Tina Sani

Talking into Tina Sani’s beautifully decorated residence, her musical instruments which are propped up in one corner, give an indication that one is in a singer’s home rather than an interior designer’s. Halfway through the interview, she turns out to be the typical caring and attentive mother, cleaning up after her feverish son who has been throwing up. One and also discover that she has none of the nonsensical airs that you would expect of a highly sought-after artist.

Tina Sani entered the professional world of singing in 1980, when producer Ishrat Ansari introduced her on TV in a youth programme hosted by Alamgir.

“It was the first programme of its kind, with live recording. I had taken up singing only six months prior to that, more for kicks than anything else, and my appearing on television was a culmination of that short period of practice. Considering that I had never been in the public eye, it was a luxury to have such a captive audience before me. I got a huge bounce from this programme, which marked the beginning of an unknown journey for me.”

However, while Tina began to make appearances on television, she also made sure that they were not too frequent in number. She confesses, “I knew I had to work hard and didn’t want to burn myself out right at the beginning of my career. I had to go through a process of learning and wanted to mature as a singer before allowing people to make up their minds about me. So I pretty much kept to myself and performed for just a few good producers.” Meanwhile, Tina Sani kept herself occupied with a number of other things including teaching at the American School. Then came an offer that was just up her sleeve — she was asked to do Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s ghazal, Aai meray dil meray musafir.

“That opened avenues for me. I received a lot of support from my listeners, family and everyone around me, but the pressure was to do good work rather than a lot of it. My father always wanted me to go into classical singing and once I understood its methodology I began to enjoy it too.”

For Sani, as with most singers, the ultimate pleasure is to perform live. But she concedes that in the initial years she used to be very apprehensive about performing publicly.

“Maybe because of the lack of experience, confidence and practice. I could never dream of sitting on the same platform as Farida Khanum or Mehdi Hassan and sing alongside them.”

In fact, even to this date she takes her music very seriously and says, “You can’t play around with an audience that has been used to hearing Farida Khanum, simply because you’ve now become a known name and your tickets sell.”

Sani is one of those rare breed of people readily accepting that she has been blessed. She is also willing to accept all the “good and bad things” in life and puts it down to experience. “I strongly believe that no one can force you to do anything against your wishes and in the final analysis, I feel you are the better judge of making and then learning from your mistakes.”

Over the years Tina Sani has maintained a relatively low profile. She claims that her family life and the need to be ‘isolated’ keep her from taking too many programmes.

“If I ever have to do three concerts in a month, which I have occasionally done, I feel the verve disappears. I need time to myself, to think in isolation and to do my ‘riaz’.” She likes to appear before an audience only when she has something special to offer. Her repertoire is always prepared well in advance and is never haphazard.

“I know exactly what I am going to sing at the concert, other than entertaining requests, and I never underestimate the audience. The best part is that my audience includes a lot of young people nowadays. My message to them is that if I can understand this kind of music, so can they. I grew up, away from Pakistan and had little practice in spoken Urdu and no formal training in music, but I made up my mind to do what I wanted to do 20 years ago. And that is exactly what I am doing right now. I feel it is my duty to bring to them works of people like Mukhtar Begum.”

Tina Sani has acquired almost a philosophical angle to her personality. She feels that what satisfies her the most about her current situation is the fact that with every ‘riaz’ her knowledge is constantly growing and she is learning more about herself. “I make it a point to take out time for ‘riaz’ — in fact I am very strict with myself about practice because I know I can’t get anywhere without it. You can be born with talent but that’s where it ends. Practice teaches you about life at a micro level. It’s like growing a seed — you have to germinate it in your mind before you can see results. I sit and listen to music of the maestros in an ‘alpha state’, which is when I am listening not with an intent to learn, but for the sheer pleasure of it. I know I’ll never get there myself, but it all plays back to me when I perform — not the techniques of what the great artists did, but how they did it.”

According to Sani, she gives her musicians full leverage to play as they please. “We work within a scale, and once the scale is determined, it is easy to do things in it and still remain within the scale. I tell them to just follow the raaga of the scale and communicate whatever they want to on their instrument. My problem has never been a desire to hog all the limelight. My only hang-up is that I cannot endure singing where Urdu is not understood. At least a basic knowledge should be there, for I love to communicate with my audience.”

The singer feels that ‘fusion’ is a loosely used term, which needs to be redefined. She opines that mixing of instruments, eastern with the western, is not fusion. Rather fusion is about working with completely different cultures — it is more about the players than the instruments they are using. She recalls an interesting experience some years ago in Greenwich Village, New York.

“There was a Spaniard singing a ballad which had been used by Raj Kapoor in one of his movies and I spontaneously started singing it in Urdu. He came up to me and started playing the chords for me and then I sang Meray Hamdam, Meray Dost and just by hearing the melody, he played it for me. Before we knew it, we had gathered an audience that was applauding us madly. That was true fusion.”

Other than music, Sani’s passion is reading. She claims to read four books at a time and finds that reading opens one’s mind. On the other hand, television bores her and she watches very few “great” movies. An eternal optimist, she feels that our people should have a more positive attitude towards things, for enough good things are happening in the country.

“We should stop this self-bashing. Criticism is healthy, but cynicism is detrimental and infectious. You have to have dreams — otherwise you simply stop dreaming.”

True, and one can’t help but feel that Tina Sani’s optimism is just as infectious.

Note:- This interview was conducted in 2001