Asfandiyar Dayan Khan has his mother to thank for who he is today. She forced him to take classical music when he was 12 and though he was a reluctant shagird then, he is glad that mommy knew best.

Dayan’s song ‘Rang Lagade’ has taken social media by storm. At last count, the video had notched 100,000 views and was shared more than 800 times.

The story of the song and the video began three years and nine months ago, when Dayan met Feroz Khan at a qawwali. “He sang so beautifully that I knew I wanted him to be my teacher,” he says.

Feroz Khan wrote ‘Rang Lagade’ for Dayan and from there on, for nine months in 2015, Dayan worked on it, fleshing out the lyrics and refining the chorus. Currently, he is working on four other songs.

“When I got the song I had no idea of how to proceed. I spent three weeks just trying to figure out how I wanted to arrange the song. When it was ready in July, I had a very limited budget to make a video, but did the best I could,” says Dayan.

The process of producing the song taught Dayan one thing: that he had a lot to learn about making music. Next up? Attending school in Cape Town for a course in sound engineering.

“I love Pakistan,” he says. “There is so much potential here that I want to use my degree to help people who cannot afford to go to a studio.”

In addition to being a music producer and a singer, Khan wants to be an actor and a dancer — “a quadruple treat,” as it were, according to him. “I was always very shy,” he says, “When I performed in Grease, Nida Butt said I was so nervous I would be shaking.”

Dayan Khan has overcome his shyness, produced a song and a video and is raring to go other places. Next stop? Where his heart takes him.By Wonder

This article was originally published in Newsline’s Annual 2016 issue.