ladies and gentlemen...

by Morgan Quinn

Farhan Shah is an award-winning, Adelaide-based, Pakistani-born singer, composer, and music producer. He arrived in Australia in 2016 and has been working tirelessly, touring internationally, performing at major Australian music festivals, and producing award winning recordings.

I recently had the pleasure of chatting with Farhan Shah, who sat down with me to discuss his music and upcoming performances at the National Folk Festival. Joining him was Keith Preston, an experienced world music player in his own right, who offered his perspective on performing in the unique ensemble that will soon grace us.

So, what kicked everything off for Shah?

“From age 10 or 11, I was always around musicians in one way or another,” he reveals. “This was in Karachi, the metropolitan city of Pakistan. I was influenced by Western, pop, and rock music.

“As a teenager, you might laugh, I had a band called Just In Case,” Shah recalls, with a smile in his voice. “I became involved in many productions, writing jingles, producing songs for others, advertisements, background music, film music, releasing my own music, until finally I found my calling in Sufi music.”

This was to be a turning point for Shah.

“When I started doing Sufi music, the earlier experiences of my life gave me a unique ability to blend those sounds,” he explains.

“I could combine the traditional Qawwali and Sufi sounds with the contemporary by mixing guitars, bass, drums, and different ethnic instruments as well.

“It also enabled me to collaborate with all kinds of musicians,” he continues. “Sufi and fusion has become kind of my “claim to fame” and it’s what I enjoy playing in a group and as an individual.”

As for what audiences can expect to see when they perform at the National Folk Festival, both Shah and Preston are keen to chime in.

“The traditional Qawwali music is the style of music we will be brining to the festival this year,” Shah says. “Singers and musicians sit on the floor and then deliver the traditional performance, using instruments such as tablas and harmoniums. All the instruments are acoustic, with soaring vocals.”

“He hasn’t noticed that I’m not Pakistani yet,” Keith Preston adds, with a proverbial wink, a line that gets Shah laughing.

“Sometimes it’s a bit odd playing the traditional music of a culture you’re not from,” Preston admits. “But that’s what is fantastic about multi-cultural Australia.

“It’s been a journey, but I feel very comfortable with this music after all this time. It resonates with me, and I’m able to contribute as an equal member of the group.

“In the contemporary iteration of Farhan’s group, I play electric guitar, whereas in the traditional Qawwali group I play Santur, which is the Kashmir hammer dulcimer. It’s a very rare sound here.”

Preston sees a festival as a potentially vibrant melting pots for such culture culminations.

“I think it’s important that the festivals represent who we are as Australians,” Preston asserts. “It’s exciting when you see African, Middle Eastern, Indian, Pakistani, and Asian performers presenting their own music and experimenting and collaborating with one another in the Australian context. Our festivals should reflect that.”

I take this juncture to enquire: when composing one of these pieces, is there a distinction between the spiritual message and the music itself?

“Traditional Sufi music is devotional music,” Shah states. “Sufiism is a movement which happened in the 8th and 9th century against the idea of the exuberant and lavish life styles and the orthodox teachings of certain religions.

“Qawwali comes from the word “call” – “call” meaning “sayings”. So, sayings of different saints, teachers, from the holy book of Muslims, the Quran. The general ideas are of peace, love, humanity, diversity, multi-culturalism, speaking for justice. This music was very hypnotic and attractive.

“So, when I compose this music, I am aware that it stays on those Sufi lines, although we are contemporising it with different words and sounds.”

Preston has his own thoughts on the topic.

“From my perspective, Sufi music is very attractive because it’s not really tagged to an orthodoxy,” he says. “It’s more that you can achieve themes of mystical unity or enlightenment through music and dance, and through the words.

“I’ve often asked other Afghan and Persian musicians who are into the Sufi music, ‘What is your religion?’. They say, ‘I don’t really care about religion –music is my religion’. It’s sort of like, this is the early form of Trance Music. It’s like the whirling dervishes who spin and spin until they feel like they’re sort of spinning in time with the world.”

“You will find traces of jazz in the music as well,” Shah interjects. “There are improvisation aspects. The scale is fixed, the rhythm is fixed, some lyrics are fixed, but it’s all about feeling that music inside you. Sometimes you will see performers pick up a line and they will keep repeating the same thing again and again with different variations.

“You will see a lot of musicians singing, cutting off each other’s lines – it’s almost like a fight between vocalists.” Keith agrees.

“We get a lot of people who can’t help themselves. They get up and dance because it’s so mesmerising. It just has a bloody good beat.”

For the Folkie, there will be five members indulging in this mesmeric musical rumble. Keith Preston on Santur, multi-instrumentalist Ravi from Melbourne, a Sydney-based harmonium player, and a Brisbane vocalist. And, of course, Shah and his incredible voice. Was such a talent a given gift, or one honed and trained over ceaseless hours?

“It is a natural gift that was always there, but I have discovered it over time,” Shah explains. “Even when I go back and watch my performances I think, ‘Is this really me who did this?’.

“I had training for Eastern and Western Classical music in Pakistan for a year or two, but I would say that the person who influenced me the most was Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, the “King of Qawwali” music,” Shah continues. “He was the one in ‘85 to perform at WOMADelaide and then ’92, and I think in ’96 and ’97. Because of him Australia became familiar with Qawwali and Sufi music.

“I received this accolade in Adelaide Fringe Festival of the “Pakistani Pavarotti”, which always brings a good laugh to us all. Now that is how I always get introduced: ‘Please welcome, the Pakistani Pavarotti, blah blah blah!’” he chuckles.

“But I will say, he will always be the real Pavarotti, the “King of Qawwali”. I’m still exploring what I can achieve and do.”

Keith adds: “In South Asian music, there aren’t such genre barriers.” In closing, Shah proffers: “The Australian audiences that I’ve seen are quite receptive to this idea of cultural diversity. This is what brings people together and connects different cultures and languages.

“What else can you do with music?

“It connects hearts; it cuts those cultural barriers and, for a moment, you become one. These are the bridges that connect different people. All those mind-setting barriers of, ‘you are different, I am different, you follow a different god, I follow a different god, I don’t follow god’… all these closed doors get opened in one performance. It clarifies.

“What you take from that performance when you go home, you reflect in isolation – it does change a lot of things, these cultural encounters. It feels good to be part of those experiences.”

You can catch Farhan Shah and Keith Preston when they perform as the five-piece Farhan Shah & Sufi-Oz at the National Folk Festival on 6 - 10 April at Exhibition Park. More info & tickets are available via folkfestival.org.au/

Canberra metalcore band A World In Colour unleash their third single, a scorching exploration of the complexities of grief, memory, and loss.

There’s more in common here with their sophomore release, Break Me (2022), than debut, Descent (2021), harnessing a broader palette of sensibilities and sub-styles within the metal/punk/hardcore schema.

In The Blue invites us into this netherworld of anguish and heartbreak quite solicitously, a mix of ethereal voices and wistful guitars prepping us for what one expects will be an onslaught of the most demandingly unforgiving variety.

And that ambush does arrive, but it’s surprisingly more melodically sensate than a mere barrage, featuring a galvanic chord sequence, a bittersweet rousing vocal texture, and soaring guitar lines that hover above the steadfast chaos of the drum parts.

All this leads to the opening verses, stripped back and highlighted by a soothing melody and developing intensity and dynamic.

A pre-section ushers in the chugging guitars and a more fitting prelude to the chorus, whose front end maintains a melodic centre that only drifts into a hardcore acerbity towards the end.

So then we have the gutturals, the double-bass drum assaults, all of which find themselves back to various interludes of disintegrations until a vitalising vocal swirl leads us to another chorus.

Post second chorus, we are treated to more of the identifying and inveterate metalcore tropes; the low tunings, a generalised deluge, and a levelling of the intensity that has us in the thralls of some suspension, as the sound and rhythms teeter on a dilating edge.

Just what that edge is, undoubtedly reflects the emotional effluence exposed in the lyric, a spectral taint whose obliquity is on par with the corroborative musical bed. A World In Colour has delivered a sterling third track, utilising a fine balance of emotional resonance and fierce, cathartic musical skills -

VINCE LEIGH

THE WILDFIRES YOUR LOVIN’ ARMS

Canberra’s Wease Wade and CC Hall have united to form The Wildfires, and Your Lovin’ Arms is the duo’s debut track. Featuring the cream of local musicians, and engineered by Australian ARIA awardwinning music producer/ engineer Anton Hagop (Silverchair, Powderfinger, Missy Higgins, and Birds of Tokyo), Your Lovin’ Arms is a selfassured slice of contemporary country, persuasively executed, and containing strains of discernible emotional legitimacy.

The rhythmic foundation relies on a mid-paced, smoky, bluestinged shuffle, laced with guitar, which allows the melody and chord choices to find a happy medium between the traditional and the new. It’s a coherent and satisfying balance between what we expect and what we don’t.

The lead vocal performance assumes control here, swirling around the melancholic, with enough yearning and anticipation that the lines uttered seem almost inevitable.

The chorus’ descending melodic structure helps crystallize the primary sentiment, and later, as it resolves, helps embolden the fevered admission—or perhaps, it’s inducement—either way. We are left with an almost confronting turnaround, ‘I can feel it when you hold me/you ain’t gonna be lonely no more.’

Is this a reconciliatory stance, or the allure of fresh desire?

We are not entirely sure, but the track’s power resides in its direct nature, despite the ambiguities.

Helping to secure this energy is the production. A balancing acts that occur throughout, the guitar parts sluicing in and out of the chorus vocal, the organ blanketing the background, or the background vocals providing a soothing counterpoint to the heated sensitivity of the lead vocal.

Your Lovin’ Arms is contemporary country with enough oldschool blues to render it casually inviting, without relying on anything other than a boiling point kind of irresistibility.

And it does this by slipping easily into an enticing intimacy without compromising the quality of the song.

VINCE LEIGH