Hamnawa Select Sep '24

What’s notable in Pakistani music this September, on Spotify & YouTube.

Some notes:

• The increasing range and volume of music coming out of Pakistan is remarkable.

• A number of cliques in Pakistani music exist in their own bubbles often. And I’ve been trying to take one of my audience groups that looks most like me – millennials influenced by Indus Music – to take more attention of hip hop from parts of society they may not run into usually. This is often hip hop from a class of musicians really struggling to make ends meet (which they talk about in their songs), and hence their ethos is quite different than many upperclass indie musicians. But what I’m seeing is that the landscape of music from Pakistan – and this is visible even in hip hop – is becoming more variegated. There is hip hop that sounds more international, some that is about struggles, some that is Punjabi-influenced but comes from Karachi, a lot that is catered only to India. And this same sort of diversification is happening in other pop genres also. This level of variety was not available on the first few Hamnawa Select playlists that we put out almost 3 years ago. 2024 is different.

• The number of cross-border collaborations between Pakistan and India, despite the limitations on cross-border interaction, are very interesting to see.

• The guitar/ukelele based indie genre seems back with a bang, influenced now by the lofi wave.

• Nusrat’s new album Chain of Light is not on this playlist, because we are still processing it. These playlists take a fair amount of work, and we had to do Nusrat’s album justice. But we would be remiss to not call it out.