Hum Dekhenge : Alvida Iqbal Bano

- The NDFS Desk
Renowned Pakistani singer Iqbal Bano has passed away. She died in Lahore on Tuesday evening.
Among her fans in India she is best known for singing ghazals, particularly those of Faiz Ahmed Faiz, the legendary Urdu poet.
Her immortal performance is that of 'Hum Dekhenge' in 1985 during General Zia’s dictatorship when there was an unspoken ban on reciting Faiz’s revolutionary poetry. Bano dared and performed ‘Hum Dekhenge’ to an ecstatic audience.
She was singing it to an audience of tens of thousands during the Zia-ul-Huq era. Halfway through the song, during the lines ’sab taaj uchale jayenge/sab takht giraye jaenge’, the crowd broke out into chants of Inquilaab Zindabad.
http://baat.pate.ki.googlepages.com/इकबालबानो (Its a must, just listen)
From that evening the song later became her anthem, which she would sing in all of her concerts to the delight of her many admirers. She was one of the greatest means of support and inspiration during General Zia’s dictatorship. In fact it was Bano who started singing Faiz’s poetry for the first time in 1981 at a time when the poet himself was in exile in Beirut.
Iqbal Bano, A pupil of Ustad Chaand Khan, was born in 1935 in Delhi. She moved to Pakistan in 1952 where she started her career with Radio Pakistan. She married a landlord the same year at age 17, who promised her that he would support her endeavors in music. Her first public concert was in 1957 at the Lahore Arts Council. No one will be able to forget her beautiful renditions, not only of Faiz’s poetry, but also Ghalib, Daagh and Nasir Kazmi. Iqbal Bano we will never forget you, we will never forget 'Hum Dekhenge.....' hum hamesha sunenge, sunte rahenge aapki awaaz, apne dil ki awaaz....Alvida.