Qawwal Hamza Akram and his party perform at the Baithak programme at PNCA on Tuesday night. — Photos by Tanveer Shahzad
ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan National Council of Arts (PNCA) hosted a musical evening, ‘Baithak’, Tuesday night to celebrate the diversity of music in the country.
A baithak is a common feature of rural life, where people gather to eat, talk and at times enjoy music together.
The concept of hosting the musical evening as a baithak was put forward by the College of Youth Activism and Development (CYAAD) and ‘Dastaan’, which utilises art and culture as a tool for social change and development.
During the evening, traditional music from Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Sindh was played and the Hamza Akram group put on a qawwali performance.
Wearing a traditional Balochi turban, Khwand Bux Bugti from Dera Bugti presented popular Balochi instrumental pieces, Ustad Gulab Khel who is a renowned Rubab player presented popular folk tunes from KP and Akbar Khameso Khan played the alghoza.
Pashto folk singer Ustad Ahmed Gul, who specialises in ‘tappa’ and ‘charbeta’ performed popular Pashtu songs. Accompanying the artists was Farman Ali Khan on the keyboard and Muraad Khan on the tabla.
The second part of the evening consisted of a performance of five qawwali by qawwal Hamza Akram and his party, who performed poems by different Sufi poets of the region, including those of Amir Khusro. The qawwalis they performed included ‘ya Ali’, ‘bhar do jholi’, ‘chaap tilak sab cheen li’, ‘rang’ and the group also paid tribute to the late Amjad Sabri with a performance of ‘tajdar-i-haram’.
Talking to Dawn, an audience member Faizanul Haq said he found the event ‘mesmerising’.
“We rarely see artists from all the provinces of the country perform together. The performances were epic, especially that of the qawwal group.