The launching ceremony of renowned musician and singer Bilal Maqsood’s YouTube channel for children, “Pakkay Dost,” was held at the Arts Council of Pakistan in Karachi. The event was attended by well-known intellectual Anwar Maqsood, Imrana Maqsood, President of Arts Council Muhammad Ahmad Shah, famous actresses Sarwat Gilani and Iqra Aziz, Yasir Hussain, and other notable personalities in the showbiz industry.
Bilal Maqsood called it a special project and said that this was a very special day for him and his team. He explained that Pakkay Dost was his lifelong project, which he started when his son Mikal was born. He realized that there were no Urdu poems available for children, and being in his band Strings, he didn’t get a chance to work on children’s songs. He noticed that children listen to English poems instead of Urdu songs. During the last performance of Strings, he was thinking about the children backstage and started working on children’s songs. He realized that making children’s songs is a science, and he asked his friend in Lahore to keep the music of these songs Western. The second step was to make puppets, and Farooq Qaiser and Rafi Theatre have been doing puppet-making in Pakistan. Bilal Maqsood said that this show is for children from three years to a hundred years old.
The Pakkay Dost channel has 13 songs with different things for kids to learn. Bilal Maqsood has also named a character named Fatima Surayya Bajia on the Pakkay Dost channel, which presents various sketches for the reformation of children. Pakkay Dost has released various children’s reform songs including “Baray Mian Gaye Cheen,” “Aik Do Teen Chaar,” “Aankhain Band Karloon,” “Tufail ki Height,” “Baarish,” “Brush Karna,” “Please Google it,” “Pait Tight,” “Kunda Cheating Hai,” “English Sikha Do,” among others. These are well performed by characters Bajjo, Jagga, Miral, Mateen, Tufail, and Lal Baig.
