Coke Studio

Coke Studio has not only revived the Pakistani music industry but has given the cultural aspect of the music in the country a relatively new twist. Coke Studio is a Pakistani music television series sponsored by the Coca- Cola Company under the able watch of the renowned producer Rohail Hyatt (former member of the legendary pop act, Vital Signs). The show has developed some amazing pieces of fusion music over the course of its past five seasons.

Fusion music, in my opinion, is not a new concept. Fusion of various genres, for example, the Western contemporary rock with Eastern classical has been experimented by the likes of the Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Michael Brooks. Then what is Coke Studio doing differently that these previous tries in the art of fusion did not accomplish?

First, Coke Studio’s name itself is a self-fulfilling prophecy of success. The partnership or support, if you may by a global brand like Coke is a definite marker of a comfortable jump-start by the musical venture. Throughout history Coke has come up with some of the most innovative and stylish ads.

Coke in Pakistan has always endorsed the strongest forms of material culture, that have been found to be relevant throughout generations, for example, the use of the sport of cricket in many of their advertisements. This provides a great marketing strategy for Coke, which uses the undying passion (non-material culture) for cricket (material culture) in Pakistan to spearhead their product in the market. As suggested in the first reading for the class (Youth Cultures in the Middle East), there is no denying that there is a relationship or overlap between the material and non-material cultures.

So swinging back to Coke Studio, such a partnership with Coke (who are always coming up with new advertising strategies) coupled with talented artists (ranging from the greatly revered performers like Atif Aslam, who have enjoyed immense success in Bollywood and folk singers such as Ata-Ullah Khan, who bring to life the ancient poetry of the Indus) from across the board in Pakistan is the pointer for Coke Studio’s success in Pakistan.

Second, as much as I have mentioned that fusion music is not a new concept, it does need its recognition as one of the core ingredients of Coke Studio’s success. Fusion music used by Coke Studio can be classified under the umbrella of glocalization and cultural hybridity. Robertson recognizes glocalization as ‘recontextualization of global phenomenon with respect to local cultures’. This is exactly what Coke Studio is doing. It merges the Western Pop/rock with the Eastern folk/classical to form this novel genre that reminisces somewhat of the psychedelic rock movement in the 1960s. This is not to say that the fusion music developed by Coke Studio is rip off of the psychedelic music but it is to put Coke Studio in a greater framework of glocalization and cultural hybridity which hints towards borrowing various aspects of foreign cultures. One example of such a musical piece from Coke Studio I find worth mentioning is:

This song incorporates various elements of Eastern folk and soul in the form of Qawwali combined with dominant use of Western instruments (electric guitar on WaWa pedal effect).

Third, Coke Studio has somewhat blurred the boundaries between the highbrow and the lowbrow culture. I am delivering this idea from my own observations and I have witnessed that music from Coke Studio has been played in low-key music stores in relatively low-income neighbourhoods on a high volume and I have also seen it being played during family gatherings of the upper class in some of the expensive hotels in Lahore. Qawwali in the Indian subcontinent is considered as the music of the people or the lower strata of the society. Rock music on the other hand is a relatively newer concept in Pakistan and is the music of the youth and the privileged half of the society. Coke Studio has developed a ‘common culture’ in the sense that both forms of music are not only accessible but also liked by the different social classes in Pakistan.

I think there are so many sociological and communications (media theory) layers to this cultural phenomenon in Pakistan that they cannot all be covered in a limited space. I leave you with some of the remarkable pieces produced by Coke Studio over the years so that you can get a taste of what this is all about: