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Ali Sethi’s infectious hit ‘Pasoori’ reverberates from Pakistan to Coachella

A tale of forbidden love with an infectious hook, Ali Sethi’s song “Pasoori” has become an international phenomenon, fusing poetic tradition with global beats to fuel the rise of the Pakistani singer’s star.

The Punjabi track whose title roughly translates to “difficult mess” was 2022’s most-searched song on Google and has surpassed half a billion views on YouTube, offering a melodic metaphor for conflict between India and Pakistan in the form of an impassioned love song with an eminently danceable flow.

The song’s origins stem from when Sethi was asked to pen a song for the popular Pakistani television program Coke Studio, which occurred just after an experience where an Indian broadcaster had pulled out of a creative partnership because the 38-year-old is Pakistani.

“You’re a Pakistani, and India and Pakistan are at war, and now we can’t really put up a billboard saying we’re working with you because extremists will set fire to our building,” the singer recalls being told.

“As a Pakistani I’ve grown up with that… ‘Oh you can’t do this because it’s prohibited, yada yada.'”

The experience got his creative wheels turning: “Of course the theme of prohibition is such an eternal theme in South Asian love songs — all true love is prohibited,” he told AFP following an electrifying party of a performance at the Coachella music festival in the United States, a cherry on top of his remarkable year.

“So I wanted to write a song that was sort of a flower bomb hurled at nationalism and hetero-patriarchy,” Sethi continued, wearing a wide-brimmed hat and black button-up with colorful embroidery alluding to styles of the American southwest. “With all the fun innuendos and all this camp energy.”

He says he drew on Punjabi folk songs of his youth, imbuing the lyrics with puns and double entendres, “a nice way to slip in and subvert orthodox views without really appearing to be out beyond the veil.”

He performs the track with Shae Gill, a singer born to a Christian family in Lahore.

Sethi was “astounded” by the global response to the song, which has the improvisational framework of a traditional South Asian “raga” mixed with the region’s contemporary sounds, along with Turkish strings, flamenco-style claps and the four-four Latino reggaeton beats keeping rhythm for much of today’s reigning pop.

“I thought it was going to be this like, indie, niche thing that a bunch of my nerdy fans were gonna like,” Sethi laughed. “I’m just astounded by how many people around the world — particularly in India — loved it and embraced it.”

– ‘The latest wild idea’ –

The son of journalist Najam Sethi and politician Jugnu Mohsin, Ali Sethi is also a published author, who began his formal Hindustani classical musical training after graduating from university. He studied Qawwali, a form of Sufi devotionals, and ghazal, a style of lyricism traceable to ancient Arabic poetry.

Today he lives in New York, and is enjoying the “fertile frontier” of…

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