Ali Sethi

One Liner:  The new king of Ghazal!

Wikipedia Genre:  Ghazal, folk, classical, contemporary, pop, Sufi

Home: Lahore, Pakistan

Poster Position: 3 (16)  
Weekend One Only.
Sunday at 2:00

Thoughts: This is making me think of the way that Netflix will frequently list a ton of new shows and movies that have been recently added to the platform, but when I go look at them 9/10 of them are something from India that I can't understand.

My man is a Pakistani singer, songwriter, composer, and author.  He first rose to fame with his novel The Wish Maker, released in 2009, which has been favorably compared to the Kite Runner.  He then started training in Hindustani classical music, learning under "Ustad Naseeruddin Saami (widely considered a master of both the qawwali and khyal forms of singing) as well as under noted ghazal and classical singer Farida Khanum."  (from Wikipedia, as I don't know what the hell that even means, also, his Wikipedia article is GIGANTIC).  I am entirely unfamiliar with these styles.  What I do know is that back in the day I freaking loved the soundtrack to Bend it Like Beckham and its mixing of Western rap and pop with these sorts of traditional-sounding rhythms.  

He's got a smash hit in his quiver, in that "Pasoori" has 297.1 million streams.

642 million vies of that video as well, which is wild.  Many of the YouTube comments are sending love from India to Pakistan.  Even though I can't understand the words, I'll readily admit that his voice is freaking awesome.  You know what else was rad?  Have you seen the RRR movie?  I'm sure I'm screwing this up by bringing up Beckham and RRR about this artist and there is probably some cultural thing that makes that deeply offensive, but if you haven't watched that unhinged ass movie, you totally should.  Some of the craziest dance scenes and fight scenes ever.

You can see all over that video that it is associated with Coke Studio - this is a Pakistani television series that airs new music every week.  Sethi ended up showing up on five seasons of the show, which helped him gain notoriety as a musician.

None of his other songs come any where near to those streaming totals.  And he has no actual albums.  So, I'll just give you the top track from his EP from 2023, called Paniya.  "Dil Mein Ab" has 90k streams.

Very chill and quiet.  I'd definitely prefer the more upbeat ones with sweet beats.  Definitely not going to go watch this, but I guess it is cool that the Fest is reaching out to add something totally different and diverse to the lineup!