‘Gao, Suno Badlo’, Ali Aftab Saeed commemorate Labour Day with ‘Mehnat Kash’

Lahore: For most of us, the International Labour Day is just another holiday that comes around every year and allows us to take a break from our busy lives. However, there is a lot more to this holiday that often goes unnoticed. Thanks to the ‘Gao, Suno, Badlo’ musical campaign, a number of issues have been highlighted that go perfect with the theme of this day via the song ‘Mehnat Kash’.

The video begins with a farmer in the fields and the song at this point tells how farmers are of paramount importance to society. The irony that villagers who grow wheat don’t get enough to eat is highlighted.

However, this isn’t where this ends. The song goes on to portray a multitude of issues including problems that blue collar workers have to face and sexual harassment that working women have to face. The video shows women working in different fields ranging from house-help to the corporate sector facing the same issue; sexual harassment. In a wonderfully composed song with a video that complements it perfectly, GSB has managed to highlight some of the most important issues that plague society these days.

 

While speaking to The Nation, Ali Aftab Saeed,the artist who composed this song revealed all the inspiration behind it, along with several other songs that the musical campaign is going to be working on.

“Gao, Suno, Badlo” is basically a calendar musical campaign launched by Aawaz and Mishermayl that aims to create awareness about issues within the society via entertainment. ‘Mehnat Kash’ is their third song which comes after a two other songs which were released on the National Women’s Day and on Shabaz Masih’s death anniversary. The songs highlighted the issues faced by women and minorities respectively.

A very prominent theme identified by ‘Mehnat Kash’ is that of sexual harassment that women, from all walks of life, have to face. Ali Aftab Saeed told The Nation that he realized that there are certain basic issues that all individuals who work have to face and there are certain additional issues that working women have to face. He said that these additional issues that women have to face make things a lot more difficult for working women than they are for men which is why, according to his beliefs, women who overcome these issues are extremely strong women who deserve appreciation.

A second theme that was highlighted in the song was that of the problems that blue collar workers have to experience at the hands of their bosses. Life is perhaps as difficult for blue collar workers as it is for the labour class. The oppression that these workers have to face was portrayed beautifully in the song’s video. In his interview, Ali Aftab Saeed particularly mentioned the problems that individuals working at media houses have to face.

“We all know of the exploitation that workers go through at media houses. They don’t get their salaries on time, they don’t have health insurance and even if they do, they have to pay for the treatment themselves and go through the hassle of reimbursement procedures that can take somewhere between 6 months to 6 years to get resolved” he stated.

He emphasized on the fact that employees working at media houses don’t get adequate pay raises despite the fact that the value of money keeps decreasing owing to inflation.He further emphasized on the point that people criticize the government whenever it fails to provide them with the facilities that they need but never do the same when their employers exploit them. The main theme of the song revolved around being able to raise a voice in order to bring about a change.

The song ‘MehnatKash’ was created keeping in mind all these issues. When one listens to the song carefully, it can be seen that some inspiration for the song comes from a song by John Lennon that also discusses the lives of working class people, hailing them as heroes. On this, Ali mentioned that while the two songs focus on the same theme and that ‘MehnatKash’ does derive some inspiration from ‘Working Class Hero’ and another song by Nickelback, the main inspiration for the song came from the conditions that the labour class, women and the working class in general have to face.

The song was very well received by the Twitterati who emphasized on the fact that this song has managed to capture and highlight some issues that affect hundreds of thousands of individuals daily, yet nobody raises a voice to get these issues the attention that they deserve.

The fourth song that GSB will be releasing will focus on Children’s rights and will be released on Children’s Day while the fifth one will focus on the importance of Fathers empowering their daughters and will be released on Father’s Day. Ali’s solo plans for the future include a song on the issues journalist and individuals from media houses have to face.

 Check out the video here: