Beyond being the girls next door (Zeb and Haniya)

“If you have to listen to local female musicians, you should take note of Zeb and Haniya’s compositions,” Sajid Ghafoor (from Sajid and Zeeshan) commented several years ago. We were having a discussion on the dearth of female musical groups in the country and how one or two aspiring artistes had managed to generate acclaim for themselves by simply posting their work online – even though their music skills still needed a lot of practice and development.

Following that conversation, I searched for Zeb and Haniya online and found their SoundClick.com profile; however, due to the internet problem, I could barely listen to their work.

Incidentally several days later, I heard Chup (their first single on the airwaves) on radio. What I particularly liked was that the sound was fresh, crisp, and raw in its originality with nothing but the vocals and the acoustic guitar dominating the track leaving the song clean. The way it had been sung felt incredibly natural and free of all pretensions.

Several months later, I found from Mekaal Hasan that Zeb and Haniya were recording in his studio with Gumby and Shallum as the collaborating musicians. It turned out that the girls had received a lot of encouragement from these musicians to record and were now finally doing it. When I met Gumby after the recording, he seemed extremely excited and thought that this was going to be a very bluesy album with a hint of jazz here and there.

Prior to that, Zeb and Haniya were also making waves in the underground scene in Lahore by doing some small-scale performances. One of them included a somewhat unplugged performance they collaborated on with Mekaal Hasan and Adnan Sarwar, the latter both on guitars, sometime in 2006.

Having heard about them, been in touch with them briefly, I finally met them sometime in June 2007 when I did their interview. One of the things I immediately noticed was that Haniya seemed very relaxed and sure of herself. She has a propensity to make sure that everyone around her was as comfortable as well! My first impression of Zeb was that she seemed shy at first, however, as the interview progressed; she displayed her more gregarious side. The entire vibe during the interview was incredibly friendly and they ended up doing an impromptu performance of Chup there and then. Sections of the interview and the audio version of that performance can be heard on Dawn.com

There was no looking back for them once their album was launched. They’ve managed to garner international acclaim for music, have taken out a highly talked-about video of Aietebaar directed by Saqib Malik, and are invited to perform regularly. Their most recent performance at a fusion music show, showcasing a rubab player flown in from the NWFP for their Pushto/Darri/ Farsi song Paimona, seems to display a whole new side to their music that is absolutely heart-warming to say the least.— Madeeha Syed

Source: DAWN.COM | images