The Tamaashbeens are a young quartet from Lahore, the capital city of the province of Punjab. They’ve recently released a delightful single titled “Duniya Re” which made us ask one of the members, Shahenshah Bokhari, for a short interview. Here’s what he told us about…
– The band’s origins:
All of us know each other for a long time and are childhood friends. I have been playing the guitar for a long time, but I had never thought of creating or composing music myself. I remember listening to Kimya Dawson’s soundtracks featured in the Hollywood flick “Juno”, which made me fall in love with that kind of music. It made me want to listen to more such tracks, of the same genre, but couldn’t discover any, Hence, I thought that I would create some myself, more or less with the same feel, and I would listen to them whenever I wanted to. That was when I started to record anything on my phone. Later on, my friends got to know about my tracks, they thought the music was pretty cool, and that is how we formed a band. But the plan initially was to keep the music hidden. I’d never really thought about bringing it out, as it was meant only for my individualistic soul.
– Inspirations, preferences and tha band’s name:
We’re really inspired by the Beatles, Kimya Dawson, Jason Mraz, Amit Trivedi, and the whole Pakistani indie music scene as well. Dawson and Mraz share the same genre, which is acoustic indie, which is our favourite genre. Hence that’s our main sound. But apart from that, we would create any type of music we want to, there can be no boundaries or limits to creativity. As for the band’s name, I’ve heard someone saying the term “Tamaashbeen”, and I immediately thought that it was such a fun word. The pronunciation of it is so diversifed. I recommended this name for the band, and Talaal [Khan] upgraded it to “The Tamaashbeens”. The word basically means “audience”.
– Their career:
Primarily, we need to clarify that the band is more of a group of friends chilling out. This is nothing too serious, none of the band members knows how to even play an instrument except me. (Laughs). So thus, we only take it as a fun activity. But having said that, all of the boys are great vocalists, especially Jamal Abbas and Ali Hassnain. So I create and compose music, we write the lyrics collectively – usually Talaal and I – and then fight with each other on who’s going to sing it. Everybody in the band is completing their undergrade studies. Music is more of a spiritual thing for us. But it’s way too overwhelming when your tracks are being heard, loved, played on the radio. Songs which were once inside your mobile phone’s memory card. The feeling is immense.
– Our featured song, “Duniya Re”:
Some of my friends were staying for the night at my place, including Ali Hassnain, and we all were just chilling out. I was playing the guitar, and I started to play the tune of “Duniya Re” for a friend – with different words, obviously. It was just a random jam initially. But later Ali and I thought that it was a cool melody, and we could write some lyrics for this piece transforming it into a proper track. I made a demo and our friends and family loved, so eventually Ali and I wrote the lyrics. They revolve around how the world, which was meant to be a beautiful lovely place originally, had gotten itself into such a disasterous and a filthy state. People are selfish nowadays, thinking about money and power only, leading to almost no humanity in the contemporary world.
– Their favourite Pakistani musicians:
Shajie and Jimmy Khan all the way! These people are making the best music ever and deserve way much more! Extremely underrated people. But I personally think that generally the new indie scene in Pakistan is very creative and innovative, producing such immense music. Favourite Pakistani track? It has to be Shajie’s “Dosti Pyar”.
Follow The Tamaashbeens on Soundcloud and Facebook.
