Music has a greater influence than cricket, when it comes to improving Indo-Pak relations, believes Faisal Kapadia, lead vocalist of Pakistani band Strings. “In cricket one team wins and the other loses, while in the exchange of music concerts, it’s the audience that wins ultimately,” says he. Faisal alongwith Bilal, the lead guitarist, make up the band. Many a time they have performed live in India.

What’s the band’s take on the controversies of lip syncing, of late doing the rounds in India recently? “Often we are asked to do so by organisers, specially for shows on TV channels,” says Bilal. But he feels it is a crime to lip sync in a live concert. “Given a choice nobody would want to fool the audience,” he says.

The show got bigger this year. Not only did the organizers fly out to Dubai, giving the local entertainment industry much-needed international exposure, they also collaborated with a television network, ensuring a much wider audience than our local channels could ever pull off.

Indian talent, comprising professional dancers, stage designers and technical assistants, was flown in to fill the gaps, but this year’s Lux Style Awards could easily have been better executed than last year’s programme had the picture not been overexposed to the glitter and gaudiness of Bollywood. The India-based Sony TV channel, as director and producer of the show, was perhaps given too much freedom to project it as it wanted, right from the poster at the front desk down to the silver and gold tinsel on stage.

As a six- year-old I could hardly understand music. But there was one tune, which I still remember humming in my class when I was in grade one. The song had a distinctly catchy tune and had taken the Pakistani Pop scene by storm. It started off as Sar kiye yeh pahar. Then suddenly the band who sang this song vanished. And when after eight years the Strings launched their smash hit album called Duur I realized that they were the same guys whose tunes infused a craze of music in me at a very young age.

The music boom of 2002 lived up to its hype and exceeded expectations in 2003. All it needed was the steely resolve of underground musicians, the mushrooming of local music channels, and the dependency of drama oriented TV channels to fill their empty time slots with music videos. All in all, the stage was set for the emergence of the third generation of artists in 2003 such as Fuzon, Noori, Ahmad Jehanzeb, Aaroh, EP and Ali Zafar, all of whom have helped drag the industry through its latest phase of evolution.

Unilever Pakistan formally announced , that the prestigious LUX Style Awards 2004 will be held on the April 24, 2004 and revealed the Viewers’ Choice Nominations.

LUX is a leading Pakistani soap brand. An icon of beauty, LUX has always been associated with film stars, style, and skin care. The LUX Style Awards is a logical continuation of LUX’s close association with glamour and allows it to strengthen its image in an exciting and involved way.

In 2004, the total number of awards is 15, out of which seven are “Viewers’ Choice Awards” and eight are “Judges Choice Awards”.