FCCM Pakistan pulled the Ministry of Sound and Sander Kleinenberg into Lahore. There's a lot more footage coming, but I thought this moment dancing on stage behind him was just epic.
This entry was written by Sapuri, posted on February 21, 2012 at 1:39 pm, filed under electronica, lahore. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
The Citizen’s Archive of Pakistan has put up this webpage that is collecting petitions and signatures to nominate Abdul Sattar Edhi, Pakistan’s most recognized philanthropist and social worker.
If you’d like to know more, click on through. SIGN IT HERE.
This entry was written by Sapuri, posted on December 3, 2011 at 3:58 pm, filed under Uncategorized. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
If you’ve ever been to the Wahga border that is just outside Lahore in Pakistan, you’ve seen quite a show. There’s a very famous ceremony that takes place EVERY day, where the Pakistani border guards ‘face off’ with the Indian border guards in a show of force, that is pretty choreographed in my opinion. As you can see from the video- there are tons of people who come out to ‘see’ the whole event. It’s seriously a form of entertainment in both parts of the Punjab it seems.
The thing is- there’s all this hoopla over what is pulling 2 flags down and closing 2 metal gates. But that’s the show and tell- these border guards serve tough duties for both countries.
Regardless, I love the energy of the crowds, the flags being waved, and of course- Pakistan.
I went to Wahga with some friends last year, and shot lots of pictures for this stop motion video. All of it is stop motion- only some minor color filters applied here and there.
This entry was written by Sapuri, posted on November 17, 2011 at 11:07 am, filed under lahore, Photo, Art & Design. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
This is what we in Pakistan call a “Bakkar Mandi” (goat market), where you go to buy sacrificial animals for Eid ul Azha. Many countries have such markets around the time of Hajj’s end- but why is this picture something you’d find only in Pakistan, or perhaps Afghanistan and Nigeria at most?
Because no other Muslim countries showcase the disparity of income as easily as we do. In the foreground is a man who must have traveled many hours to Lahore with his flock to sell his goats/ cows for sacrifice. Even if they overprice their stock, the profits are nothing to go and apply for a new bank account for.
But look closely in the back. Yes my friends, that is a Mercedes Benz S430 from the previous generation- in a country where luxury cars typically cost 2-3 times as much as in the European and American markets because of our tax and customs/ import duty laws.
Nothing like going shopping for your bakra (goat) in your V8 Benz- especially considering this market is not paved.
If this is your Benz and you’re a a friend of mine, apologies- it’s really not personal. It’s a society thing I’m just observing.
Natasha Ejaz is an artist who recently made headlines in Pakistan for her voice on the track “Jahaan”, from the project “It Might Get Glitchy”, that is engineered and produced by Rishabh Rajan.
From the biography on the YouTube page, Rishbash is “a Music Production lecturer at ICOM, is a graduate of Berklee College of Music, with a Major in Film Scoring. He has written music for a few independent films while working in Los Angeles, many of which played in the local festival circuits. As a film composer he specializes in writing electronic, orchestral and ethnic music. He has also worked for various sound library companies as a content developer and is now developing his own sample libraries.”
I wanted to share this video where he walks us through the work done on the actual song production, all in Ableton Live. I love this program- it’s a treat watching what people can do with it every day, even if it is a bit more difficult to use than Logic, depending on how your mind is wired.
This entry was written by Sapuri, posted on November 4, 2011 at 1:57 pm, filed under electronic, electronica, music. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
EB.Tv is one of my favorite sites. They’ve always got a very different angle to cover in the world of electronica. It’s not just about boom-boom house music; it’s deeply insightful into the world of electronic music. Here’s a very cool video about vinyl record ‘pressing’. Vinyl records were really the first medium DJ’ing can ever be said to have started on, which is why they’ll always hold a very special place in the masters’ hearts.
This entry was written by Sapuri, posted on November 3, 2011 at 10:05 pm, filed under electronica, music, podcast. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
It’s June 17, 2009. I’ve spent the last 6 hours packing the last bits of my apartment in Palo Alto (well, East if you want to be particular) with JJ, Amer, Anshuman and Wasiff. It’s been the best night of my life in California- hanging with some of the most amazing people in NorCal I know. Tushar’s already abroad.
I’m leaving California for Pakistan on a one-way flight.
But Mike’s not done yet- we’ve got our ritual drive up and down Skyline Drive ahead of us- despite me being dead tired. 5.40 am, he shows up, yanks me out of bed while the other overqualified movers sleep away. My flight leaves at noon. This is enough time to drive down Skyline in Mike’s Nissan 350Z. The video starts at a Shell gas station on El Camino, from which the route is traced in Google Maps from, to Alice’s restaurant in Woodside, then back to 1717 Woodland Ave in East Palo Alto.
I’ve put the video’s work on pause right now because I intended to mix video and stop motion. My DV camera has stopped exporting to the laptop, so this is as far as I got with the stop motion alone. The track is what was almost on repeat the whole time- LCD Soundsystem’s “Get Innocuous” remixed by Soulwax.
Today in Afghanistan, one of its former presidents was killed in a suicide bombing. Burhanuddin Rabbani was a professor, politician and nowa negotiator with the Taliban, as appointed by Hamid Karzai. If you think about it, that means a lot. You can not ask just anyone to go ‘negotiate’ with absolute animals. Second, whatever your lineage, your background, I’d say it takes guts and conviction in what you’re doing, to take a chance with shaking hands with people as inhuman as the Taliban. Regardless, ask anyone in Iraq, Afghanistan or Pakistan about how they live with suicide bombing, and they’ll tell you that in order to function- to remove the indescribable trauma of a completely unpredictable and unstoppable human bomb- the biggest tool is numbing yourself. It’s a conscious numbing- you mourn; not ignore- but then realize that in order for the enemy- whoever it is- to not win, you must give it a big middle finger, and just move forward.
You see, I’m not a political commentator here. There will be opinions regarding a politicians past in every single case, but the reason I’m quite shocked andmoved by this is below.
Today, after almost 15 years, I heard the voice of my friend Jalal, who grew up many years in Pakistan, but is from Afghanistan.
He’s also Burhanuddin Rabbani’s son.
Jalal and I were classmates in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia (my father taught architecture there from 1992 to 2003), along with the rest of our Manarat El-Sharqiah school’s mad troupe of expatriates livingin Saudi Arabia- we had a very lively and crazy adolescence. I still remember Jalal, Rizwan and myself getting ‘secretly’ picked up from the bus station, missing the school bus just so we could skip school as teenagers in his green honda accord- it wasn’t about cars; it was about young kids feeling brave for the simplest and most innocent of reason: ‘being too cool for school’.
Today, coming back to suicide bombings- you have to be brave to live in our countries, and in this case, it’s not for innocent reasons. It’s the ultimate bravado- you know you can die any moment, but you choose to push on for the reasons and dreams you believe in.
Jalal was a character, a fun guy who made good and bad decisions just like everyone else. But speaking to him today, and hearing in his voice this sadness that, well, I am being honest here: I have never, ever heard before in my life. And this is not a question of someone being strong or weak; it’s more like every tear they’ll shed is as heavy with personal sorrow, as it is with the cyclical question or conundrum:
Why?
I really pray that Jalal finds strength right now, not as a son of an important person onthe Afghani political landscape, but as a son, period.
This entry was written by Sapuri, posted on September 21, 2011 at 4:15 am, filed under War On Terror. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
