KARACHI: Famed Pakistani musician Bilal Maqsood on Friday launched an online puppet show, ‘Pakkay Dost,’ for Pakistani children, saying the show uses “humor” to educate kids in a fun way.
Maqsood co-founded popular Pakistani pop rock band ‘Strings’ that ended its 33-year run in March 2021. Since then, the 52-year-old has been working on creating content for kids, an idea he says has been on his mind “for the longest time.”
Last year, Maqsood created a few poems for children but that was more of a commercial venture. His latest production for Pakistani children has been released on his YouTube channel.
Speaking at the show’s launch in Karachi, the musician said the fact that there were no songs for children in the Urdu language had troubled him since the birth of his son, Mikail, who is now aged 26.
“This was my life-long passion project. When Mikael, my first son, was born, I used to wonder why don’t we have songs for children in Urdu,” Maqsood said at the launch.
The screen grab taken on September 2, 2023, features characters Miraal and Laal Baig from children's puppet show, Pakkay Dost. (Photo courtesy: Pakkay Dost/YouTube)
“We grew up listening to Sohail Rana’s music. Even today, when we hear his songs, it takes us back to our childhood. These songs keep us connected to our values and our culture. But when my kids were growing up, there wasn’t any such thing. They instead listened to Sesame Street, Mary Poppins.”
In the mid-70s, Pakistan’s state TV aired the children’s show ‘Kaliyan’ that featured famed puppet character Uncle Sargam, created and voiced by award-winning puppeteer and television director Farooq Qaiser.
To date, Uncle Sargam and Maasi Museebtay are regarded as Pakistan’s legendary puppet duo, but the South Asian country has hardly ever produced a similar show again.
Pakkay Dost is based on four episodes, each averaging a 15-minute duration and exploring “diverse” themes, according to Maqsood.
The show includes a total of eight skits and 13 songs for children, ranging from education (alphabets, names of days) to life lessons, while a team of more than 100 people worked on the project that features six key characters.
“There is a bit of fun and message but the engine the show is riding on is humor so that children learn and enjoy at the same time,” said Maqsood, who has already started working on the second season of the show.
To create Pakkay Dost, Maqsood said, he studied Disney and Sesame Street songs in order to understand the “science behind it.” He said he wanted to create local content with a “foreign sound” and in three months, he developed a range of characters together with Canada-based puppet-maker Allison Ewert that suited his songs and vision.
For the art direction, Maqsood got the husband-and-wife duo of Umer Adil and Beenish Umer on-board, who have a three-year-old daughter.
“Our audience was at home. We have a three-year-old daughter. When we started working, she was one and starting to talk. She started picking up Urdu language words and we gauged what she resonated with,” Adil told Arab News.
“So many things in Pakkay Dost are inspired from kids and only parents can understand that. The idea is to fill the major gap that’s there in kids’ content. Puppet shows are our legacy that we wish to carry forward so that it is visible in the new-age media.”
Sarwat Gilani, an actor and a mother of two, also attended the launch, where she praised the show for focusing on children and adults alike.
“As a mother, it is very tough for me to teach Urdu alphabets to kids. But teaching Urdu alphabets through this in the form of a rhyme, mothers will thank Bilal for this. I hope it gets the kind of attention that it truly deserves,” she told Arab News.
“I would suggest all parents to google and to watch Pakkay Dost with their kids and entire family. The best part about this is, it has talked about friendship, values and things that we as adults also face in Pakistan.”
