PhilPaine.com

Haider Ali (or Ali Haider, علی حیدر ) is prob­a­bly the most pop­u­lar light pop singer to come out of Pak­istan. His sev­en albums will be hard for a Cana­dian to accu­mu­late, but it is easy to find the two Best of Haider Ali discs, which I have. He is not as much of a light-weight as you might guess. Yes, the arrange­ments are pure pop, but he choos­es melodies that have some folk­loric roots, and his per­for­mances are flaw­less. There is also notice­able devel­op­ment. He finds his feet with the fourth album, Qarar. This con­tained the hit “Purani Jeans”, which I’m told found a cross-gen­er­a­tional audi­ence. After this, the songs became sub­tler, and bet­ter craft­ed, with touch­es of clas­si­cal Urdu style embed­ded in the euro-pop orches­tra­tion. Some of the lat­er songs have live flute, tabla, dho­lak, sitar and ban­jo. “Papa Mumi”, a hit from his best-regard­ed fifth album Das­taan, is more than just a pop song, and it comes across emo­tion­ally to some­one like me, who doesn’t under­stand Urdu.