The Dream of Easternization: Coke Studio Pakistan

What is the first image that comes to one’s mind when hearing that Coca-Cola is funding a popular music program in an Asian country? Most would probably expect scantily dressed women shaking to Western beats, a blizzard of colorful images, sex mixed with consumerism. In other words: an influx of Western pop culture.

And yet the formula adopted by Coke Studio in Pakistan was completely different. The musical program, launched back in 2009 and still running, is much more a fusion between Western and Eastern music than a one-way invasion of the West into the East (even though the latter is something that the West has a long historical experience of). There is usually little dancing in Coke Studio, save for artists moving their bodies here or there a bit while standing or sitting – and everyone is fully dressed.

One also hardly finds any direct references to particular Western songs, and English is rarely used (though a few covers of such songs did appear in the show, including references to Michael Jackson’s “Billy Jean” in Atif Aslam’s “Wasta Pyar Da”). Love is a major song theme, as usual with much music, but there are no direct references to sex and no obscenity in the lyrics. Moreover, love appears not just as an emotion between two people but nearly as often as devotion to God. Many songs performed in Coke Studio are spiritual, and many outspokenly Islamic.

The program is more like a Pakistani and Islamic soul appearing in a mixed, Pakistani and Western, body. In his excellent profile of the show, Shahwar Kibria aptly summarizes it as “reimagined traditional forms of music with Western instrumentation.” In other words: Western influences are apparent but they are audible not visible, appearing on the level of music, where they mix with traditional local genres. They are not felt on other levels, however – not in the lyrics and not in the program’s underlying ideas.

Apart from this “Western instrumentation,” Coke Studio charted its own path sailing through the sea of musical diversity, not more toward the West or to the East but rather searching for more islands in its own sea. While the program has collaborated with some of Pakistan’s most famous musicians, mainstream and traditional, it has also gradually invited less known and regional artists. Most of the songs are in Urdu (with Punjabi coming a very distant second), but sometimes other Pakistani languages, such as Sindhi or Balochi, and occasionally even those not spoken in the country (like “Man Aamadeh Am” by Gul Panrra and Atif Aslam, in Persian). The first half of a performance titled “Daanah Pah Daanah” was a praise of the marginalized region of Balochistan, sung by a musician from that province, Akhtar Chanal Zahri. Admittedly, these types of songs do not dominate the program. A rap song, “Rap Hai Saara” by Lyari Underground and Young Desi, is even more of an outlier, but even here the diversity of the country was recognized, as the performance included four languages: Balochi, English, Urdu, and Punjabi.

There is no doubt, however, that devotional Islamic music appears much more than regional genres. Combining religious works with Western music is probably the program’s most novel and experimental aspect. The devotional genre of qawwali, as well as references to Islamic mysticism (Sufism) appear fairly often in the show, but reincarnated in new musical bodies. One can for instance listen to a religious song rising on an electronic beat (“Jana Jogi Dey Naal” by Rizwan and Muazzam) or a musical adaptation of a poem about Islamic faith performed like a rock song, with guitar cutting through devotional lyrics (“Shikwa/Jawab-e-Shikwa”). Mixing qawwali with other genres and influences was not invented in Pakistan by the makers of Coke Studio; the famed artist Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s efforts to do so pre-date the show. On other occasions, the show has been less experimental, with melodies closer to traditional forms, as in the brilliant “Kangna” by Fareed Ayaz and Abu Muhammad.

The show, running for 12 years now, surely transformed itself on the way. The first seasons were focused much more on popular Pakistani music (in the sense of a genre which can be termed “pop”). Strong religious accents and local, lesser known singers started to appear only with time. Coke Studio is still changing and still experimenting; not every performance is a confirmation of the above general observations. For instance, Season 11 (2018) invited transgender artists (Lucky and Naghma) for the first time, and one of the program’s creators admitted that earlier such a bold step would not have been possible. Moreover, it was quite a stark juxtaposition to the already-mentioned performance of “Shikwa/Jawab-e-Shikwa,” which took place in the same season. It was a combination of two poems by the famous Muhammad Iqbal, written as letters between Muslims and their God, which were adapted to the show in a shorter version but which retained some of the original, bold and warlike words, such as talking of “wiping the Earth clean of infidels.”

At any rate, the general formula turned out to be a massive hit. The show is popular not only in Pakistan but other Muslim countries, as well as India. An Indian iteration of Coke Studio was created, but contrary to its older Pakistani brother was discontinued after a few seasons. As but one measure of success, the program’s most-viewed song is a religious song, “Tajdar-e-Haram” by Atif Aslam, which crossed 300 million views on Coke Studio’s official YouTube channel. The second most-viewed is a love song, “Afreen Afreen” by Rahat Fateh Ali Khan and Momina Mustehsan, with another 300 million views.

Two conclusions arise from Coke Studio’s story in Pakistan. First, not every major involvement of a influential American company in the music of a non-Western country means an imposition of Western genres on Eastern societies. It is true that Western popular influence is usually uncompromising with local culture and one-sided: McDonald’s or MTV, for example. Yet, what Coke Studio did in Pakistan was a much more patronage over a part of the country’s musical scene, than an imposition.

Second, while globalization of culture is usually one-sided, with Western popular culture influencing other cultures, this is far from the only direction of exchange. Not only is the West open to influence as well, but various non-Western areas interact with each other more actively thanks to globalization. Indian movies, for instance, are more popular in some non-Western countries than in Western ones. Similarly, Coke Studio helped carry Pakistani devotional music to other Islamic states.