See the rapper with 62 million streams perform in Melbourne – for free

Rapper Faris Shafi, one of South Asia’s biggest artists, is coming to Melbourne for the first time to perform in a free concert at Fed Square. Pakistani rapper, songwriter, and actor Faris Shafi, will perform at Blockbuster, for the opening of Rising. Dubbed the “uncensored voice of Pakistan”, Shafi’s work includes Blockbuster , a viral track streamed 62 million times on YouTube last year.

The song provided the inspiration for the Fed Square show which takes its name, to be held as part of the Rising festival in June. It’s a coup for Melbourne’s winter arts festival – a melding of White Night and the Melbourne Festival – now in its fifth year, to attract such huge artists from the subcontinent. As well as Shafi, the lineup for Blockbuster includes Annural Khalid, Spotify Pakistan’s most-streamed female artist of 2024, and brother duo Zain Zohaib, known for Thagyan , as headliners.



Blockbuster curator Ayesha Bux, left, local hip hop choreographer Jasmine TXO, seated with pink leggings, as well as a handful of young Pakistani-Australian students in traditional garb. Credit: Simon Schluter Also on the bill is Sherry Khatak, lead vocalist of the Pakistani alternative rock band, Karakoram. Producer, composer and musician Zulfiqar Jabbar Khan, professionally known as Xulfi, will also appear.

Having started his musical career on what he calls a “toy piano”, he felt connected to it and went on to learn piano, then guitar, drums and later became a composer and a producer. Speaking on the phone from Lahore, the 45-year-old says Pakistan has a diverse soundscape. Music schools and options for learning music were not common when he was growing up and, as a result, “you have to hustle your way through it”.

Zulfiqar Jabbar Khan, professionally known as Xulfi, a Pakistani music producer. “I want to speak with my heart and express ideas that do not have boundaries. I have been trying to do that all my life .

.. We are able to transcend these boundaries and express our message of art and love through our music,” he says, adding he wants to take Pakistan’s sound to the world.

Xulfi is one of the masterminds behind the Pakistani Coke Studio Season 14 and 15. A TV show curated by different people each season, Coke Studio provides mentoring and development to emerging and established artists. Xulfi’s work with the studio got a combined 2.

5 billion streams. Together with Shafi, Xulfi wrote the track Blockbuster , which is a mash-up of old and new, featuring a sample of a traditional song, female street singers and a little girl. It is sung by Shafi, Umair Butt and an all-female group called Gharvi Group (Abida, Rooha Rawal, Sajida Bibi and Saba Hassan).

It’s reminiscent of Marta’s Song , the Deep Forest track from the mid-1990s featuring Bulgarian folk singer Marta Sebastian. That mash-up of genres is reflected in Blockbuster , curated by Melbourne-based Ayesha Bux, who says the idea came to her last year. When she went to Pakistan in September, she found a receptive audience – the Coke Studios team had been thinking about a similar project.

“I said ‘It must be some sort of spiritual Wi-Fi’,” she quips. “They have been very, very generous, they bought into the vision,” Bux says. “A lot of the work they are doing is a gift to us, it is a love letter from them to us.

We’ve got some of the biggest artists in South Asia coming to us; a huge group of 31 people.” Bux is the creator of SalamFest, which celebrates contemporary Muslim culture and co-produces events including Blockbuster . She expects 10,000 people will attend the show, a mix of locals and others from interstate.

The Rising event will see dances choreographed by locals – including by Jasmine TXO – and a Pakistan truck art installation on site, the distinctive, colourful, richly decorated vehicles used for transport in Pakistan. There will also be food trucks providing Punjabi street food, workshops and a film program. Blockbuster is at Federation Square on June 7 as part of Rising , which runs from June 4 to 15.

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