Zeb & Haniya

I came across this wonderful song Chal Diye – many thanks to Manish Vij – and was completely blown away by this mesmerizing creation by Zeb & Haniya, a female-cousin duo from Pakistan,  and qawwal Javed Bashir.

Below is another outstanding melody that I just can’t get enough of. This one is actually written in Dari/Farsi. If you’re interested in the meaning of lyrics, check out this video link (a slightly different musical version, but with same lyrics). 

Here’s a bit of information about the band from BBC:

Both Zeb and Haniya are ethnic Pashtuns, and their families hail from the town of Kohat in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province.

That region has, of late, become synonymous with the Taleban and al-Qaeda.

“We’ve never lived there, but we do keep going back for family functions and get-togethers,” Haniya explains.

How accurately the militants represent the cultural identity of the Pashtuns is one of the mostly hotly debated topics in the region.

Zeb and Haniya are a living and vivid example of how much more there is to the Pashtun sensibility than the images of gun-toting renegades.