Source: The Express Tribune (Entertainment Desk), 23 November 2020 — “Qawwal Hamza Akram accuses corporates of neglecting deserving artistes” — https://tribune.com.pk/story/2273260/qawwal-hamza-akram-accuses-corporates-of-neglecting-deserving-artistes
In November 2020, Hamza Akram Qawwal wrote a social media post that travelled far beyond his own following. It was not about a concert, a release or himself. It was about the classical and folk musicians of Pakistan who, in his words, spend their lives in riyaaz and are then forgotten when the covers are handed out.
His point was about what he called the pop and corporate takeover of the classical scene. Folk songs, qawwalis and Sufi kalaams, he argued, are increasingly being re-recorded by pop singers on brand-led music platforms — while the artistes who originally carry those traditions are left on the sidelines. The post was written in his own voice, in Roman Urdu, and it was blunt. Roughly, his message was: go ahead and get pop singers to sing every folk and Sufi cover — and go on forgetting the artistes who truly deserve the recognition, the ones who consider a tuner an insult to their craft and spend their whole lives perfecting it.
The reason, Hamza argued, is not talent but packaging. The neglected artistes, he wrote, do not have millions of followers on Instagram — real or otherwise — no verified pages, and no money for expensive music videos. What they do have is power in the song itself. Yet labels and brands, in his telling, are more interested in profiting from stardom than in making stars, so the artistes who need a platform most are the least likely to be given one.
The post ended with a clarification that mattered to him. This was not about his own career — as he put it, he has plenty of work, alhamdulillah, as everyone knows. It was about the desi musicians and singers around him, and about what he called a dark trail the Pakistani music industry is leaving behind.
Read today, the piece still lands, because the argument has not dated. The debate about covers versus originals, about who gets to sing a tradition and who gets paid for it, is still live in Pakistani music. Hamza’s intervention is worth remembering not because it was angry, but because it was generous: a working, touring qawwal using his own platform to point at the people standing behind him in the tradition.
We are sharing this rephrased summary in our press archive because it says something important about what Hamza Akram Qawwal & Brothers stand for — not only the music, but the musicians who keep it alive.
This post is a rephrased summary of The Express Tribune’s report of 23 November 2020, based on Hamza Akram’s social media post of 22 November 2020. Read the original at the link above.
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