It’s one of those days where you wake up and find a contemporary musician ruining the precious little we have left of Pakistan’s musical legacy. And I’m not being a purist by saying that old songs shouldn’t be remixed or revamped: Coke Studio educated so many millenials on beautiful and rich Pakistani songs which we may have not taken the time to discover had they not been reproduced on the show. However, they need to be done well and Komal Rizvi seems to not care about preserving the legacy of a beautiful folk song.
‘Chitta Kukkar Banere Te‘ is a traditional Punjabi folk song usually sung at weddings and also made famous by the award winning Pakistani singer and actress, Muassarat Nazir. On the other hand, Komal Rizvi’s version, ‘Yeh Kya Hua Hai Re‘, has been reproduced for the show Cornetto Pop Rock 2, and has me in tears. Of sadness.
First of all, I won’t even argue over whether Komal Rizvi can sing or not. That’s a debate that nobody can settle and my personal opinion is that she should throw in the towel. However, she has star value and loves delivering energetic and colourful performances (as most of her music videos are well choreographed) so she does make for a good performer.
But does that give you the license to ruin a good song? ‘Yeh Kya Hua Hai’ is a cover of the punjabi folk song and Komal Rizvi has given it her own twist by adding a meaningless chorus and generic lyrics. Also, the video is depicting a club scene so this remix is supposedly a club number except that it’s not…? It’s too slow to ever be played at a club or a party and the musical composition is not music to the ears.
However, it’s clear that all the hard work, planning and execution has gone into making the video. It has been directed and edited well and the back up dancers have really tried to elevate the mood of an otherwise mediocre cover by dancing to the best of their abilities.
Therefore what is clear is that the song ‘Yeh Kya Hua Hai Re’ has just been made FOR the video, and not the other way around. Cornetto needed to shoot a video for their show, they didn’t want to make the effort of writing or producing an original song so they picked up an old song, made Komal Rizvi sing it, and then jazzed it all up with a colourful and vibrant video. If I heard this song playing somewhere without knowing who sang it and why, I wouldn’t even have paid any attention to it because it’s not memorable without the visuals.
Here’s the original by Musarrat Nazir (or at least the version we love)…
