Zulfiqar Jabbar Khan, professionally known as Xulfi, a Pakistani music producer.
“I want to speak with my heart and express ideas that do not have boundaries. I have been trying to do that all my life … We are able to transcend these boundaries and express our message of art and love through our music,” he says, adding he wants to take Pakistan’s sound to the world.
Xulfi is one of the masterminds behind Coke Studio Pakistan seasons 14 and 15. A TV show curated by different people each season, Coke Studio provides mentoring and development to emerging and established artists. Xulfi’s work with the studio had a total of 2.5 billion streams.
Together with Shafi, Xulfi wrote the track, Blockbuster, which is a mash-up of old and new, featuring a sample of a traditional song, female street singers and a little girl. It is sung by Shafi, Umair Butt and an all-female group called Gharvi Group (Abida, Rooha Rawal, Sajida Bibi and Saba Hassan). The idea is reminiscent of Marta’s Song, the Deep Forest track from the mid-1990s featuring Bulgarian folk singer Marta Sebastian.
That melding of genres is reflected in the show, Blockbuster, curated by Melbourne-based Ayesha Bux, who says the idea came to her last year. When she went to Pakistan in September, she found a receptive audience – the Coke Studio team had been thinking about a similar project. “I said, ‘It must be some sort of spiritual Wi-Fi’,” she quips.
“They have been very, very generous, they bought into the vision,” Bux says. “A lot of the work they are doing is a gift to us, it is a love letter from them to us. We’ve got some of the biggest artists in South Asia coming to us; a huge group of 31 people.”
Bux is the creator of SalamFest, which celebrates contemporary Muslim culture, and co-produces events including Blockbuster. She expects about 10,000 people will attend the show, a mix of locals and others from interstate.
The Rising event will include dances choreographed by locals – including by Jasmine TXO – and a Pakistan truck art installation on site (the distinctive, colourful, richly decorated vehicles used for transport in Pakistan). There will also be food trucks providing Punjabi street food, workshops and a film program.
Blockbuster is at Federation Square on June 7 as part of Rising, which runs from June 4 to 15.
