Ustaad Taffu’s son is on a mission from ‘above’ to promote Spiritualism by way of East-meets-West fusio.

I knew interviewing Sajjad Taffu was going to be a ‘tricky’ proposition. The reason is that the guy although soft-spoken is extremely talkative. The questionnaire doesn’t work on him and any notions that I had for a ‘conventional’ interview went straight out the nearest window once he started to talk. I found him very honest in his convictions and keen to ‘tell his tale’ to the world.

 Childhood In Music

Being the son of the renowned & illustrious film/pop/classical music composer Ustaad Taffu and he grandson of sarangi-player of note Hussain Baksh Tariq’s childhood was spent entirely in listening, playing and learning music. His inspiration for getting into music was off-course his dad who brought back for him Bongo Drum-set & an Electric Guitar from one of his trip to Indonesia. It’s a little known fact that Daddy Taffu also knows how to play the guitar and displayed his axe-grinding skills in the golden-oldie DORAHA music for which was composed by Master Composer Sohail Rana. Sajjad was thus inspired by his own father and started under the tutelage of Mazhar Hussain Popa, well known guitarist and a friend of his dad. Sajjad by his own admission picked up his first guitar at the tender age of 10 & performed his first professional job for the Feature Film AINA, a blockbuster like no other released in 1970 to great critical & commercial acclaim. He then aged just 15 played his guitar to the tune of the hit song Mujhe Dilse Na Bhulana composed by filmdom’s accomplished composer Robin Ghosh.

 Studies & Studies In Music

A Ravian (alumnus of Government College, Lahore) Sajjad completed his education by graduating from Government College, Lahore where his passion for music continued to overshadow everything else. He formed a bad with his mates at the college and named it AVENGERS. The band became somewhat of a social-institution and stayed active for nearly a decade between 1986 & 1995 (the pioneering era for pop music in the country). The band toured extensively within Pakistan & Abroad and its financial benefits allowed a less ‘monetarily’ fortunate bas player to complete an MBA and find a good career opening in a MNC. His first international tour was in 1980 when he accompanied the celebrated A. Nayyar on a tour to UK arranged by notable promoter Akhtar Hussain Qomi.

 US Jaunt: ‘An Eye Opener’

The most career-defining step in his life came when while on a cultural-exchange trip to the US with renowned comedian Dildar Pervaiz Bhatti, proto pop-singer Alamgir & trained classically trained ghazal singer Naheed Akhtar, Sajjad decided to stay ‘back’ and spend nearly two years in the United States.

He spent the first year in New York City where he attended a six-month course in Professional Jazz playing at the Manhattan School of Music in Brooklyn and even hung-around the seedy Harlem cafes with the objective of perfecting his jazz & blues playing in the company of the genre’s ‘best kept secret’ exponents. His quest took him across the Hudson to New Jersey where he spent another 3 months playing at clubs and bars. Keen on learning Hard Rock which became another fascination during his US jaunt he traveled all the way to the West Coast where he spent time in the birthplace of hippie hard rock San Francisco (3 months) and LA (2 months) where he no doubt spent time with proto-Nu-Metal acts during the post-grunge ascendance of Heavy Metal years.

 Financially Rewarding Yet Mundane Existence

Once back on home soil the only lucrative career that Sajjad found he capable of pursuing was Background Score for Movies. From 1997 onwards Sajjad created, composed, played & produced music for nearly 100 films. Although not challenging intellectually he persevered with film music until the downfall of the Pakistani Film Industry seemed inevitable. To sum it in Sajjad’s words: “Jab Mein Ne Dekha ke parhe likhay khandani log sub nikal gaye hain aur sirf Gujjar aur badmash reh gye to mein ne film industry chor di” (When I saw that all the educated professionals have left & only those with ill-gotten riches were here, I decided to leave the film industry). His mind was looking for an infinitely bigger challenge and one day he finally got it.

The Spiritual Voyage

One day while at the grave of mystic Zia Hussain Sajjad had his guitar with him and touching the grave prompted him to play with his guitar Mian Muhammad Bakhsh’s sufi-poetry instrumentally inside the shrine. From then on he to use his own words started performing ‘duty at all major sufi shrines’. During that period he suffered a major heart-attack and still has scares to show for the 6 hour surgery that he underwent. After the severe ailment he began to contemplate the near-mystic question about the meaning of life “Why has God kept me alive?” the answer that he received was “This s It!” He claims his motive is neither a Greed for Money, Nor Hunger For Fame. He is doing merely a service to the Mystics that involve spreading Sufism through ‘Guitar’.

His present ‘set-up’ includes performance of Sufi, Classical, Thumri & Rohani Poetry using an instrumental set-up of Sarangi, Tabla fusion with Drums, Bass & lead Guitars. The pendulum of his ‘music’ swings between East & West and his guitar playing is more ‘floating’ in the Eastern stringed arrangement rather than tempo-driven ‘mechanical’ Western arrangement. The style of his music is Unique Classical Improvisation ranging from Darbari scale to the ‘Sultans Of Swing’ scale. He has been ‘silently’ (no pun intended) working on an album titled The Spiritual Voyage (Reviewed in box) which is now on the verge of official release that is composed entirely based on sufi poetry & arranged as a collision of ‘classical raga played as western instrumentals’. Sajjad even has an interesting (big budget) concept for video of one song while the video for another is in post-editing stage and is being done by Bashir Tahir under his Liquid Magic Productions banner.

 What next?Sajjad during the meeting was very excited about his next step. A live performance in tandem with Rustam Ali Khan for Asad Amanat Ali Tribute Concert that would give a voice to his instrumental rendering of Raag Malkos played via electric guitar. If successful in this ‘experiment’ he will make vocalization a permanent fixture for the planned Spiritual Voyage Part II album, currently in conceptualization stage.