Karachi: To access Muhammad Hussain’s Vinyl Library in Karachi, visitors must make their way through congested neighborhoods with motorbikes and rickshaws until they reach a non-white building on the edge of Violet Street .
Once there, they climb a staircase to the fourth floor and walk down a dusty hallway to a door with no indication that there are 25,000 vinyl discs ahead of it – possibly the largest private record collection in Pakistan.
The three-bedroom apartment-library is filled with wooden shelves with albums, some still in plastic wrapping, others labeled with Post-It notes marking them as rare. Wooden boxes and cardboard cans overflow with soundtracks and “best of” collections, and sit atop tall piles of antique radio and gramophone records in various shapes and sizes.
Records of famous Pakistani and Indian singers are seen at the collection of vinyl records of Muhammad Hussain in Karachi, Pakistan on May 25, 2022. (AN photo)
And the music always plays: The famous rendition of the hugely popular ghazal and folk singer Malaika Pukhraj’s “Abhi To Mein Jawan Hoon” (“I’m still young”) could be heard last week.
“I found out how rare and precious these things (records) are, how important their existence and maintenance are,” Hussein told Arab News at the music library. “It is an asset of Pakistan.”
The music library was once the warehouse of Rhythm House, a record store run by Hussain’s father on Karachi’s famous Tariq Road, which was closed in 2006 after the digital revolution sounded the death knell for audio tapes, discs and records. was forced to.
Six years later, at the age of 20, Hussain, who regularly listened to old Pakistani vinyl records while growing up, decided to explore the remaining collection of family tapes and records. While cleaning records in a warehouse and browsing titles on the Internet, he soon realized he had a treasure in his hands.
What began as a quest to organize the thousands of records, cassettes and CDs discarded from Rhythm House, Hussein now has the work and passion of his life: Vinyl Recording.
Today, his 25,000-record library houses 4,000 LPs, nearly 10,000 singles from qawwali and ghazal, major pop names from the 1970s and 1980s, and some rare releases from the 1950s.
“I started listening to music from Nazia Hassan (records),” she said, referring to a 1980s Pakistani singing sensation known as the queen of South Asian pop. “Then, gradually, I moved on to Nur Jahan, Mehdi Hassan, Iqbal Bano and Farida Khanum,” he said, listing the great masters of the ghazal form.
An old gramophone is one of thousands of vinyl records in the collection of Muhammad Hussain on May 25, 2022 in Karachi, Pakistan. (AN photo)
Hussein is well known among the community of record collectors, and often receives calls from people wanting to buy and sell albums.
“When I get records in other parts of Karachi, it takes a whole day to travel there,” he said. “To get there, go back, sort the records, bring them back and clean them and do the whole processing, it takes me two or three days for some records.”
Record purchase and replacement orders come in from all over Pakistan as well as other countries.
“I have received a lot of messages and calls from all over the world, from many other countries, saying that we need these records,” he said. “When I have spare copies, I give them away and help people complete their collections.”
Hussain declined to put a value on his “precious collection”, but said the records could go as low as Rs 2,000 ($10) to as much as Rs 50,000.
His collection is not just about earning money but also being part of the community of vinyl devotees. “We have kept this (business) alive for passionate people. It is our passion to collect these items and deliver them to those who care about them,” he said.
CDs are displayed on the shelves of Muhammad Hussain’s music library in Karachi, Pakistan, on May 25, 2022. (AN photo)
Many connoisseurs visit the library, some looking for a particular record, a rare find, while others simply want to browse and listen to music for hours—a guilty pleasure.
Recalling a recent visitor to Lahore, Hussain said: “When he saw my library, believe me, his six hours here passed as if he had just spent 10 minutes. While leaving, he said, ‘I have been looking for these things for the last 15 years.’
Hussain understands the excitement. “It’s a passion that won’t let you sleep when you know there are some records,” he said.
“It is devotion, an obsession and an obsession.”
What sets records apart from other storage formats is their audio quality, which Hussein believes is better than anything modern, widely available technology has to offer.
“The sound quality you have in the original record can’t be found on YouTube or any other digital format,” he said. “The sound quality of the record is such that when you listen to it, it will sound as if the musician is singing in front of you, and its clarity is so beautiful that you will get lost in it before you know any more while listening. This, the whole record ends Has gone.”
When asked how he felt about owning possibly one of the largest collections of vinyl records in Pakistan, Hussain smiled. Behind him, a record player began rolling a blue disc: “Best of Noor Jahan Vol. 1.”
“Music is like a vast ocean; it is a passion that can never be fulfilled, no matter how passionate a person may be.”
“Pakistan has such a huge library that no one person has the entire collection.”