Some albums are made to mark a moment. Others are made because the artist has something they need to say. For this record, the writing became a way for Bilal Ali to process grief, memories, family and the complicated business of moving forward.
“It’s been a long day without you, my friend
And I’ll tell you all about it when I see you again” – ‘See you again’
by Wiz Khalifa
He started writing. It was like a form of therapy where you pen down your deepest emotions in a journal. But Bilal Ali is also an artist. What he was writing were not simple words. He was writing stories in the form of lyrics. It was a cathartic process, the only way he could process grief, the monster that can come out even if you think you are done mourning. What began as lyrical storytelling eventually took the shape of an album (that’s coming out next month). Each song has a story behind it; some songs are so open to interpretation that what was the compelling emotion for Bilal might not be the same for a listener.
The soft-spoken singer-song-writer of music group Kashmir and a dynamic solo artist in his own right, was surprisingly forthcoming about making a solo record as he recounted the phases that led to this album. If Bilal Ali trusts you, he will speak his mind. We spoke about many things (some of which will stay off-record) including why he is becoming wary of veteran artists, his views on the industry and how it is designed to push forward a solo artist instead of a six-member band. Why he chooses to focus on the positive for the sake of those he loves the most, even as he notices the apathy in the world. We both discuss parents as they get older and at times don’t take care of their health and as their adult children, we need to convince them to do so.
Bilal Ali’s experience in the industry (now spanning almost 10 years) has changed from the time when he was an emerging name in the music scene. For him, Kashmir is ‘his band of brothers,’ and he wants to clear the misconception that the band is not together anymore, not just by words but by action. Above all, he knows exactly who his friends are within the industry and why it is better to stay together in a tight-knit group rather than chase the social scene.
As for his debut album, Chota Sa Ghar (which Instep was provided before release), he is clear about its sonic distance from Kashmir albums from the start and has stayed true to his word.
Throughout his debut solo album, what is obvious is that he knows what kind of solo artist he hopes to be, making sure nothing has been overworked for the sake of polish.
In this interview, he talks about the emotions that led to this album, why some songs were more difficult than others and how he feels lighter after writing the album, which will release this October.
Instep: You’ve released music before, including collaborations with Janoobi Khargosh, Young Stunners, Natasha Noorani and others. What made this album different and when did you realise it needed to be a solo record?
Bilal Ali (BA): I’ve done quite a few songs before. ‘Dil’, which Janoobi produced, ‘Jeena Nahi’, ‘Aaz Maale’ with Young Stunners and ‘Har Kadam’ with Zahid Qureshi. I’ve collaborated with a lot of people, but with this album, I didn’t want to collaborate. It was too pure, too single-minded. I just wanted to let something out. The only collaboration on the album is with my wife on ‘Khaireyan De Naal’. I wrote the whole thing in a week. One song was left and I had two or three lines for it, but I didn’t understand why I had written them. That’s often how it goes for me, I write something and only realise later why. Until I understand the direction, the song isn’t finished, it’s just words over a set of chords.
Instep: What was happening in your life when the album began?
BA: My mother had literally just passed away. It was the third of Ramzan when I wrote ‘Kya Tum Khush Ho’. People might hear it as a travel song, a journey song. For me it’s something I wanted to say to my mother and something I wanted to hear from her. She used to be a fine artist, but after marriage and children she left all of that behind. Her whole world became her kids. The two things I heard her say most throughout her life were, “Did you eat?” and “When will you come home?” That was her love language. I wanted to make her dreams come true, fulfil her wishes, but she passed away before I could and those things were left unsaid. That’s what the song is about.
Instep: When did you realise these songs were becoming an album, rather than simply a collection of things you were writing?
BA: When I wrote ‘Kya Tum Khush Ho’ and then ‘Chota Sa Ghar’. Writing has always been my way of channelling emotion and I have dealt with grief before, but I’d never had to deal with losing a parent.
Instep: Losing a parent never gets easier, irrespective of age.
BA: Honestly, I couldn’t tell the people around me what I was going through, so I just kept writing. ‘Chota Sa Ghar’ came the same week. I’d go to Zahid (Qureshi) bhai and Sinnan Fazwani and they knew I’d finished writing because it flowed through me. ‘Chota Sa Ghar’, the first single from the album that’s been released, might sound like a love song and in some ways, it is, but it’s really about my childhood. We lived in Dubai from the time I was in class one to class five, in a two-room house. It was my mother, father, my sisters and me. That was the happiest time for all of us. Every song started forming that way. I knew I had to make the album because I needed to get what I was feeling into writing and let it out.
Instep: What came first: the sound you wanted or the stories you needed to get off your chest?
BA: The stories, always. I’d established early on to keep things simple: I’m going to tell a story and the lyrics defined those stories. I thought if I were locked in a room with a guitar and a recorder, what would I actually do? So that’s literally what we did. We locked ourselves in the studio, me, Sinnan and Zahid (bhai) and used instruments that were in the studio including ukulele, resonator, melodica. If the bass shows up in a song, it’s because the song needed it. On ‘Farvary’ I decided it should only come in at the end, so that’s how we left it. We didn’t want to add things just because they sounded nice. Even the harmonies in ‘Kya Tum Khush Ho’ aren’t there. I’d sing them while listening back, but we never recorded them. We wanted the message to land on its own; if you’re feeling it, you can sing along yourself. There’s a part in ‘Chota Sa Ghar’ with violins and I performed at LUMS recently and the crowd was singing that part, which I didn’t expect. It might be the most natural process I’ve ever had making music and it wasn’t just my work; a whole team of collaborators made this album possible including Rahada Tajwer, Hassan Ali Effendi, Saad Hayat, Sinnan Fazwani, Zahid Qureshi, Muneeb Haq, Saqib Kaleem, Bradley D’Souza, Vais Khan and Usman Siddiqui.
Instep: Which song took you the longest to get right?
BA: ‘Kya Tum Khush Ho’. On the surface you hear two guitars, but there were probably eight layers underneath and one demo take had a slightly off-time picking pattern that turned out to be the heart of the song, giving it a feeling almost like a ping-pong delay. We spent four or five months trying to work out the timing mathematically. When we finally finished it, it was probably the most rewarding song on the album, purely because of how long it took to get there.
Instep: Was there a song you nearly gave up on or didn’t have the courage to release?
BA: If I’m going to be honest, ‘Roya Tha Main’ was a song I just didn’t have the heart to put into this album. Maybe it’ll make the second one. I think I found my real closure through ‘Tasveerein’, but ‘Roya Tha Main’ just wasn’t ready.
Instep: Which song feels closest to the person you were while making this album?
BA: ‘Tasveerein’. The first line is about photographs in a drawer where we’re still happy and it is a constant reminder that this person isn’t here anymore. It was the one place I let myself fully express the suffering. It’s also the last song on the album, which felt right: this is what happened, this is what I carry and I have to keep going. I don’t tell everyone the full story behind the album, because people start assuming I’m depressed or constantly sad. I am grieving, but I’ve learned how to live with it.
Instep: Was there anything in the lyrics you worried people might take too literally across the album?
BA: Not really. The chorus of ‘Hum Tum’ says that when we meet, the world will end and it’s not literal; I’d built this whole fantasy around being with someone and then started wondering what happens to that world once I actually get there. People can take a song wherever they want. For one listener it’s a breakup song, for another a travel song, that’s the beauty of it. This album isn’t like the songs I’ve written with an intentional social message before like ‘Dhoop’; I was just being honest about what I was going through.
Instep: Did making a record under your own name change how you made creative decisions?
BA: It did. I was much more stubborn about what I wanted. With Kashmir, everyone pitches in, that’s part of the joy of being in a band. On this album, if someone could play something beautiful but the song didn’t need it, I’d say no. If a chord change served the melody or the lyric, we made it; otherwise, we left it alone. There’s always going to be someone telling you it would sound better with X or Y. But I had to trust the vision in my head. I’ve listened to ‘Tasveerein’ more times than I can count. Now it gives me a kind of peace and makes me smile. Same with ‘Farvary’. I’ve played this album so many times and I still don’t get tired of it. Musicians don’t listen to their own work because they spend so much time on the record that afterwards they don’t.
Instep: Was there anything you discovered you were actually terrible at, doing this on your own?
BA: Recording guitars, for sure. I’m just a guy who knows some basic chords; others on this album are the ones who made it beautiful. The album was originally meant to be produced entirely by Sinnan, but his grandfather became ill halfway through and we shifted half the album to Saad Hayat’s studio in Karachi, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise. And my wife handles all my management, the posts, the deals as well as keeping me on schedule. I’m hopeless at that part.
Instep: The album was supposed to take a month or two, but ended up taking six months. Did you, at any point, ever lose confidence in it?
BA: I lost confidence in the timeline, not the album. I thought two months, maximum. A lot of what slowed things down was out of our hands. What kept me going was the people around me.
Instep: If someone had followed you around while you were making this record, what would they have seen besides you sitting in a studio with a guitar?
BA: A lot of hope and support. I found my group of people, the ones I know I have, no matter what else happens. It took bravery, too. Sinnan, Saad and I didn’t always agree; and our arguments were frequent, but they were part of the creative process and usually pretty funny. We also left in the raw, unpolished moments most people would cut. If you listen closely, you’ll hear a hiss in one recording, a motorcycle roaring past in another and even my dog barking in the background. I wanted to keep all of it. That’s what my room actually sounds like and capturing that raw reality made the whole experience fun from start to finish.
Instep: You’ve spoken about how difficult it is for bands to sustain themselves in Pakistan. What needs to change?
BA: We don’t really have a music industry and bands feel that the hardest; more people to travel with, house and pay. But you can’t separate the face from the band, the integrity of the whole thing is the point. There’s also no real way to forecast live work. You might hear about a show two days out, a week if you’re lucky, a booking confirmed a month in advance is an anomaly. And bands don’t stop being relevant just because their members go from 19 years to 30 years and start families. If anything, that’s exactly when they need an industry built to let them keep creating more music. That friction is why you see more solo names outshining bands and it’s also why you see bands break up, not always because they want to, but because it’s made impossible for them to function as a unit. We need to be able to appreciate solo artists, producers and bands alike as well as different genres, so the whole industry moves forward and not just a handful of curated names.
Instep: Now that you’ve finished this album, what do you want the next one to say?
BA: When I started writing this album, I thought I was keeping a personal diary. By the time I finished, I realised I’d written a story, a good one. It’ll always make me smile, but it’s a story now. I can’t let it hold me forever. It’ll always be there, but I have to move on. And I’ve already started writing the second solo album. I’ve figured out what kind of writer I am. I told a producer recently that I’m a conversational writer. I love the way Dido tells a story; I know her through ‘Thank You’ more than through Eminem’s song ‘Stan’ where she is a featured artist and which is how most people know her. I’m a visual, conversational storyteller. That’s where my heart is, so that’s what I’m going to keep following.
– Photography by Salman Ahmed
– Outfits designed by Syed
Mohammad Rizwanullah
“The first line of ‘Tasveerein’ is about photographs in a drawer where we’re still happy and it is a constant reminder that this person isn’t here anymore. It was the one place I let myself fully express the suffering. It’s also the last song on the album, which felt right: this is what happened, this is what I carry and I have to keep going. I don’t tell everyone the full story behind the album, because people start assuming I’m depressed or constantly sad. I am grieving, but I’ve learned how to live with it.”
– Bilal Ali on the song ‘Tasveerein’ and why it means
so much to him
