MUSADIQ SANWAL
1963-2014
About
An artist by education, a musician by training, a theatre director by choice, an unpublished poet and founding editor of dawn.com, Musadiq Sanwal found creative expression through multiple channels.
Born in 1963 in Multan, also known as the ‘City of Saints’ , Karachi was his adopted study, with work stint London, and performances in Europe, Dubai, North America.
MUSIC
Sanwal’s greatest love was devotional music. He composed and sang Sufi Kalaam from Pakistan rendered in epic folklore as well as modern styling, nostalgic partition verses of Nasir Kazmi, playback music for Baang theatre, BBC radio, occasional productions based on the genre of everyday sounds from Pakistan. Happiest performing live in music baithaks, his voice was powerful, raw, he sang usually without accompaniments, studio strappings. Most of his music has not been recorded.
Follow Musadiq Sanwal’s music available on spotify and on his dHOL sANWAL sound cloud account
THEATRE
“I applied a technique of improvisation to evolve a script. The idea was to begin with just the outline of a story. It helped us to speak from the heart rather than memorise pre-determined lines. I can claim that it was the first time such an experiment was carried out in Pakistan. Eventually, several theatre groups here adopted the improvisation technique.”
– Musadiq Sanwal (Founder, Baang Theatre Group)
Musadiq Sanwal was known in the public eye as an established theatre director, founding the Baang Theatre Group in Karachi that carved a niche in Pakistan’s theatre history with charged avant-garde multi-art performances over 1990-2001.
POETRY
“Sanwal’s collection of poems, published posthumously, is a celebration of life with all its inconsistencies, ambiguities, successes and joys. Pain is a part of life and so is death. He knew it well. He did not fear it. He did not feel discontented. He was never melancholic. He saw death coming and wrote poems.” Harris Khalique, Book Review
Musadiq’s artistic journey began with avid poetry writing during his childhood in Multan, prompting him to adopt the surname Sanwal, recitals on Radio Pakistan and mushairas during his teens. It culminated in his only published volume – Yeh Natamam Si Zindgagi Jo Guzri Hay, compiled when he took up poetry again to pen his conversations with death in the last year of his life.
CYBER JOURNALISM
“The plan is to be better than the BBC and make them take the lead from us one day and show them how one should really tell the story from Pakistan, online.” – Musadiq Sanwal, Founding Editor dawn.com
Musadiq Sanwal set up the first online newsroom in Pakistan as founding editor of dawn.com and set the signature for interactive online journalism integrating blogs, videos, culture, analytical narratives, alongside current affairs. He refrained from ‘sensationalism of the masses’, a byline his team adopted at Dawn.com
