MUMBAI: Mir Kashif Iqbal, founder of the band Parvaaz is all geared up for his next song Labov.

The singer appeared on India's first homegrown social networking platform, Khul Ke where he spoke about his next song for the very first time. Khul Ke has been making waves since its inception. It has been instrumental to a slew of meaningful conversations that have created a stir in the social space. In their episodic series, Cultural Chronicles, the well-known singer, Kashif Iqbal famed to be the co-founders of the band Parvaz opened up on his journey with Parvaz, on his decision to leave the band at its peak, and also spoke about the his latest song, Labov.

What’s your inspiration behind the latest song?

The word Labov means to find. It’s almost like saying let us find and the song is mostly about sort of a mix of nostalgia, reminiscing about the past, childhood, a lot of things like that yeah it’s quite a melancholic song in that sense. But that’s the theme and that’s what we try to depict in the video as well with the old man you know searching for something when he takes that long walk. Whether he’s searching for an old memory or he’s looking for some lost inspiration, those were the kind of theme behind the song as well as the video I think.

I think I was inspired to write some instrumental music in the beginning. So, Peak Wave Descent started sometime around in 2020. So I wrote a few tracks. My primary instrument is guitar mostly so I would write a guitar part and maybe supplement that with a base guitar but then because I had so much time, we all had so much time in 2020 and 2021. I thought it was a great time to explore how to be a music producer and how to programme drums myself and experiment with some keyboard sounds and all of that. So I spent time doing that with the intention that I’m writing an instrumental album for now. I think that was the initial idea, I hadn’t thought of songs yet and I hadn’t thought of any lyrics at that time. I wrote a few pieces of music which I thought they sounded nice as a sort of background score to how I was feeling at that time, but during those sessions, Agaaz and Paaband the two songs which do have lyrics, they happened and they were structured in a way they kind of demanded a vocal on them. So I worked on that and that’s probably when I rediscovered my own voice again, because I hadn’t sung as a lead singer for so many years.

How has your journey been as a solo artiste after leaving Parvaz?

Yeah it’s different, I think it’s just as difficult with a bunch of people playing music together. It’s both, its liberating also but it’s way more, way tougher I guess, as well. Because you don’t have any immediate support group in that sense then. You don’t have a band member, or a couple of band members to fall back on and then for me, the music that I’m writing is still of a nature where it has to be more than just me, so when I’ve written this album or my last single or the EP that I Did , it was music meant for a band, for a bunch of people to be playing. So that was all well and good when I was producing it at home, but then it needed for a bunch of people for it to be played live. I was really happy to explore that and there were some friends and collaborators who’ve been part of our musical journey in Bangalore that I got in touch with to not just record on the album but play the live EP that I put out in February this year and for the last year or so it’s just been a constant you know journey to meet new musicians, and play with new musicians and see what I can do as far as music is concerned, because I’m still writing music in a very band oriented form.

What made you leave Parvaz at its peak?

It was a 10 year relationship between 4 individuals who are from different backgrounds. Yes, we did connect on music and we did have this common goal to push Parvaz to a place where it’s a great live band firstly, then it’s a great recording brand and it’s something we make our living through. Firstly that’s very rare, that doesn’t happen for a lot of people where you know 4-5 individuals will get together and you know they’ll have a common goal and they’ll be working towards it in synergy. So I guess we had a great run! Of course after that 10 years is a long time and you do end up going your own way at some point because your music taste evolves, understanding of life changes, so many actual changes happen in your lives, so 10 years is a long time, and I think I can just say we had our differences creatively ad artistically and it was probably time to move on. Also it was a weird time overall. The world was hit by covid, so quite a bleak time with not just us I would say every other musician and every technician artist probably didn’t know what was going to happen and that kind of gave everyone time to kind of revaluate what they have been doing, what they should be doing, what would happen next so during that time all this happened with the band as well.