Pakistan's government does nothing to spread our culture: Mekaal Hasan
Our performance at music fest SXSW in Texas is possible by US State Department funding, not Pakistani funding, he says
“It feels just like we’ve gone 15 or 20 years back in time in Lahore,” says actor, singer and musician Haroon Shahid, as he meets Mekaal Hasan — producer, guitarist and overall frontman of the eponymous Mekaal Hasan Band (MHB).
He says this to me after the end of MHB’s recent final concert in Karachi. The concert was a tribute to the legendary qawwal that put Pakistan on the global map — Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (NFAK).
Haroon is not wrong. The era of Pakistani music he is referencing was probably among the most exciting in recent times. It was the era of regular concerts by Noori, Aaroh, Entity Paradigm, The Call, Mizraab and Overload, to name just a few. There were frequent collaborations between creative forces in music and newer voices kept emerging now and then, eager to make their mark. It was definitely a very happening time in Pakistani music, indeed.
Incidentally, it was Mekaal himself who first introduced Haroon to yours truly. At that time, Mekaal used to call him Haroon5 because of the latter’s habit of covering Maroon 5’s songs during his concerts.
There’s one thing about Mekaal that I don’t think most people know — that he has always gone out of his way to promote up-and-coming artists and acts he believes are promising. And he’s usually right on the money.
He told me to watch out for Co-VEN (which has a massive cult following), Symt (Haroon’s band), Sahil (they had a massive one-hit wonder — a single called ‘Dil Chaahay’), Zeb and Haniya, and others.
And here we are, all of us together in the same space — along with a few older faces — after more than a decade, experiencing Mekaal bring together another set of extremely talented artists and create magic — absolute magic — on stage.
“Bohat pasand kar rahay hain loag [people are really liking it],” says Mekaal. “You weren’t at the previous performance, but everyone was there — Bilal Maqsood, Tapu Javeri, Frieha Altaf, Ayesha Omar… saaray puranay dost, sab aaye [all the old friends attended it].”
This NFAK tribute didn’t just come out of the blue. Back in 2023, Mekaal was working with the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto on a project that required him to put together a Toronto-based version of his band — a mix of Canadians and artists from South Asia — and they performed works from MHB’s earlier albums, Saptak, Sampooran and Andholan.
“Since it was an Islamic art museum, I asked the programme director if they had anything from Pakistan,” remembers Mekaal. It turns out they didn’t. Mekaal then suggested a tribute show centring on the impact of Night Song, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s last album. Produced by a Canadian called Michael Brook and released by Peter Gabriel’s Real World Records in 1996, it was the only album NFAK never truly performed live. He passed away just months later, in 1997.
“That link to Canada was already there 30 years ago,” says Mekaal. “We should keep that bond — and that dialogue — going with this generation of musicians and artists. I just had to come back to Pakistan and develop that record.”
After touring overseas, Mekaal brought the show to Pakistan. And what an amazing experience it was. The best way to describe it is: a perfect blend of qawwali and progressive rock that highlights each artist’s mastery of their instrument or voice and weaves them together in perfect harmony.
Leading the performance at this NFAK tribute was a relatively new face of the MHB — Shehzad Ali Khan — who mirrored Nusrat’s tenor and tone powerfully and effortlessly. He brought NFAK’s compositions to life in a way that not only did them justice, but elevated them, adding a touch of freshness tinged with a lot of nostalgia.
Mekaal discovered him when he first launched Rivayat, a music series in which he features and produces relatively unknown classical, folk and qawwal artists.
“Shehzad is, like, really super-talented,” says Mekaal. “He’s really nice to work with. Humble and jolly, he is a pleasant guy to work with. He was the first person to record for us, and he brought in a song called ‘Tauba’, which he had composed. So, we did that, and I arranged a collaboration for him with a couple of my friends from the UK and France.”
He adds: “We’ve toured together since then. I’ve been working with him for close to six to seven years, knowing him and developing music with him. He’s from a qawwal family. His father and son also perform it. Locally, people know his father, but he himself is relatively not that well-known.
“It’s unlikely that Pakistan will produce someone with such a unique imprint on world culture as much as Nusrat sahib, honestly,” adds Mekaal. “I wanted to be the one to bring this to life with authentic voices from Pakistan, so we don’t lose that flavour.”
How old was Mekaal when Night Song came out? “I’m 53 right now,” he replies with a chuckle. “This was exactly 30 years ago, so I was 23. I had just returned [from the Berklee College of Music in the United States] and was figuring out what to do with my life.”
Has he had a chance to speak with the original producer of the album, Michael Brook? “I wrote to him earlier when I was putting the music together,” says Mekaal. “I just cold-called him and sent him some stuff I had done.” Brook wrote back, expressing interest meeting with him. He later flew to Toronto to record a three-hour interview with Mekaal for a documentary that he’s putting together about the making of this project.
Did he share any interesting stories about Nusrat? “No!” exclaims Mekaal. “I asked him, but he didn’t have the time. Nusrat didn’t speak English, and they didn’t speak Punjabi or Urdu, so communication was extremely limited. They would just be recording in the studio. [Brook] mentioned that he spent about two entire days with him without any real conversation.”
Does Brook grasp the impact of NFAK or this album worldwide, especially for South Asians?
“No,” chuckles Mekaal. “He knows it was a huge record in our part of the world. I asked him if he had done similar ones with other artists, and he said, ‘No, that’s the only time I did that kind of work with someone like Nusrat.’ After that, Real World Records shifted focus to West African sound and picked up artists from Mali, Ghana, Senegal, etc.”
The Night Song album opens with a West African legend, Baaba Maal from Senegal, playing a traditional stringed instrument called the kora. “He was recording in another studio at Real World,” says Mekaal. “As he was practising in the hallway, Brook and Gabriel heard him and essentially said, ‘Idhar aa jao zara dou minute ke liye [Come here and join us for a couple of minutes]’. Baaba Maal recorded the intro and went back to do his own recording.”
One of the most interesting stories that Mekaal related came from his conversation with Brook about the erroneous edit of ‘Mast Mast’.
“They recorded the whole track with Nusrat,” says Mekaal. “They then chopped it up, keeping only the parts that they liked and then added the music. But the way they cut up the vocals didn’t make any sense.”
He continues, “Nusrat ended up taking a lot of flak for it, even though it wasn’t his fault. They [the producers] thought it was all the same and they would put the record out.”
‘Dama Dam Mast Qalandar’, or NFAK’s version ‘Dam Mast Mast’, is widely believed to have been originally written by the 13th-century poet and musician Amir Khusrau. It was composed in honour of the Sufi saint Lal Shahbaz Qalandar and is believed to have been later modified by the Punjabi poet Baba Bulleh Shah.
“Only when the album came out did Nusrat find out that they had chopped up the kalaam the wrong way. Brook admitted it wasn’t Nusrat’s fault — it was his,” reveals Mekaal. This is huge. Thirty years after the album was released, Nusrat’s name is now being cleared. I even saw a small clip from the interview in which Brook admits they kept what sounded good to them.
Hopefully, this ‘mistake’ will be fixed in the tribute record that MHB will be releasing, featuring tracks from NFAK’s Night Song. “I feel like a lot of songs in Night Song were still in draft form — the melody was there, but the structure was very loose,” says Mekaal. “I just took songs from Night Song and arranged them.”
They have also added their own verses and sections. “In ‘Ni Sayyon’ [Naina De Aa Ke], for example, there are fresh verses that are not Nusrat’s. Shehzad wrote those because Ni Sayyon Akhan, Naina De Aa Ke Lagay, is the only line that was ever originally released. There are no NFAK verses beyond that. Shahzad then composed the rest. The antra is new, but you won’t notice — it will feel like Nusrat wrote it.”
Both the album and the documentary film covering the making of the tribute album, the tour and, most importantly, that interview with Brook, will hopefully be released after Eidul Fitr. The Aga Khan Museum in Toronto will also release its own version.
This year, other than being the 30th year of Night Song’s release, also marks the 25th year of MHB.
“Twenty-five years of somehow surviving,” laughs Mekaal. “Yehi achievement honi chahiye! Baqi sab, [expletive]iss ne gana banaya ke nahin chhorro… woh survive kar gaye yahi barri baat hai! [That is what the achievement should be counted as! Forget whether they made a song or not, that they survived is what really matters]!”
In the 25 years that MHB has been active, they’ve gone through different standalone eras, leaving a defining mark on Pakistan’s musical landscape in each. The lead singers have changed — from Javed Bashir to Sharmista Chatterjee to the late Asad Abbas, and now Shehzad Ali Khan — but one constant has always been Mekaal.
“Producer-led projects are accepted more now,” says Mekaal, adding that the concept would have gone over people’s heads earlier. “I’m doing more in terms of flexing my music taste. You guys have only heard me do this classical thing. Now, I’m working in qawwali, and then I’m going to go into more pop and folk pop. I have all these other influences people don’t know about. They think I only know about jazz.”
What I noticed at the concert was that people still remember, enjoy, and want to listen to some of the older music that MHB has done, but Mekaal seems so ‘over it’.
“I don’t think we’re going to top ourselves with that material, not with the people that I am hearing now,” says Mekaal firmly. “I’m not hearing the skill level those songs require. Rather than massacring them, I’d rather work with someone new with a different skill set.
“Shehzad sings amazing qawwali, but he’s not a classical singer,” he points out. “He’s easy to work with, and I can create different kinds of music with him.”
I protest: Mekaal might be over it, but audiences still want to listen to the classics! “They’ve got tonnes of that s*** out there,” he retorts. “All of the recordings, sara kuchh parra hai, uss ko sunn lain. Ab kuchh aur hoga [all of it is out there, just go and listen to that. Now it’s going to be different]. I don’t want to be that kind of guy who plays his one [expletive] hit song for 30 years. I didn’t go to music school for that.”
He adds, resolutely, “I want to play different things now. I’ve done that s*** for 20 or 25 years. I don’t want to do that anymore.”
Mekaal isn’t looking back. He’s tuning into the future. As for his progressive rock Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan tribute — somewhere between reverence and rebellion, a new sound is being born.
Originally published in Dawn, ICON, February 1st, 2026