comes in. That is where other industries come in. There should be platforms/agencies who can tell musicians we’ll do that for you … they can strike a deal with the musicians and say, for example, we’ll charge such and such percentage of what you earn.”

After the keynote address Shakil Jafri recited an Urdu poem that he wrote on music.

Programme manager PTV Karachi Amjad Shah was the chief guest of the summit. He said even in the past artists or creative people found their own path. While the pandemic has affected the music industry, it may have also provided them with an opportunity to practise their art and learn from the masters. We need to tell our young ones about our legends of music and their work. “If you know how to give respect and protocol to an artist, trust me, he will not talk about the money. It’s their foremost right to be given respect.”

Earlier, Buraq Shabbir and Shazleen Vahidy, who anchored the event, also spoke.

The speeches were followed by an award ceremony. Among them, lifetime achievement awards were given to Sultan Arshad, Z.H. Fahim and Nizar Lalani.

Published in Dawn, July 7th, 2021