"you’ve almost certainly heard of her in the ether"

I felt this profile of wife of the show, Natasha Noorani, by Saba Imtiaz for Dunya Digital would be of interest to Hamnawa’s audience.

She’s a full-time musician — in this economy — and so fully immersed in the world of not just creating music, but the whole product — the look, clothes, merch, the visuals, the marketing — that it’s hard not to get the sense that Natasha is doing the most. She’s buying fabric for her outfits for her music videos, which she’s making on the cheap. She’s at the printer’s shop getting boxes made for her EP release. She is rearranging the chairs in her room for this interview’s video crew and brewing coffee. She’s incorporating references from Pakistani musicians into her work, her songs, into the whole experience of being a musician; some on the nose, some so deeply layered that they need to be pointed out. It’s those samples and reference points and visuals that are making their way into the music she is making now.

In particular, this piece is notable because Saba Imtiaz was one of the editors for Bandbaja, an OG music magazine that helped define the early 2000s era of Pakistani music and has shaped a lot of our thinking since. The piece includes some quotes from me, and I was frankly just elated to speak about one of my inspirations to another.