Babar Mangi fell in love with American hip hop and rap before he could even understand the words.
Growing up in Karachi, the cosmopolitan capital of Sindh province, Mangi was instinctively drawn to these genres by their latent energy and distinctiveness from the then-dominant Lollywood and Bollywood fare.
While his style of music might sound familiar to the Western ear, Mangi never severs his link to Sindh province. Take his most recent release, “Sindhu Waadi,” an ode to the river Sindhu, better known as the Indus in English, from which the Sindhi people and language derive their name.
To quote the video, “(Sindhu) remains the soul of our land, a river that carries out history, culture, and identity.”
Like all Pakistanis, Mangi is well aware that the river, like all sources of water in the country, is at risk from drying up or becoming too polluted to use. It’s hard to miss the symbolism of him trekking through a desert and finding an abandoned canoe, a sign of a lost ecosystem and livelihood.
We may be used to thinking of natural disasters through the lens of the material suffering they cause, but when Mangi refers to the river as his “mad lover,” and his “spirit and existence,” he reminds us of the intangible spiritual damage of witnessing part of your own history and culture being destroyed by forces outside your control.
Mangi’s breakout song “Sanam Sopari” reached #14 on the YouTube trending music chart, introducing the rest of Pakistan, and much of the world, to his niche discography.
“Sanam Sopari” tells a story which many outside Sindh can relate to, it is about the feelings of a woman who is unappreciated by her partner. In an interview with Forbes, Mangi explained that he based the lyrics off the “unheard emotions” of the women in his life, specifically his mother.
It helps that Mangi is young, which by his own account makes him more open to singing about his feelings. He attributes his success to that openness; his ability to tap into his own memories of his childhood and personal struggles lends a sense of authenticity to his work that his listeners can immediately recognize.
Mangi hides a reference to Sindh in the title “Sanam Sopari,” which means “betel nuts” in English. It is a reference to the South Asian Muslim tradition of couples exchanging betel nuts at their wedding. It is also a metaphor for the woman in the song wanting to be closer to her partner. Betel nuts are a regional specialty of Sindh province, especially Karachi, where they are chewed as a recreational stimulant called paan.
And like paan, Babar Mangi’s music is another Karachi-based sensation, which draws you in, and stimulates the senses.
Photo: Babar Mangi, courtesy of the artist’s Facebook.
