Urdu rapper Faris Shafi touched down in Toronto with winged juthi* on his feet to perform at a huge festival, attracting Urdu rap lovers from all over the city.
Bypassing the ongoing hullabaloo between Pakistan and India which has basically been going on since Partition circa 1947, Pakistanis and Indians in Toronto enjoy getting closer to being one again.
“Music, in a lot of ways, is a connector in times of tension and trouble, and we see the same thing, not just in music, right? We see it in general with censorship. We see it within countries. We see it across countries. We see it in film. We see it in all entertainment segments, right?,” Tawoos Initiative co-founder Pratishtha Kohli told Windy6ix Magazine.
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Tawoos Initiative was formed by Kohli, Haris Javed, and Auoro Maksud in 2017 – all respectively from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.
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Politics of Art
“All the arts are really doing is connecting and allowing you to vocalize your political or somebody else’s political struggles, and it forms bonds,” Kohli said, who’s worked in cultural programming and curation for Hot Docs Film Festival, Aga Khan Museum, and City of Toronto.
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Reppin' South Asian Music
Although Bollywood and Indian classical music had some representation post 2000s in Toronto, this simultaneously created a pigeonhole and an opportunity to showcase South Asian artists across various genres and countries.
“It's not South Asian music, it's artists of South Asian origin creating any kind of music… It’s really about the artists and platforming the artists,” Pratishtha told me.
Think: Quwaali, folk, UK garage electronic dance music, pop synth, Hip Hop, Indie alternative
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“Through platforming those artists, we've gathered a really positive community of folks who are just looking to connect, who are looking to create safe spaces, specifically within the queer community and within queer South Asians, who often have a very hard time finding safe and harm reductive spaces to engage in publicly,” she further elaborated.
Luminato and Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) have been helpful for Tawoos because they are not for profit and primarily receive funding through the government.
For the first time ever last year, Tawoos Initiative had the opportunity to curate programming for the South Asian community while operating under a budget shared with Luminato.
“We've done similar things, like with TIFF in 2023 and Product of Culture, which is a US based brand. We were invited to do a showcase for all of the South Asian films that were coming to TIFF,” Kohli said.
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11 years ago, when Kohli was a wee student at University of Toronto (UofT), she heard Pakistani rapper Faris Shafi was in Toronto on the radio. Right after, Kohli sent him an embarrassing message on Facebook, which ended up working out in her favour.
Shafi agreed to speak at the UofT Pakistan Development Foundation, covering topics he often conveys through his political lyrical rap, like music and censorship in Pakistan.
“Faris is genuinely one of the pioneers of hip hop and rap in the Urdu rap scene in the Pakistani industry…. His music talks about censorship, it talks about the rights of individuals in a lot of ways. Hip hop and rap comes from a history of being for the common person, right? Like being for marginalized communities. I think a lot of the work that he does really stems from a lot of those inspirations,” Kohli said.
Shafi’s cinematographic music videos reach millions of views, his latest song, Shayar, and employs a primarily Pakistani crew. Musically, Shafi spits in Urdu, Punjabi, and English, landing him collaborations with Ali Sethi, BBC Asian Network, and Sultaan.
Courtesy: Karan Soochak
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