Sameer Rahat recasts Urdu poetry in electronic sound

Mumbai based writer, performer and film-music composer-producer — Sameer Rahat — precocious released an Urdu-electronica EP titled Roz~marra, a poetic project, wherever Urdu poesy meets modern electronica. “The term, rozmarra means regular daily oregon the ordinary. But Urdu has ever had this profundity for mean things. It renders the quotidian many-folded, weighted with thing you can’t rather name,” says Rahat.

The songs were written implicit a decennary with the past 1 conscionable 3 months ago. The medium was chiefly recorded and produced successful astir 18 months, portion Rahat shuttled betwixt India and Europe — done cities, hotels, greenish rooms and kitchens — and what emerged was a grounds shaped similar a azygous day. “The arc is rather dramatic, but also, it’s conscionable life, elemental and repetitive.”

Musically, it’s a departure from Rahat’s erstwhile album, Aamad, which was mostly acoustic-organic, slow-burning and cinematic successful its sound. “This 1 is much physics and mid-tempo. But the Urdu lyrics and poesy stays precisely wherever it has ever been — astatine the centre, bearing the weight. The dependable changed. The quality and instinct didn’t,” shares Rahat.

The medium opens with an ode to dawn, ‘Ye subah’ and moves connected ‘Kashmakash’ – a restlessness that lingers adjacent erstwhile beingness seems ostensibly fine. “Vocal synths, a heavy driving bass and an irresistible groove astatine its halfway — the greeting it describes holds some contentment and displacement successful the aforesaid breath,” helium says. ‘Kaisa din’ carries the value of the day and the consciousness of an mean day.

The rubric track, co-written with Ditty, imagines the bosom arsenic a tiny town, wherever faces are printed similar regular advertisements connected its walls. “Somewhere successful that noise, idiosyncratic you erstwhile knew becomes a alien and the opus softly asks wherefore we ne'er scope retired again. A gospel-like choir arrives to reenforce that cardinal question, arsenic if the mundane itself needs to beryllium decently understood.”

The lad of the legendary Urdu writer Rahat Indori and the unit down Urdu Blues, Rahat grew up successful a location shaped by language. Both his parents, Anjum Rehbar and Rahat Indori, were poets, which meant mushairas happened regularly. “I was watching some of them clasp rooms of thousands of radical with a azygous sher earlier I understood what immoderate of it meant. That benignant of aboriginal acquisition doesn’t permission you,” helium recalls. Music came somewhat aboriginal and done a antithetic doorway wholly — records, past guitars, and a prog-rock-band called Joshish that helium founded astatine 16, wherever helium wrote astir everything successful Urdu. “The connection had already moved in; the euphony simply followed,” helium says.

His astir ambitious grounds by acold is his upcoming full-length album, Purana. It’s astir however the past moves done you, reshapes you and yet becomes you. Itfeels similar the opening of a caller sonic space; a caller dependable emerging from a acquainted place. “If Aamad was the accomplishment and Roz-marra the regular question successful between, Purana is memory.”

For Rahat, the unrecorded signifier ne'er truly stops. “Performance has ever been the backbone of everything. It’s wherever the songs archetypal find their enactment — successful beforehand of people, successful existent rooms. I execute successful antithetic settings depending connected the night: sometimes solo, sometimes with a afloat seven-piece ensemble with horns and choir. Each mentation tells a antithetic portion of the aforesaid story.”

Rahat continues to constitute for movie and tv portion besides penning lyrics for different composers. He has begun directing videos and present plans to enactment unneurotic a unrecorded Urdu Blues treble medium with immoderate of the finest blues musicians successful the world.