A great day for our new DVD & CD

The Fareed and Abu Concert at T2F took place a long time back. Sadly the concert had to end a bit early as the Qavvalas home was attacked by thieves while they were performing here. They got the news and had to rush off — though, professional as they are, they did stay back long enough to recite the Rang!

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The performance was recorded for video, too. But the gentleman who recorded it had problems with his hard disk. It took Sabeen constantly pushing him to get the file out somehow … and it was finally extricated from the failed drive and sent to us a few weeks ago.

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CityFM89 had done the audio recording of F&A's delightful performance. However, the gentleman who did the several mike recording had not started the recording with a 'clap' or some sound effect - to be captured on all mikes - that would make it easy to put all tracks in line and have a harmonious recording.

We were originally going to get it two weeks from the concert date: 18/12/2011 … but it went on and on until we said do it on T2F's 5th Birthday. No luck!

There were numerous problems each time they'd send us the disc. Tablas rolled away at the wrong time. Hand motions and clap-beats were not synced with the songs. They had to go through tons of 'repeats' to finally put the whole thing back together and send it to us.

Now it has been sent to us this week and we've checked it and put the DVD and the 2 CD versions together and you can get them. Wow!

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Mustafa Zaidi was one of my absolute favorite poets and I had always wanted to do a CD of his works. I had a couple of his pieces from 2 Mushaerahs and 7 pieces from his private recordings. I looked on the internet. Nothing! Asked cousins and friends. Nothing! I went on to the Facebook page on Mustafa Zaidi. Nothing! I posted 2 of his pieces there and a lot of people say it was the first time they'd heard his voice. This amazed me! I asked others on Twitter and Facebook if they had any of his works. No answers.

While 9 pieces (brilliant as the poems are!) seem short of a full CD, there seemed to be little choice. Today I have put that CD out and, while I am glad that people can hear him, I have requested people who buy this, or hear it, to ask others and see if more works of Mustafa Bhai can be found. It would be wonderful to have as many of his works we can get hold of and put out an updated CD.

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Take a look at http://digitaldiscs.blogspot.com/ You can get all of these DVDs/CDs (and some more) at T2F in Karachi. They are on display at The Faraar Shop downstairs.

You can also get them anywhere in Pakistan - for the same price as the web - if you send a cheque to PeaceNiche.

If you are outside Pakistan you'll have to ask a friend to order it here and send it to you with someone who is going to wherever you are …