Basement gets Alive

As many of you would relate to me, life in an engineering school gets more and more tough and exhausting as the semester approaches the mid. Any extra curricular activity during it really releases your work tensions, but of course for a very short period of time.

Few days back, I got a call from Nestle and they invited me to an event which was basically a live concert of Nescafe Basement showcasing the whole new younger lot of Pakistani music scene mentored by Zulfiqar Jabbar Khan a.k.a Xulfi.

It was a pretty cool October evening in Lahore and as expected this corporate event began timely. It was a well arranged program and the stage was well lit and all set with the backdrop of Basement in place. The show began with a little chat by the company officials throwing light on the idea of basement which was conceived about 5-6 months back.

Soon the basement’s band consisting of some 15 aspiring musicians took the stage. All of these musicians belong to different universities and colleges through out Pakistan but have one thing in common, i.e. passion for music.

The first song which the band presented was the magnanimous hit by Strings, Sar Kiye Pahar. And this really laid down the base of an entertaining show to come up. The basement guys continued with their performances comprising of various famous Covers from the past and couple of their original ones too with a brief interval for dinner in between. Perhaps the climax of the concert was another cover of Sajjad Ali’s hit, Babiya where audience could not remain seated and literally the whole crowd went up and gave a standing ovation to the band once the song ended.

The best part about this venture is that it uses up lots of innovative musical instruments including Djembe, Violin, Saxophone, Flute, Tabla, and one of my most favourite musical pieces, Rabab being effortlessly played by a guy named Asfar Hussain who belongs to NCA, Lahore. Asfar was on the lead and backing vocals for most of the time, but shifted to Rabab for couple of songs and he truly showed his musical skills with both the jobs being done so well. For me he was really the pick of the show and has got all the elements which matter to make it big.

And surely not to forget the musical genius, Xulfi who is the mentor of all these youngsters and one must say that he has done fairly a good job. Even during the live show, the dedication level of Xulfi was really something to be appreciated who was seen excitingly managing all the band people and more importantly the sound systems. Also the fun part was, when Xulfi was rather compellingly thrown on to the stage when the band was covering Laaree Chootee and he eventually sang couple of lines after a big roar from the crowd.

All in all, it was a good event presenting the young musicians, which according to Xulfi are the future of Pakistan’s music industry.