From the late-60s to mid-70s, Pakistan had its own film and music industry that was as vibrant, open-minded and odd as anything in the west. Imbued with Sufi ideas of love, tolerance and dogma-free faith, Pakistani pop was an explosion of colour contrasting with the country's image today as a hotbed of fundamentalist intolerance.
After a violent conflict with India in 1965 Indian movies were banned in Pakistan. This galvanized the country's ailing film industry, creating stars (Waheed Murad - the Elvis Presley of Karachi) and giving birth to a native pop music. At the scene's heart were a composer and his muse: M Ashraf and Nahid Akhtar. Incredibly prolific - Ashraf made over 400 soundtracks - and working on a shoestring, the duo threw anything in, from space-age bleeps to surf guitar to hip English slang.
The music reflected the freedom of Pakistani culture. Nahid Akhtar sings the title tune of a celebrated Urdu film called Society Girl, in which a guitar-playing hippy beauty drifts into prostitution. "This was a landmark film," says Akhtar now. "It dealt with issues that are very much a part of our society, but mostly thought too bold to discuss in the course of normal conversation."
One of the great stars of Pakistani pop culture was Noor Jehan. A famous actress in pre-Partition India, she settled in Karachi in 1947 and became The Queen Of Melody. "Lesser mortals would exit the recording premises when Madam would arrive," remembers Iqbal Asif, an EMI engineer who worked on hundreds of Pakistani film soundtracks. "I remember after the recording of one track she listened to the final mix, got up, patted my head, and offered me a crisp 100 rupee note. Times were good then."
The good times were not to last. The Pakistani liberation war of 1971 led to a drain of talent after the founding of Bangladesh. Then the rise of piracy decimated the film and music industries. And in 1977 general Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq staged a coup and advanced the Islamisation of Pakistan. The fun was over.
With the closure of EMI Pakistan's vaults in the early-80s all of this music would have been buried had it not been for two vinyl obsessives: Andy Votel, a DJ whose Finders Keepers label specialises in reissuing psychedelic music, and Chris Menist, a UN envoy based in Pakistan. Votel discovered a Pakistani pop 45 in a charity shop and, intrigued by its raw sound and alternate verses in Urdu, Panjabi and English, delved deeper. Menist tracked down the original recordings, which were all owned by one man in Lahore; EMI had sold the entire legacy of Pakistani pop as a job lot.
The result is The Sound Of Wonder, a time capsule capturing Pakistan's rich artistic legacy. The title track contains a lyric straight from Sufism: "Live and let live/Love and give love". Against all odds, the sound of wonder lives on
• The Sound Of Wonder is out on 6 Apr on Finders Keeper
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