In addition, practicing music professionally for over 20 years now, Rakae is also a full-time musicology professor at Lahore’s National College of Arts (NCA). Initially starting off as a sitar player, he has since then evolved and donned many different hats, from producer, to archivist. He is also a member of the fusion-funk band Mughal-e-Funk and has released music as a solo artist as well. Je Jun, his latest song, was made way back in 2017 as part of an archives conference on South Asian music in Nepal, hosted by the University of Chicago, which is where he did his masters from.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvMc6Q-kCjw
Je Jun started off as a recording of an old Bengali folk song given to him by a colleague of his from university. Rakae then took the recording, spliced it up into his software and began adding layer upon meticulously crafted layer, breathing into it a life of its own. The resulting product was no longer a rehashing of an old folk song, nor could it accurately be described as a modern-day Top-40 song. This is the beauty of Je Jun; it acts as a bridge between Now and Then, while at the same time contextualizing the Now within the Then. It’s self-preservation, but as Rakae tells me, it also makes archival music more consumable and palatable to audiences today.
“I’m exploring how to create a sound palette that is unique to one person or individual and looking into how to take something that is old and turn into something that hasn’t been done before but that also makes it accessible to younger audiences,” he says. This isn’t the first time this has been done, both by him and in general. He reminds me that Coke Studio and Nescafe Basement and other commercial music shows are constantly rehashing older songs, but that there shouldn’t be any harm in doing that yourself at home and creating your own unique sound. To his own end, he’s done it before with an EDM fusion version of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s Halka Halka Suroor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHLQI4fMigg
This, he says, is what he tries to teach his students at NCA. “I tell them that you guys are here to learn about different genres and music in the present and in history, so you have to do something where it becomes apparent that you know that part of your culture,” he says, “So you have to present it in a way that the world at present can relate to it.” Most of the classical music that’s around these days has compositions dating back to hundreds, if not thousands of years ago, which Rakae says explains the dwindling number of classical music listeners. “People don’t relate to these compositions anymore because they were relevant to us in another time, but not anymore,” he says.
Of course, he acknowledges that there are compositions that transcend time and space. “I was listening to Man Kunto Maula, which is thought to be an 800-year-old composition, but when you listen to it, or something like Sakal Ban, when you put a twist on it, the composition transcends time,” he says, referring to the song his band Mughal-e-Funk did with Meesha Shafi, which is also an Amir Khusrao composition. This is why a new spin on an old folk tradition is more easily appreciated by people, he says, because the composition is so powerful that it draws them in and helps them find meaning in it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtRbl_TXAzE
By composition he clarifies that he is first and foremost talking about the melody, rather than the arrangement or the lyrics. “The melody reaches you first, even if you don’t understand the language or the lyrics, you can understand the melody,” he says. These melodies have been passed down amongst musicians for centuries, from guru to shaagird, as an oral tradition that carefully preserves a facet of culture and passes music down like a family heirloom. “This is why we assume that these melodies are ancient, because if you look at it, no one has any claim to these melodies, so you can’t really pinpoint and say that it belongs to this one person,” he says, adding that this is just a part of our cultural heritage. “The great thing is, we’re allowed to explore, recreate and interpret it in our own way as musicians.”
At present, while the idea that you need to be a vocalist to be successful in music may still be lingering, people’s appetite for instrumental and fusion music is slowly building, according to Rakae. “I feel like even in this year’s Coke Studio, you listen to Kana Yari, and there’s a lot of fusion going on there,” he says, highlighting the Baloch instrumentation layered over electronic beats with a steady flow of rap. The delicate balance of familiarity and innovation is really important when making music; while you don’t want to give the listener a regurgitated mix of sound, you also don’t want to give them something so foreign that they are unable to connect.
The most important thing, however, is to not get caught in the weeds and just make the most of the moment. Rakae says he became insecure about his Sitar playing when a long time ago an ustaad of his called him ‘unskillful’ because he wasn’t a ‘fast player’. He says he adopted a ‘less is more’ attitude when it came to his sitar playing, and that greatly helped with how he felt about his own music. “It’s really freeing to make music not just for your consumption, but also for a wider range of listeners,” he said, adding that he still loves playing classical music, but now he just doesn’t care about what other people think. “That really is the key, I think, when it comes to making music, but also just to being an artist.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzO8c_QNawg
For now, Rakae is focusing on teaching at NCA, and producing music for artists like Bayaan and Ali Hamza, but he hasn’t turned away from fusion music. In fact, he tells me that Mughal-e-Funk is bringing vocalists on board for their new album, which is currently in the works. “We just wanted to test the boundaries in terms of diversity,” he says, explaining the band’s choice to have vocal songs on the album. Their first album, Sultanate, is described by Rakae as a ‘musician’s album’, with a lot of odd time signatures and a more progressive vibe. With this one, they are exploring a side that audiences would be able to relate with more, and that they would have fun performing for people. As he says with a smile, “We want to make songs that we can groove to.”