From Haroon’s heart to ours

Once upon a time, ‘Dil Se’ offered a raft in a sea of confusion

I do not have cool taste in music. Or, indeed, cool taste in anything. I know this because I have three children who remind me of this daily, usually every time they are trapped in a moving car with me and my faithful playlist.

This trusty playlist is not quite the nails-across-a-blackboard affair that my dear children would have you believe. Dil Se by Haroon, Mack the Knife by Bobby Darrin and Mamma Mia by ABBA have all made the cut. Mamma Mia: because it is the musical equivalent of caffeine (unless you are my poor misguided offspring, in which case it is the equivalent of a general anaesthetic or a dying cat), Mack the Knife: because what’s not to love in a jaunty jazzy tune about a bloodthirsty serial killer? And of course, our very own Haroon’s Dil Se: because it does exactly what it says on the tin. It speaks to the heart, comes from the heart, and is all heart from start to finish. If you cynics are now feeling faint, it is enough to know that even if he didn’t mean it, Haroon faked it well enough to make us believe he did. It is this authentic fakery that matters more than anything else.

The return of Haroon

What seems like aeons after he unfurled Dil Se before us, Haroon is back with a brand new track. As far as comebacks go, it’s been quite the year for unexpected offerings from artists of the days of yore. For example, as we have already seen on these pages, we have the Backstreet Boys, of all people, reminding us that Millennium exists. Oasis fans, meanhwhile, have their hopes pinned on the Gallagher brothers keeping the peace long enough to not mess up their reunion on stage this summer. Not to be outdone, British ’90s boyband, Five, have also decided they will be back this year.

Haroon’s triumphant return to the music scene has been less dynamic, but it is a return nonetheless. The man shook things up on Instagram in February by dropping word of his latest song Cha Jaa, a collaboration with Aima Baig. Those familiar with Haroon’s Burka Avenger will already know that this man who once gravitated towards the pyramids (Mehbooba) also has a penchant for children’s television. With all this in mind, then, Cha Jaa is a high-energy dance video serving as the official soundtrack for the children’s animated TV series Planet Champs, and it is pretty much exactly what you would expect from a techno dance number telling you it is time to save the planet. It’s not quite Heal the World, but it will do. Picture a live-action + animation twenty-first-century edition of Captain Planet, and you will have some idea of what you are in for.

If you care for neither animation nor high-octane Captain Planet-type escapades, Cha Jaa will almost certainly leak out of your head like water from a sieve no matter how much live-action anyone throws into the video. Having said that, it would be unfair to judge Haroon entirely on the basis of Cha Jaa when he has given us so much more – even if we do have to travel far, far back in time to find it.

Why Haroon matters to

this expat

To hardcore Haroon fans, he will always be the Romeo who decided that sand, pyramids, a Sphynx and a woman calling him her ‘habibi’ melded together to form the ultimate aphrodisiac in Mehbooba.

For others, he will be the man who danced along in perfect time with his buddy Fakhir, clad in a blinding white kurta shalwar and a tasteful green dupatta slung across his neck in Ay Jawan. The two key components of anything hoping to stoke the flames of nationalist pride are the colours green and white, and in this, Haroon and Fakhir succeeded spectacularly as they both leapt around with reckless abandon (through a rakish diagonal camera lens, as was music video law when Ay Jawan was shot in the 1997.)

In addition to all this burst of green and white, Ay Jawan relies on the power of repetition. With the helpful use of the word ‘Pakistan’, the odds were always going to be low that this song would leak through people’s heads. Ay Jawan may not quite be Dil Dil Pakistan, but it has stuck around in people’s heads long enough to form a core memory of ’90s Pakistan for those who were around to live through it.

But to someone who only hung around in Pakistan during the summer holidays in the ’90s, Ay Jawan has slipped through the nets. To me, it captures the flavour of carefree Augusts and houses brandishing flags from the rooftops, but not much more beyond. With a tune easy enough for a two-year-old to memorise, Ay Jawan is hard to forget, but comes with few emotional bonds other than a hollow wish for a summer free from the shackles of adulting.

Dil Se, however, is where Haroon kicked aside the memories of the green-and-white diagonal choreography of Ay Jawan and truly achieved what he set out to conquer: evoking a hearty mix of patriotic pride and unsolicited tears. For a teenager growing up in Kuwait, Dil Se was the best present any Pakistani artist has ever delivered. Cheesy? Yes. Reminiscent of boybands with its formulaic structure? Absolutely. A banner of pride with a melody you can listen to on repeat? Yes. And also yes. There is nothing wrong with cheesy boyband-ness in small doses.

For a semi third culture kid (the product of Pakistani parents in an Arab country going to an English school), there is a whirlwind of mixed messages to take on board. You identify with the Urdu-speaking parents at home. Those are your roots. But at school, you cannot help but look on in jealousy at your close-knit Kuwaiti, Egyptian and Lebanese cohorts conversing rapid-fire Arabic. The words gush from their lips like a waterfall during those coveted moments in break time when no teacher is reprimanding anyone for not speaking in English. You with your half-hearted Arabic-as-a-second-language lessons can catch only tantalising snippets (although by now you are well versed in Arabic insults, which are traded amongst your male peers on a minute-by-minute basis during those moments of sweet release from lessons.)

Amidst all this, Haroon’s Dil Se gave me something that my dear Arab cohorts could not have a hope of making head or tail out of: Urdu music with a heart. Putting on Dil Se in the A-level common room, I at last had something from my origins that I could show off with smug pride, something that caused the other kids to pause and admit that Pakistani music is as cool as anything else they had heard on the radio. For a few glorious weeks at school, Dil Se gave me an identity, a raft in the middle of a sea of confusion – and for that reason alone, Cha Jaa or no Cha Jaa, Haroon deserves a very, very belated and heartfelt thank you.