Two of its most famous songs in this respect were 1994’s No Love and its 1995 sequel, Yes Love. Led by Javad Bashir, the band at once began to parody the mainstream themes of the Pakistani pop music scene of the time. In 1978 the year Pakistan’s state-owned TV channel, PTV, launched Fifty-Fifty – a weekly 30-minute show of comedy skits – one of the show’s initial skits parodied the rivalry between the Brothers and Aziz Mian.ĭuring the early and mid-1990s when the modern Pakistani pop scene had well and truly broken out of its ‘underground’ status and went mainstream, there emerged a quirky pop band (from the famous Lahore College of Arts), called Doctor Aur Billa (Dr and Billa). In 1977, the Brothers released a long Qawali, Peena Weena Chor: O’ Sharabi, Chor De Peena (hey, drunkard, stop drinking), that indirectly taunted Aziz Mian’s obsession with whisky.Īziz Mian retaliated with an even longer and sarcastic Qawali, Aye Kambakht Tu Nein Pi Hi Nahi (O’ unfortunate soul, you never even drank). Though the Sabri Brothers too came from the same Sufi-music background as Aziz Mian, they were more subdued and harmonious in their approach towards their music.Īs crowds in Karachi, Lahore and other major cities of the country flocked to see Aziz Main and the Brothers, they loved their professional rivalry even more. Long-haired, almost always sloshed on his favourite brand of whisky, and punctuating his qawalis with sudden spoken-word interludes that he would shout out as if he was having an argument with God and the conservative clergy. Over a period of time a rivalry of sorts developed between Aziz Mian and the Sabri Brothers, and a time came when both began to record qawalis mocking each other with taunting lyrics.Īziz Mian was the wild man of Pakistani Qawali.

Two of the most famous exponents of the genre were Aziz Mian Qawal and the Sabri Brothers.

The passionate South Asian music genre of the Qawali reached a peak in popularity among urban Pakistanis in the mid and late 1970s.

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