I wrote before about how my first exposure to Pakistani music was not from Mian but instead was from my Roommate at the time. After listening to a cd from Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, though, my second exposure to Pakistani music was ALSO not from my Mian - it was from his friend Muda.
He hung out with three other guys all the time, all four of them and in various combinations of 2 of them or 3 of them - sometimes I was also included. Once, M invited me to go somewhere with M and his friend Muda. It was the first time I ever got to ride in one of his friends cars (M didn't have a car when I met him) and I really liked the music that was playing. They told me it was arab music, not Pakistani music, but I still associated it with M because that was about the only international music I'd heard and I didn't hear it any other place except Muda's car.
A few weeks later, M told me he'd sent me a package in the mail (we lived about 75 miles apart so it wasn't easy to see each other whenever we wanted.) I waited. And waited. And waited. I am not a patient person. I asked M about it but he wouldn't tell me anything about it, not even a hint. Then one day, he told me he'd recieved the package back because he'd put the wrong address on the box. My lack of pateince got the best of me and I drove 75 miles to personally retreive my package, though he teased me that he was going to correct the address and mail it again and make me wait. Inside the package was a copy (copywright infrigement, surely) of the CD and a case with a special inscripted message for me.
For months, I listened to that and only that CD in my car. Even though I couldn't understand the words, I could eventually sing many of the songs from memory. Later, after another trip in Muda's car, I recieved another illegal copy of a CD, this time a Pakistani musician named Faakir. That one replaced my Arabic Groove cd and soon I was singing songs from Faakir's Aatish CD.
To this day, while sitting at my desk semi-mindlessly clicking through documents, occasionally these songs come on my iPod and I smile. They bring me back to feeling like I did in the very early days of infatuation with Mian and everything connected to him.
He hung out with three other guys all the time, all four of them and in various combinations of 2 of them or 3 of them - sometimes I was also included. Once, M invited me to go somewhere with M and his friend Muda. It was the first time I ever got to ride in one of his friends cars (M didn't have a car when I met him) and I really liked the music that was playing. They told me it was arab music, not Pakistani music, but I still associated it with M because that was about the only international music I'd heard and I didn't hear it any other place except Muda's car.
A few weeks later, M told me he'd sent me a package in the mail (we lived about 75 miles apart so it wasn't easy to see each other whenever we wanted.) I waited. And waited. And waited. I am not a patient person. I asked M about it but he wouldn't tell me anything about it, not even a hint. Then one day, he told me he'd recieved the package back because he'd put the wrong address on the box. My lack of pateince got the best of me and I drove 75 miles to personally retreive my package, though he teased me that he was going to correct the address and mail it again and make me wait. Inside the package was a copy (copywright infrigement, surely) of the CD and a case with a special inscripted message for me.
For months, I listened to that and only that CD in my car. Even though I couldn't understand the words, I could eventually sing many of the songs from memory. Later, after another trip in Muda's car, I recieved another illegal copy of a CD, this time a Pakistani musician named Faakir. That one replaced my Arabic Groove cd and soon I was singing songs from Faakir's Aatish CD.
To this day, while sitting at my desk semi-mindlessly clicking through documents, occasionally these songs come on my iPod and I smile. They bring me back to feeling like I did in the very early days of infatuation with Mian and everything connected to him.
No comments:
Post a Comment