It was the summer of 1985, and TV audiences across the country were spellbound by Thari playwright Abdul Qadir Junejo’s PTV drama serial Karwaan. The drama depicted the story of the rise to popularity and subsequent exploitation by corporate world barons — in the guise of the patronage and promotion of a ‘cultural symbol’ — of a fictional Thari female folk singer called Sukhaan, played by Huma Akbar.

Quite surprisingly, at the same time, something else was brewing in the foothills of the Karoonjhar mountain range in the Thar desert. The summer had brought with it severe drought, forcing the area’s inhabitants to migrate to irrigated areas, as they often did in times of drought.

That year’s caravan of migrating people and livestock included a small family from Kharsar village comprising, among others, a 19-year-old girl named Hakeemaan. She would later rise to prominence under the stage name of Fozia Soomro — the quintessential folk singer of Sindhi and Marwari languages.

Following the trajectory of both the life and career of Karwaan’s Sukhaan, Fozia Soomro significantly reshaped the culture of ’90s Sindh and, within the span of a decade, revamped its musical landscape. Twenty years after her death, on this day, Fozia’s voice still reverberates in every nook and corner of Sindh.

Today marks the 20th death anniversary of folk singer Fozia Soomro, who reshaped the culture of Sindh and revamped its musical landscape

Not belonging to any traditional singer community, Fozia inherited the art of singing from both her parents, who used to sing mauloods (religious songs) in Nangarparkar in Thar. Apart from accompanying her mother in singing mauloods, Fozia also started singing in weddings as well. But being a secular and poverty-ridden area, Thar offered little space for such occasions or the flourishing of Fozia’s singing skills.

However, that water shortage-forced migration turned out to be a watershed moment in her career, as her family settled in Tando Muhammad Khan — some 25kms from Hyderabad. There she had plenty more opportunities to sing but, initially, her parents did not let her sing in public owing to social pressures and the prevailing orthodox policies of Gen Zia’s hardline regime.

Fozia had already made up her mind, however. She secretly tried to visit the Hyderabad Radio Station for auditions a number of times but in vain, because the watchmen would deny her entry. Then, in 1987, Radio Hyderabad’s music producer Naseer Mirza heard her sing at a wedding reception and later recorded a song with her, which became an instant hit.

Fozia’s was a raw talent, however, and the lack of proper music training was a bottleneck in the advancement of her musical career. This was a time when, as someone aptly put it recently, a girl would go to a music teacher to become a pupil and he would often say “shaagirdi ko chhorain, nikaah mein aajayein” [Leave aside becoming my student, marry me]. But Fozia was lucky as, instead of an ustaad, two musicians from Radio Hyderabad stepped up to teach her music.

Dholak nawaz Ghulam Hussain Kaleri and sarangi nawaz Majeed Khan were the two musicians Fozia considered her ustaads till the day she breathed her last. Meanwhile, Bilawal Otho, now an octogenarian poet of Thar, and Meva Faqir were the other men who also contributed significantly in her career, helping her improvise the sad and sombre tunes which were lying lost in the sand dunes of Thar.

Bilwal Otho recalls the rise of the melody queen of Sindh quite fondly and poetically. “She was a peacock’s cry. She was a wild, lonely flower.”

Before Fozia Soomro, musical traditions in Sindh were limited to a few feudal families. She created an aura of her own by not only improvising the folk songs of Thar, and making them popular across Sindh and Balochistan, but also by reaching out to a large population through her audio cassettes. Almost all her albums were recorded and released from the small town of Mirpurkhas, but every release marked an event across both the provinces, as people desperately waited for it.

Her fan base primarily comprised people belonging to the lower strata of society, who would buy her albums for 25 rupees and play it on their cassette players repeatedly. She holds the record for being the only Sindhi language singer who released 110 albums in just over a decade.

In doing so, she helped demolish the sense of patriarchy that had held Sindhi music hostage in general, and the music industry in particular. During that period, patriarchy had influenced the music world to such an extent that female singers such as Rubina Haidri used to sing while wearing men’s clothing. Fozia challenged this sense of patriarchy and founded her own niche.

Fozia Soomro was an all-important component of the bus, tractor and hotel culture that prevailed in Sindh throughout the 1990s. Sadly, that culture is fast fading away, but Fozia’s voice still resonates in every village of Sindh, a testament to her excellent singing skills.

Throughout her brief singing career that spanned over a decade, Fozia not only revamped the folk music of the Sindhi, Gujrati and Marwari languages, she also left an indelible impression on Sindhi society and its culture. Fozia Soomro not only enriched the music of Sindh but also those associated with the music industry, who made huge fortunes through the sale of her albums.

In the 1990s, Sindh was in the grip of dacoits and people in the rural areas would suffer sleepless nights in fear. “We were unable to sleep because of the fear of dacoits on the one hand, and Fozia’s soothing voice coming from the tractor’s tape recorder on the other,” says Abdullah Halepoto, a diehard fan of Fozia who, he says, triggered fond memories of a long lost love for him.

Sadly, unlike Sukhaan, who returns to her native village at the end of the drama serial Karwaan, Hakeemaan aka Fozia Soomro — who also left her village amid a drought — could never return to Kharsar village. She breathed her last at the young age of 36 years in a hospital near Karachi’s shoreline.

Fiction and reality may intertwine in remarkable ways but, sometimes, reality can be even more tragic than fiction.

The writer is a freelancer and tweets at @gobindmeghwar

Published in Dawn, ICON, September 4th, 2022