Photo courtesy of Falak

Falak seen performing at the Hershey Centre in Mississauga. The band has performed over 200 shows across North America and Pakistan.

On a Friday evening, 27-year-old Farid Khan is hanging out at the Ram in the Rye with some friends, sporting a goatee and a brown suit. In addition to being a part-time business management student at Ryerson, Khan works full-time as a recruiter at an IT firm.

His friend Shibil Siddiqi, a soft-spoken lawyer wearing glasses and a suit, arrives 10 minutes later looking apologetic.

From looking at them, you would never guess that they've played more than 200 gigs across Canada, the U.S. and Pakistan, or that they have fans screaming for them, flashing them and giving them their numbers.

Khan and Siddiqi are part of a five-member rock band called Falak, which means "unreachable distance" in Urdu, Pakistan's national language. Other than frontman Khan and bass guitarist Siddiqi, the band consists of banker Siddiq Mohammed on guitar, former Ryerson student and promotional agent Zaed Maqbool on drums and web developer Raheel Gauba on the keyboards.

Khan, who founded the band in 2001, described Falak's sound as hard rock with Eastern influences. Their Urdu and English songs and are known for their strong political messages.

In 2003, they wrote a song with a punk twist called Blood for Oil about the Iraq war, which they performed as part of the Artists Against War concert at Nathan Phillips Square.

"We realized that some of the best songs we'd written were the ones with political lyrics - those were the things that inspire us. In a sense, with those songs we found a voice and found what we wanted to say," Siddiqi says.

In 2007, their first video for their song Yaadein (Memories) II, which depicts a day in the life of a hypothetical 9-11 suicide bomber, was banned by MTV Pakistan for being too controversial.

Siddiqi says their aim was not to sympathize - rather, it was an attempt to humanize the "evil terrorists."

"It's people like you and me who do evil things and that's what we're trying to show - how banal the whole exercise was," says Siddiqi.
He adds that understanding where fanatics are coming from is the key to eliminating violence.

Khan and Siddiqi say the MTV ban worked in their favour as it created publicity and they received emails of support from around the world. 
The band has performed at highly publicized South Asian festivals in Toronto such as desiFEST and Masala Mehndi Masti, and has opened for internationally renowned South Asian bands such as Junoon, Noori and RDB.

Khan's most memorable moment happened after Falak performed a Pink Floyd cover at Reverb four years ago.

"At the end of the night, the owner of the place came up to us and said, 'If any of you did justice to Pink Floyd, it's you guys,'" Khan says.
In addition to finding success in Canada, Falak is gaining popularity in Pakistan since the release of their video last year and live concerts promoting their first EP album, Standard Issue, released in fall of 2006.
But Ryerson students remain the most loyal fans.

"I can't say enough about how much the Ryerson support has helped us," Siddiqi says.

 Khan remembers fans screaming for 10 minutes after they had stopped performing at Ryerson's 2004 Battle of the Bands. He said he didn't expect so many people to come out and support them, and he was blown away.  Since judges' decisions were partly based on crowd reaction, Falak took the top prize.

The band's future plans include recording and releasing its first full album in the coming months. Its members are also in the middle of organizing a showcase for South Asian bands at the Opera House in February.
 
When asked how they plan to attain commercial success with unconventional music, Khan replied, "We're not in it to make an extra dollar. We feel very passionate about our lyrics and our message and that's what we're going to keep trying to do.

"I don't care if we sell 10 CDs, I don't care if we sell 10,000. I care that we make good music."