Zeeshaan and I cancelled our plans to go back and here we are, playing at one of the finest venues in Delhi — The Piano Man Jazz club Zeeshan Nabi adds to the electronics and keys along with vocals. We all have been close friends since we were quite young."The balance between the understanding of where we’ve come from, our roots, the music and poetry we’ve grown up listening to, how the contemporary soundscapes affected us, and art and literature we encountered defines the reason why we named our band Meezan. Qassam Hussain is the lead vocalist and guitarist of the band. It’s basically I guess due to the demographical placement of the land where we come from and how it has been a significant contributor to the cultural exchange.According to Qassam, "Our sound doesn’t fit one single genre. Zeeshaan is opening his own studio where we’ll be holding up music sessions with a lot of artists creating a space to help the whole scene grown. Somewhere, Urdu merged with our culture creating a unique bond.
The idea is not to specifically stick to genres.". Muneeb Khan specialises in playing the drums, cajon and darbuka, and the fourth member of the band, Ovais, plays the bass. So, our idea isn’t restricted to being just a band that perform music. We met at the right time in the right place and ended up forming Meezan. Our first single, Pasbaan was created because we, I guess, were seeking the same thing all these years. Meezan is the object that balances, and our music constantly tries to seek that art of balancing these vast narratives," they unanimously believe. In December 2017, we met in Kashmir and I had to leave for Mumbai, Muneeb was at that time studying and Zeeshaan had come back from Australia. Be it studying Urdu in school or singing Kashmiri songs, somewhere in between, it all began," he says. Also, the band’s formation is due to a reunion we had after years.On being asked about their future plans, they say "We have couple of things lined up for this year as we have started working on our debut album, reaching out to masses and share our music as much as we can and apart from that, we are trying establish a proper independent music scene in Kashmir, that’s why we like to call ourselves "home grown".
Since we knew each other since a long time, we knew how each one of us operate musically and I guess that is the reason why we’ve been able to write 15 songs in last 6 months. We have grown up in a cultural space where literature in Kashmir has inspired us with poets like Rasul Mir, Shams Faqir, Lal Ded. It is not restricted just to the sound that is produced but the very journey that leads us to creating that sound. We experienced it through poets like Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Ghalib. Persians travelled from Middle East to this side of the planet. We recently composed a short story by one of our favourite authors, Franz Kafka," says ZeeshanMeezan was co-founded by Zeeshan Nabi, Qassam Hussain and Muneeb Khan, who each add their uniqueness to sounds they create."The bass player of the band, Ovais reveals his story, "I used to listen to a lot of Kashmiri mystic poetry and folk musicians like Rashid Hafiz fascinated me.Deeply influenced by progressive rock, blues, electronic music and Kashmiri folk, Meezan is a four member Bag fabric Factory band that plays Kashmiri and Urdu poetry as music, amalgamating various genres."
Adding to that Muneeb says, "The band was formally formed in January and we jammed to a couple of songs we wrote together and it all worked quite well. In fact, we have been exploring English literature during this process as well. Maybe that is why subconsciously we all connect to both languages at an emotional level. we have grown up reading and listening to their works and Urdu and its beauty. Our soundscape is a blend of folk, ethno-electronic, progressive, ambient music infused with Kashmiri, Urdu and English poetry."Kashmiri being our first language, enables us to reflect our experiences We want to contribute to the fabric of Kashmiri art and music and that gives us numerous options and how we can utilise music with other art forms. The journey creating our music using bilingual poetry gives us more space to express.
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