A few years ago, the musician Ali Sethi was driving through Punjab, behind a jingle truck—the long-haul trucks known in his native Pakistan for their filigreed paint designs—when he spotted a phrase in florid Punjabi calligraphy on its back. “Agg lavaan teriya majbooriya nu,” it said—a call to “set fire to your compulsions.” It’s not uncommon to glimpse bits of verse, or dire warnings—against straying eyes or losing yourself in the big world out there—among the fluorescent parrots and tropical fruit schemes of jingle trucks. But Sethi couldn’t stop thinking about that phrase.
It inspired the first line of “Pasoori,” the thirty-seven-year-old’s latest single, a joyous, dance-fuelled hit that has drawn more than a hundred million views on YouTube since its release three months ago and is playing on the radio everywhere, from the United Arab Emirates to Canada. The song is stealthily subversive: a traditional raga—the classical Indian framework for musical improvisation—has been laid over an infectious beat that sounds South Asian, Middle Eastern, and, improbably, reggaetón, all at once. Even if you don’t understand the lyrics, you can tell that it’s a song about longing. “If your love is poison, I’ll drink it in a flurry,” Sethi sings in Punjabi with smooth anguish, in a rousing duet with Shae Gill, a Pakistani singer and Instagram star. “It’s my favorite genre,” a friend of mine said. “A love song that sounds like a threat.”
The idea for the song began when Sethi, who lives in New York, was invited to collaborate on a project in Mumbai, which he had visited many times before for literary festivals and music gigs. But any travel to India for Pakistani nationals is subject to the politics of the moment, and Sethi was told by the producers that he wouldn’t be able to work there as a Pakistani artist, because extremists might burn down the studio. The danger of arson reminded Sethi of that line from the jingle truck. “So I did what desi bards have done for ages,” he said, referring to South Asian songwriters of yore. “I might not have been able to travel to India, but I knew my music could.”
“Pasoori,” a Punjabi word that translates roughly to “difficult mess,” is about an age-old situation: two people who are forbidden from meeting each other. It’s written in the style of a courtesan song, a genre with origins in medieval South Asian poetry that emerged in response to the custom of arranged marriages. (Often the song is about an extramarital affair, and a courtesan is trying to persuade her married paramour to stay the night.) Full of puns and erotic innuendos, courtesan songs typically lament trysts that must take place in secret, meetings that don’t materialize, and the oppressiveness of polite society. “Pasoori” is ostensibly about star-crossed lovers, but it’s also an apt metaphor for the relationship between two countries in perpetual conflict whose histories and cultural touchstones are entwined.
In early 2021, Sethi sent a voice note with the melody and the first few bars of the lyrics he had in mind to the producer Zulfiqar Khan, who goes by Xulfi. Xulfi had just been brought on to helm the fourteenth season of “Coke Studio,” a popular musical TV series in Pakistan produced by the soda company. “I had goosebumps. I wanted to dance,” Xulfi said. “I knew that people were going to love it, and that they wouldn’t know what hit them.” Xulfi found Anushae Gill, a.k.a. Shae Gill—a student of economics whose best friend started posting videos of her singing on Instagram in 2019—and brought her into the project, thinking that her smoky voice would pair nicely with Sethi’s rich tenor.
“Pasoori” opens with a series of hand claps, which calls to mind desi musical traditions but also comes straight out of flamenco. “It was very deliberate, the musical hybridization,” Sethi said. The track doesn’t feature traditional…