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Ali Sethi's infectious hit 'Pasoori' reverberates from Pakistan to Coachella
A tale of forbidden love with an infectious hook, Ali Sethi's song "Pasoori" has become an international phenomenon.
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Pakistani Singer Ali Sethi performs during the first weekend of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio, California, on April 16, 2023. (AFP/Valerie Macon)
A
tale of forbidden love with an infectious hook, Ali Sethi's song "Pasoori" has become an international phenomenon, fusing poetic tradition with global beats to fuel the rise of the Pakistani singer's star.
The Punjabi track whose title roughly translates to "difficult mess" was 2022's most-searched song on Google and has surpassed half a billion views on YouTube, offering a melodic metaphor for conflict between India and Pakistan in the form of an impassioned love song with an eminently danceable flow.
The song's origins stem from when Sethi was asked to pen a song for the popular Pakistani television program Coke Studio, which occurred just after an experience where an Indian broadcaster had pulled out of a creative partnership because the 38-year-old is Pakistani.
"You're a Pakistani, and India and Pakistan are at war, and now we can't really put up a billboard saying we're working with you because extremists will set fire to our building," the singer recalls being told.
"As a Pakistani I've grown up with that... 'Oh you can't do this because it's prohibited, yada yada.'"
The experience got his creative wheels turning: "Of course the theme of prohibition is such an eternal theme in South Asian love songs -- all true love is prohibited," he told AFP following an electrifying party of a performance at the Coachella music festival in the United States, a cherry on top of his remarkable year.
"So I wanted to write a song that was sort of a flower bomb hurled at nationalism and hetero-patriarchy," Sethi continued, wearing a wide-brimmed hat and black button-up with colorful embroidery alluding to styles of the American southwest. "With all the fun innuendos and all this camp energy."
