Will the real Hadiqa Kiani please stand up?
Hadiqa Kiani
- Rung
(3*s/ 5*s)
Third albums for most acts are make or break albums: they are where an artist who might have had a hit or two with the first two albums is expected to demonstrate some artistic growth. Many artists fall away; only a few manage to go to the next level of acclaim and productivity. Hadiqa Kiani’s third album Rung manages to demonstrate some vitality, some experimentation but even then is a curious one in that it manages to stave off the next step. Moreover, through regurgitating the same tired old love related themes it postpones any significant growth for the time being. The jury still remains out on Hadiqa as the album is an ‘alright’ album and that is pretty much all one can say about it. It is a collection of some good songs and other almost good songs, that have little or no thematic coherence with each other and are more the work of hired studio hands and friends than an involved piece of work. It is the sort of an album a Mariah Carey (no character, great image) puts out with a few good songs on it, but cynically calculated and lacking in real emotion or personality.
Ms. Kiani’s Rung is similarly good whenever it plays to her strengths. She has a sweet little voice and songs that ape Bohai bariyan (still her best song) or are not too vocally or emotionally demanding work well on the album. Jogi Bun Key Aa, Is bar milo, Dholan and the first single, Yaad Sajan are undemanding and fun little confections. Yad Sajan musically manages to turn a trick or two. With beeps and dhols it fuses the contemporary with traditional. It has a nice little melody and a memorable central flute riff. Jogi ban kai Aa has a traditional soft ethnic beat and highlights Khawar’s (Hadiqa’s mother’s) effective lyrics. Simple direct lines ‘Ishq Na Puchay Zaat/ Na Wekhay Takht/ Na Wekhay Taj’ are evocative, if not spectacularly novel. Is bar milo is a great song which manages to do something different. It is slow-rock crossed with breathy trip hop vocals a la Portishead. Hadiqa uncannily sounds like Beth Gibbons in a rather memorable fashion. Dholan is an awesome dandiya song and will be played at weddings for years to come, sort of a redux version of Bohai Bariyan with memorable sarangi, flute and tabla riffs.
Musically, at least, to her credit Hadiqa tries something different on this album. A lot of this may well be down to the whole army of studio hired hands she calls upon to assist and write for the album. With them in tow, she manages to convincingly pull off parts of some songs, but each song away from her familiar template invariably falls short of a memorable performance. Paagal Ker De Gee is an attempt at a dance song, starts with a nice dance beat and has nice horn charts, but loses all momentum with the tacky keyboards and lame middle and ultimately ends with a whimper. Kya Kya Honay Laga is a pretty nice song but the vocals are a tad too restrained and the English bit is retch-inducing, as bad as Hadiqa’s attempts at scatting on Dupatta. Chahray claims to be ‘full fledged soul’ (www.hadiqakiani.com) but is something much lesser than that.
A lot is this in unfortunately down to Hadiqa’s own emotionless vocals. The attempts at diversity and indeed the album’s pristine album production by Irfan Kiani often backfire, putting the spotlight on the weakest link on the album, Hadiqa’s own vocals. Notwithstanding her apprenticeship with Sohail Rana and kudos won with Adnan Sami et. al, while Hadiqa can sound sweet (most of her better songs) and cold when the songs demands it (Achai Dost), she does not seem to manage to impart genuine emotion in her singing
This is never more in evidence than on Ranjhan, a fast bhangra-influenced number in which Hadiqa sings monotonously and without fire. Aao Phir Aik Baar an epic sounding mega ballad along the lines of earlier Inteha-e-Shoq could have done well with powerful incrementally more aggressive vocal performance. But Ms. Kiani fails to cut loose. She does sustain a note for a bit pre-solo in the middle of the song, but singing a note for a while does not make for passion. Mahi also unfortunately serves to highlight the same point. Vocally it sounds more like a cut paste job: the vocals sound as lacking in passion or inflexion in the start as at the end. Lines like ‘ishq di sooli tai main pai tarap niyan’ are delivered all the passion of a Britney where the song cries out for a Reshman (our Aretha) or even a Tina Sani (our Joni Mitchel?). One can help not but feel that the protagonist in the song should then be left of that sooli for a while more. Mayhaps she will develop more soul.
In all of this Ms. Kiani’s hip and with it image often serves to distract from the music. After Raaz her makeover with Roshni was novel. if somewhat inappropriate. A case in point was when she sang Bohai Bariyan live after the release of Roshni. With Rung, she has further refined her image and her glamour girl look, her natural grace and elegance notwithstanding, just does not go well with the ethnic touches and the high emotional content of songs like Ranjhan (Ranjhan Ranjhan kardi main apai ranjhan hoi). That the album curiously in its liner notes acknowledges makeup artists, Khawar Riaz and Salma Rasheed (was it really their intention to make Hadiqa look like a Kabuki dancer in one of the pics) indicates somewhat misplaced priorities.
The reason this album also does not seem to work as a whole for me is probably down to the disjointed feel arising possibly out of too many songwriters and studios used. ‘Too many cooks…’ goes the parable. Art does not come up by way of a committee. Ms. Kiani needs to pick a collaborator or two for an album and have one who will honestly tell her what to attempt and what not to. Moreover, diverse styles make for a schizophrenic personality, it at all, for the album.
One
actually wonders to what extent Hadiqa was involved
with the songs on the album beyond singing them. I say this because, curiously,
on several songs, while lyrics are cited to be by Mr. X and music by Mr. Y, Hadiqa and sometimes Irfan her
brother and producer get credit for composition (vocal lines? Arrangement?). Strange, if music and lyrics are by some
other people, what precisely did the Kiani kids do on
the album? Possibly tell the musicians that a la-la-la here and a keyboard
flourish there would not go amiss. I guess that is possibly why Hadiqa fails to make the songs her songs.
Musicianshipwise, this album is outstanding, a fine work of
a collection of crack musicians. Aamir Zaki shines here with his guitars and surprisingly excellent
bass. Wohi Ik Naam and Socha Naheen are his
personal highlights and demonstrate his improved pop-songwriting chops.
The tracklisting is generous with there being fourteen songs on offer on the album. However one can help not feel, like on a Prince album, that with a little bit of editing the quality of this album could have been much higher.
Lyrically, by
en large there is nothing new here. Khawar, Hadiqa’s mother writes most of the lyrics and is excellent
at times at what she does, but mostly she is competent. If themes such as the
ones explored on Aurat had been taken up more, this album
would have been better for it.
One might think that that I have been overly harsh with Ms. Kiani in this review. My mother (my editor for this piece) certainly thinks so. I probably have been. It is just that I have been a closet fan for some time now and have been quite disappointed by the lack of originality or substance on this album. I just feel, Ms, Kiani being the only solo female pop artist of note in the market and clearly intelligent and better educated than most and after all the success she has deservedly garnered, deserves to be judged to a higher standard. She has been in the pop game long enough to have shown any aritistic growth rather than continue to remain in the love songs Fareeha Pervaiz rut or make muzak like the other famous brother-sister duo of Carpenters (no not Nazia-Zoheb). There are some slight instance of depth here, but with all the many many contributors on this album and the overdose of image, one cannot tell where Ms. Kiani ends and where the marketing gimmicks start.
The question that so then comes up is what next for Ms. Kiani? Promisingly, two of the most involving tracks on the album point the way forward. Achai Dost and Aurat are the impressive in what they attempt to do and almost manage to pull off.
Achai Dost is probably the most remarkable
song lyrically (lyricist
Lastly, Aurat is possibly the lyrical highlight on the album and the possibly the most sober and intelligent moment of the album also. The lyrics from Khawar shine here (Yeh meri zindagi hai/ is main dekho/ laga rehta hai pehra/ doosrai ka… yehan to sans tak / apni nahin hai/ meri pehchan mujh sai/ ab nahin hai) and give a taste of verite with a feminist take on the place of women in our largely patriarchal society. The gravitas this song lends to the album near its very end is its saving grace. After lightweight songs about legendary lovers (Ranjan) and Mahis, Dholans and Chahray, it provides some effective last words on Ms. Kiani’s dilemma: its and the album’s last lines are: yeh zanjeerain meri rahon main aa kar/ mujhai bandhain khari hain/… mujhai kholo/ kai main na ashnai-e-qaid o pand hoon. These words have all the makings of an epitaph for a talented artist for lack of her trying or risk-taking. They only get one thing wrong. It is not for someone to set Hadiqa Kiani free. Only Hadiqa Kiani can set Hadiqa Kiani free from singing Bohai Bariyan and songs of the same ilk endlessly. All she needs to do it try.