Favorite music this month, on Spotify as usual.

February 2023

4: "Confirmation Bias Ki Ghantian" – TPR Roundup on Hamnawa Select Feb '23Listen now (38 min) | A discussion with Ali Abbasi on the songs you should listen to in February. We talk about a song that Karachi people shouldn’t…
Ethnomusicologist Daniyal Ahmed (also know by his handle honiunhoni and his journeys to find and record artists like Ustad Noor Bakhsh): Karela occupies…
Themes of hip hop globally reference economic struggle and personal hardship. This is why the visual aesthetic of bling, of over-the-top consumption…
Lots of great music has piled up since I was last able to put out a Hamnawa Select playlist. Here’s the music I think you should listen to in February…

January 2023

3: "Mummy Papa Music" – Pakistani Music in India, a Discussion with Sharanya DeepakListen now (67 min) | Sharanya Deepak is a writer & editor from New Delhi. We talk about her recent piece for 52 on listening to Pakistani pop in India…
Sharanya Deepak’s essay for 52, tells a few wonderful stories about Pakistani pop in India. It’s a lovely capture of the allure of Pakistani artists…
Over the last year, I’ve established analytics mechanisms to understand the Pakistani music industry empirically. At the end of the year, it is…
Ye Dunya Karakoram, Faris Shafi, Talha Anjum Post 2020 Pakistani pop music is often pitted against the previous renaissance in the early 2000s. Many in…
As part of my end of 2022 (rather, start of 2023) activities, I’m writing a few lines from selected songs in my Best of 2022 playlist. Lafzuna Zahoor…
2: "Crazy" – Pakistani Music in 2022 with TPR PodListen now (47 min) | I talk to Ali Abbasi of TPR Pod on the Pakistani music scene over the last year. This is a cross-post of TPR episode #177. You can…

December 2022

For a second year running, I’ve compiled my favorite Pakistani pop into one playlist. If you’ve been following the Hamnawa Select playlists I put out…