DAWN
Tuesday Review, Jan 23-29, 1996
Profile: Sohail Rana
A few weeks back there was a musical
programme arranged by some university students. The band on
the stage was singing Kokokorina, and the unsuspecting crooner
mixed up a couple of lines. I was amazed to see that not only
did all the listeners begin hooting the performers, but they
also stopped them and repeated the whole song themselves, in
one voice, not a single line confused! This is indeed remarkable.
For a song to be living in the hearts of a generation that was
born about a decade after its first notes faded, is what makes
a song a “classic” (please don’t read classical).
And there is Sohail Rana, the
man behind Kokokorina. Of course, the classic owes a good deal
of its popularity to the lyricist, the singer, the performer
and the film director – all of whom were themselves big
stars in this particular case. But after all, how can you ignore
the composer.
Yet, upon meeting Mr Rana for
the first time my immediate reaction was that of disappointment.
I had expected to see a person who would reflect at least some
of the “young at heart” spirit that his song emanates.
But the man I met was an “uncle type” and just then
he was sermonizing an ex-student on all things good in life.
It was only when I was nearing the end of Side B of my first
C-90 cassette that I began to see connections between the different
facets of Sohail Rana.
Sohail Rana comes from a learned
literary but somewhat conservative middle class family. His
father was Raana Akbarabadi, a renowned poet. Sohail’s
first passion was painting. It was only when his paints were
stolen that he turned towards music for the satisfaction of
his father. The latter was aghast when he learnt that his son
had not only learnt music, but was also toying with the idea
about making a name in it. Any name associated with a performing
art was, of course, bad for a typical middle class family of
the times.
“In fact, this was one of
the major reasons of my taking up music. I asked myself if music
is such a bad thing then what was the music that Hazrat Amir
Khusro gave us? What about the works of Shah Abdul Lateef Bhitai
and other Sufis? What double standards we have! We listen to
the qawwals and ghazal singers but treat them as outcastes.
I decided that I will change these double standards”.
Some years later Sohail produced
Doraha (1967). It includes a scene where Waheed Murad (playing
a singer in the movie), declares proudly before Talish (playing
the singer’s college professor): “My art is a necessity
for the society!” and he gets a repartee from Talish:
“Yes, but this necessity is sold at the prostitutes’
den in our society.”
Unlike Waheed in the film, Sohail
in real life could not summon enough courage to face his elders
over such an issue, and instead sent his sister to convey his
reply: “Father,” said Sohail with his sister as
mediator. “Please look at the changing world. How professions
are growing. The job that was once done by the humble jolahas
(weavers) has now been taken up by textile industrialists. The
job of the dhobis is now owned by prestigious dry cleaners.
The job of the hajjam has now been taken up by respectable women
who call themselves beauticians, and hold diplomas from London
and Paris. This only proves my one point. That there is no profession
good or bad, but only how we do it. If you want me to give up
music and take up engineering, I sure will obey you. But why
do you think that I will end up playing harmonium in a brothel
if I take up music? Why can’t you imagine me playing music
in the United Nations?”
It worked. He was given a test
period of six months. If he could not prove within six months
what he had claimed before his father, then he would have to
become an engineer. It so happened that within those six months
of 1962, Sohail Rana got himself appointed as a composer in
Radio Pakistan, began composing music for EMI. He also got assigned
as a composer for the television displayed at the Philips stalls
in an exhibition (TV had not yet come to Pakistan) and last,
not the least, he entered into a contract as the music director
for a film. This producer was Waheed Murad, who had booked Rana
for his second venture, Jab Say Dekha Hai Tumhain (starring
Darpan, since Waheed had not started acting by that time).
“And how old were you then?”
“Nineteen!”
“And how did you enter into
a contract with Waheed Murad?”
“I first met him through
a friend. It was some party… and I had taken my accordion
to amuse them. We became good friends.”
Waheed himself was only 22. And
did he influence Sohail’s music? Or did Sohail influence
him?
“I will not say we influenced
one another. We were one. We use to spend a lot of time together.
(This includes other members of the team, Pervaiz Malik, the
director and Masroor Anwar, the lyricist). Even on the sets
we remained friends. Waheed would never pretend to be vain or
make us feel that he was the boss around there. We believed
in respecting each other’s work, each other’s feelings
and efforts. And we never closed our minds to anybody’s
suggestion.”
After Jab Say … came Heera
Aur Patthar (1964) which starred Waheed as a hero. This was
the film which brought for Sohail the well-deserved praise of
his work from his first opponent: his father.
But the best was yet to come.
A song which deserves a note here. “I did not compose
that song. It came to me one night when I was dreaming. Call
it intuition. I noted the composition down the next morning,
and gave it ‘dummy lines’, so that I may not forget:
Akalay nah jana hamein chore kar tum. Tumharay bina hum bhala
kiya jiyein gay.
Sohail included this tune in a
film he was making those days, but the producer (not Waheed
Murad, this time!) could not afford to record the song with
65 musicians in Lahore, and approached Sohail to accept arrangements
for second class recording. But this kind of compromise would
have been quite unlike Sohail’s nature, who had always
dictated conditions for his own work. He disassociated from
that film and together with his friend Pervaiz Malik, launched
his own production, Doraha (released three years later in 1967).
He decided to include his song in Doraha, so that he may get
it recorded in his own style. “The tune reached Waheed’s
ears one day, as I was humming it. He said, ‘it’s
a good song, just give it to me’. I said, ‘No, it’s
Doraha’s song’. ‘But Doraha’s a long
way, and I am launching my own film. I have even conceived the
story and this song fits in well. The film is going to be called
Arman.”
Sohail put his conditions before
Waheed, who met them by offering him a blank cheque. “I
agree to all your conditions. I just want that song!”
And that is how Arman came about.
Sohail Rana thinks he achieved
something in Arman (1966). “Film is a medium which embodies
all the performing arts within it – painting, poetry,
music, decoration, what not. Our field is music, therefore we
(the music directors) restrict ourselves (to composing music).
But composing is more than turning words into music. You have
to study the character. The point in Arman is that is is the
story of a young boy who is modern, and likes to go out to clubs.
And what used to happen in those clubs was rock ‘n’
roll, foxtrot, twist…. If he sings a song there, what
should he sing? Of course, something which has a western touch,
western beat, western instruments. That is what we did to Kokokorina.
But we kept its background a bit oriental. Kokokorina was meant
to depict the boy’s character as we find him at the beginning
of the story. As he matures through falling in love with a girl,
he undergoes a reformation. Now he is not a visitor of the clubs;
he does not take his beloved to the club, nor does he want such
a girl as his beloved. So, now he expresses his emotion through
Akailay na jana…. Which is based on raga Aiman. This
song embodies our own (oriental) art, our own value, our own
metaphors. Later, when that same boy goes back to the club,
he is singing a different song. Things at the club appear to
him as false shadows (Saye ki talab karney walo) and he expresses
himself in raga Bhopali: (Jab piyar main do dil miltay hain….
Now this song is a long way from Kokokorina you see, I have
made the same character sing three different types of songs
at three different phases in his life, I have given you justification
for each one.”
Yet film music is just one of
the many sides of Sohail Rana’s talent. “The main
thing which I would like to convey to posterity, which I learnt
from my seniors and elders, is that one should never keep all
one’s eggs in one basket. This is also, if I may say,
the reason of my success. Had I limited myself to the film,
leaving films would have posed a problem of survival for me.
And (also) I thought that if I only work in films then I am
a film composer, not a composer. To be a composer I must also
be able to produce commercials, symphonies, instrumentals, folk
dances, ballet, national songs, nursery rhymes. Only if I can
do all these things then shall I become a composer, otherwise
I am going to be branded as a film composer.”
Right at the very beginning of
his career, Sohail Rana was involved with a number of things.
His love affair with gramophone records had produced a hit number
by about the same time as his earlier films were released. This
was called folk tunes of Pakistan, which was produced against
the advice of the EMI management. Nobody thought it had any
chance of selling but it did record business.
Two years later came Shahbaz Qalandar
and around 1970, Khyber Mail. This time Sohail Rana had the
luxury of doing it the way he liked to do his work: on his own
terms. He made the EMI Company import equipment for stereophonic
recording, make arrangements for producing LPs, change the printer
of record “sleeves”, improve the microphones at
the EMI studios and arrange for publicity banquets.
“May I tell you why I was
so determined to release these records, based on Pakistani folk
tunes? It was because I had seen an eight-year-old girl in Come
September. This was 1964. You could not have imagined western
music being played in a middle class family. And there it was,
an eight-year-old from the middle class dancing to the tune
of Come September. I was shocked. If this goes on like that,
our younger generation will run away to the west and forget
its own traditions. What do I do? Why not use these kinds of
beat, tune…. But with out own melody? And then I thought,
why not folk?”
For most of the younger generation,
Sohail Rana is to be recognized by the songs he wrote and composed
for children. “My own son learnt ABC through a song his
teacher taught him. My father tried to teach him Alif, bay,
pay, but the child would not pick up. Then one day I sat down
and composed a song of the Urdu alphabet. It took only half
hour for my son to learn it. Once again, his grandfather was
convinced of the magical power of music.” In 1968, Sohail
Rana started Kaliyon ki Mala, a music programme for children
on TV. The programme continued under various titles right up
to the 1980s.
In all it had around two hundred
students over a period of time, including as Nazia Hasan, Afshan,
Anwar Ibrahim and some others. In these programmes he followed
a rigorous code of discipline for his pupils. Quite contrary
to the expectations one might gather from his smiling, soft-spoken
personality that appeared when the camera light went on, he
was as harsh to his pupils as a Victorian schoolmaster at all
other times.
“The elders have to present
themselves as models before their young ones. And not temporarily
but perpetually. And these values can only be passed on to the
younger generation while they are growing up, but you cannot
cultivate them once they have become mature persons.”
During his long association with
the television, he also composed patriotic songs that gained
enormous popularity, second only to the national anthem. To
mention three: Sohni Dharti, Jeevay Pakistan and Hum Mustafavi
Hain.
Now, he has turned his attention
towards what is the big dream of most great composers. Symphony.
“Now I want to compose symphonies. On Omar Khayam, Bu
Ali Sina, who are our heroes. A few years back I composed an
Anarkali symphoniette. Now I am reconceiving it. Maybe, I shall
be able to present it with a big symphony orchestra with sitar
and tabla. I am trying to do my best, however, I have been managing
a number of things at the same time, and mind you, none of them
get done substandard. You should organize yourself in such a
way that not a single moment goes waste. And balance is the
key. My father wrote me a poem when I was getting married. It
is a pandnama (advice).
But why did Sohail Rana leave
the film industry? Well, his feelings towards the film are ambivalent.
“Film is the best of all media,” he says. Yet he
left it when he was at the peak of his film career. And he left
it because a friend made him realize that he had done nothing
for his country, and could not do anything in that direction
through films. But he also left it because it was becoming stale,
and he was no longer getting teams to his own liking. “
I don not say this as a matter of pride, but I like to work
with educated people. I might have contributed more had there
been more people like Javed Jabbar, Rashid Mukhtar and Waheed
Murad… I did not leave the film industry with an announcement
that I will never come back. In fact, I did go back to do Beyond
the Last Mountain for Javed Jabbar. But I cannot work with people
who do not believe representing our own culture in our films.
“I decided that I must temporarily
disassociate myself from the industry because the films it was
producing were rubbish, and I thought that the reputation that
I had earned will be tarnished if I continue…. And then
actually came a time when I met Waheed – my friend, my
mentor – with sunken eyes, completely dejected, forlorn,
in despair. I said to him, ‘turn your attention towards
film-making, like Raj Kapoor. (What if you have become unpopular
as a hero), you started primarily as a distributor and as producer.
It was a mere chance that brought you to acting. You have even
directed a film (Ishara, in which he even sang a song for me
although the song was never released)’.
Poor Waheed said to me, ‘when
you left the industry we called you a fool. Now we see that
you were right and we were wrong’.”
A career in music has brought
Sohail what he had envisaged – he has not just played
music in the United Nations, but also received the Peace Messenger
Award from it. And how does he feel about it? “There was
once a time when my parents wanted me to become an engineer,
but nature wanted me to become a composer. So here I am. My
parent’s apprehensions were correct, because learning
music did affect my formal studies (which were left in a very
bad state at the end) but I do not think I have paid a heavy
price. Had I become an engineer I would have led a regulated
life but with regret that I could not accomplish what I had
aimed for in life. Today I have everything I might have had
acquired as an engineer, plus the satisfaction that I have done
what I wanted to do. I have given back the nobility and respectability
that this art deserved, which it (had) always enjoyed but for
a time being which people (had started denying it). The same
parents, the same relatives, the same friends, the same neighbours,
who used to consider (music) a bad thing, started taking pride
in calling me their friend, their neighbour. But I haven’t
done anything: a diamond, which was a diamond, had accumulated
dust. I have just wiped away the dust. And the diamond has started
shining again.
