Haniya Aslam never expected to be a successful musician. Now she's inspiring other Pakistani women

Haniya Aslam had just started to settle into her musical career in Canada when family matters took her back to Pakistan in December last year. A few days after her return, she happened to run into Ali Hamza — a famous singer-songwriter and musician who fronts the celebrated Pakistani pop rock band Noori along with his brother Ali Noor — at a friend's house.

"He asked me what I was doing back in Pakistan. Ten days later I get a call from Ali Hamza. He told me he's doing Coke Studio with Zohaib Kazi, and he asked, 'Will you write a song?' And I asked him, 'Do you want an editor?' So we both got what we wanted," says Aslam.

One of Pakistan's beloved music shows, Coke Studio — and yes, it's produced by Coca Cola Pakistan — has become popular because of its winning formula. It brings together a myriad of musical sensibilities to the same stage, blending Pakistan's folk or qawwali traditions, say, with bass guitar riffs and drum kit solos. Aslam was well-familiar with the show; after all, Coke Studio was a launchpad of sorts for herself and her cousin Zeb Bangash almost a decade ago, when the duo were first making their mark on the music scene with their debut album Chup! ("Quiet!"). And so Aslam's work on Coke Studio's 11th season, which included writing a women's anthem called "Main Irada (I'm An Intention)," was another sort of a homecoming.

Although Aslam had never considered a career as a musician growing up, she came from a family that adored music. Her grandmother loved to sing ghazals and old Bollywood songs. Her mother and father sang around the house and at parties, and her uncles played instruments.

"Nothing professional, but the love for music was definitely in my family," says Aslam, sitting in the living room of the friend's house in Leslieville during a short work-related visit to Toronto in October. "I remember I was very small — so small that my line of sight used to be under the sofas and beds. And my chachu (father's younger brother) used to keep his tablas under his bed. I used to crawl under his bed and bang on the tablas there."

Although she was a full-throated bathroom singer herself, she never discovered her own voice until she learnt how to play instruments, starting with a keyboard and a guitar that she inherited from her brother. She taught herself how to play by looking up guitar chords on the On-line Guitar Archive back in the day of text-based internet pages, and by playing along to the like of Suzanne Vega, Simon and Garfunkel and Leonard Cohen.

"I had a curiosity about — how does a song happen? I am an engineer's daughter. Things used to be lying around in the house, taken apart," she says. "I was always interested in how things worked, how you put them together. I wanted to reverse engineer a song."

But it wasn't until Aslam and Bangash came up with the song "Chup!" while they were at Smith College and Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, respectively, that they gave serious thought to their musical interests. Homesick and lonely, the duo met often and sang rousing wedding songs, with Aslam banging on the tabla drums she kept in her room.

"People would tell us to shush. Then one day, it was some cold holiday — [American] Thanksgiving or something. It had snowed. People were away except for the international students who had stayed back on campus. Zeb's dorm had a laundry in the basement, and there were vending machines there," says Aslam. Exploring the basement further, they came across an abandoned room that had once served as a cafe. "I don't know why we wanted to sit there and play music. It was kind of creepy but also cool. We started by playing some creepy music. But then we got a little scared, and we thought we should play something fun. So I played a little riff and Zeb went, 'Chup!' And then we did it again, and then we did it again. And then we started laughing."

That song they made for a laugh ended up becoming a viral sensation — before the days of social media. It was shared via email by South Asian students across universities, and ended up playing on Pakistani radio. That led to collaborations with well-known Pakistani musicians such as Mekaal Hassan and Louis "Gumby" Pinto, and their debut album Chup! was born.

Their success took them by surprise. Aslam, who was teaching at the National College of Arts in Lahore and intended to become an academic, quit her job to pursue music full time, as did Bangash. The duo eventually went their separate ways, and Aslam came to Canada in 2013. Her parents had moved to Canada in 2000, and she decided to study audio engineering and music production.

"I wanted to learn more about music...and I found out Toronto was great for sound," she says. "A lot of North American audio work comes to Toronto."

Although she never quite understood the success of Chup!, she says that the fact that she and Bangash were female musicians of a new generation, who didn't buy into the typical feminine attitudes of South Asian popular culture, intrigued people.

"Without even realizing it, just by being ourselves, there was a confidence [in Chup!] It wasn't shy or coy — it was about a girl declaring how she felt, and being frank about it. And if you don't like it, then shush!"

A somewhat similar idea is behind Aslam's latest song, "Main Irada." Called out by her friends for always writing melancholic songs, and wanting to challenge herself, Aslam tried her hand at an uptempo, anthemic song. When she shared her idea with Hamza at Coke Studio, he suggested she write a women's anthem.

"In fact, I was surprised that I hadn't thought of the idea myself," she says. Working with a poet-lyricist Bilal Sami, and inspired by Maya Angelou's "Phenomenal Woman," Aslam came up with "Main Irada." The song's Coke Studio recording became remarkable in that it was the first time the set had featured an equal number of men and women on stage. Clearly, the song struck a chord with the audience — it has over a million views on YouTube and counting.

"When it came out, I was on Facebook following it obsessively. I know I shouldn't but I couldn't help it. The women's responses really warmed my heart," she says. "I got a couple of messages from young teachers. They said they will teach the song to young girls, and thanked me for giving them a new perspective to give to their students. A friend from New York said she will make her daughter memorize it."

"You should be able to see women you can aspire towards," she adds, while talking about "Main Irada" fitting into a larger conversation today around feminism and female visibility in all aspects of life. "When I was small, I remember I saw a female [deputy superintendent]. That blew my mind. One of my mother's friends, she was doing her PhD. When you are growing up, it's important to see that."