ISLAMABAD: Google doodle has once again honored a Pakistani great, this time by illustrating the country’s famous ghazal singer, Iqbal Bano, on what would have been her 81st birthday.
Bano was born in New Delhi, India, in 1935. She spent her formative years in the neighboring country and started training in classical music under Ustad Sabri Khan of the Delhi Gharana. In 1952, at the age of 17, she married and moved to Pakistan where her singing career flourished.
She was known for her classical Urdu ghazals, thumri, ballads as well as easy-listening tunes which found their way into popular consumption through film soundtracks and the radio.
Bano was also known for her activism, most legendarily for her defiant and radical bucking of the rules when in 1986 she performed Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s poetry and work which was banned at the time before a crowd in Lahore. Recordings of Bano’s bold move found their ways to all corners of South Asia. One of those songs, “Hum Dekhenge,” has long been a song and recitation of resistance in South Asia, both in Pakistan and India.
That same poem has recently been sung and performed by students and protesters in neighboring India where people have been rallying against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) which its critics describe as an anti-Muslim piece of legislation. In fact, a faculty member of the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur filed a complaint against his students for performing the song during a protest, claiming that it was pro-communist and anti-Indian.
Bano’s first public performance in Pakistan took place in 1957 at the Lahore Arts Council prior to which she worked with Radio Pakistan where she sang ghazals live on air. Her music found its way to Afghanistan and Iran since she also performed Persian poetry.
Bano received Pakistan’s Pride of Performance award in 1974 for her contributions to classical music. She passed away after battling a short illness on April 21, 2009 at age 74.
Google Doodle has honored a number of Pakistani greats in the past, including Abdul Sattar Edhi, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Noor Jehan.
