abdul rehman / jj

This post is so overdue I don’t even have a good excuse left.

P☆KI with Ahad has to be the biggest, most important show of my life so far. I know everyone says that about every show they throw. I don’t care. For a kid from the streets of Lahore, hosting one of the biggest artists in South Asian electronic music, in one of my favorite venues in the city, surrounded by my favorite lineup, artists I actually grew up listening to, is not something I will ever take lightly.

There’s a moment from that night I keep going back to. Right as Sidd’s set ended and Ahad’s began, Nusrat playing through the speakers, I started tearing up and I couldn’t help it. Kailvi was standing next to me and I grabbed him and just held on, telling him I couldn’t believe we’d actually made it this far. Looked up and the whole stage was feeling it too. Lahore dancing its heart out in the middle of the city.

Things got heavy after. The political situation in Pakistan went off a cliff, there’s real hatred and discourse aimed at new Pakistani music right now and everything happening in america and across the world. The state of the world sits on my conscience most days, and some days posting just doesn’t feel worth it. That’s a big part of why this took so long.

Thank you to Ahad, man, for trusting me and putting his own money behind this. And thank you to Esha for trusting us to carry out her vision. That kind of trust is not small.

Thank you to all my Dosti boys, everyone at Lay, the security team, the DJs, and everyone else who had a hand in this. It takes a village. Throwing a rave in Pakistan that’s fully legal, fully safe, with real assurance nothing goes wrong, is not a simple task. We cry, we fight, we push ourselves past what our bodies should be able to take, because we want this scene to grow, grow safer, and grow bigger.

I’m headed off on a break for a while now, so I don’t know when the next one lands. See you again soon, I hope.