Hadiqa Kiani (born 11 August 1972) is a Pakistani singer, songwriter, guitarist, actress, and social worker. Along with Urdu and Punjabi, she has also sung songs in various local and international languages. She has won several national and international awards.
Hadiqa has also performed at venues such as the Royal Albert Hall in the UK and The Kennedy Center in the USA.
Kiani was born on 11 August 1972 to a Gakhar family in Rawalpindi as the youngest of three siblings. She has an older brother (Irfan Kiani) and a sister (Sasha). Her father died when she was three years old. Her mother, poet Khawar Kiani, was the principal of a government girls' school. Seeing her musical ability, Khawar enlisted Kiani in the Pakistan National Council of the Arts. She received early education in music from her teacher, Nargis Naheed.
While studying at Viqar-un-Nisa Noon Girls High School, Kiani represented Pakistan at international children festivals in Turkey, Jordan, Bulgaria, and Greece, winning various medals. Kiani was also a part of Sohail Rana's children's program Rang Barangi Dunya, a weekly musical on PTV.
As an eighth grader, Kiani moved from her birthplace Rawalpindi to Lahore, where she continued her classical training by Ustad Faiz Ahmed Khan and Wajid Ali Nashad. Kiani went on to graduate with a bachelor's degree in psychology from Kinnaird College for Women University and a Masters in Psychology from the Government College University in Lahore.
In the early 1990s, Kiani hosted a children's TV music program called Angan Angan Taray. In the 3+1⁄2-year-long run, she had sung over one thousand songs for children while hosting the show alongside the music composer Amjad Bobby and then with music composer Khalil Ahmed. Owing to the number of songs Kiani sang during this program, she was presented with the title of "A+ artist" on behalf of PTV, joining the likes of Noor Jehan, Naheed Akhtar, and Mehnaz. Kiani also appeared as a VJ for a music charts program called Video Junction on NTM.
The following year, Kiani released her debut album Raaz (Secret) in 1996. The album spawned a string of radio-friendly hits and received positive reviews. Some argue that the reason the album did well was because it was not common for female singers (from educated/non-musical backgrounds) to release albums in Pakistan. Also, she was the first female singer to release a pop album after the former pop singer Nazia Hassan gave up her musical career. Kiani's ability to sing in other dialects was also presented to the country through the hit folk song "Maane Di Mauj" featuring Kashmiri tunes.
Her increasing popularity was further highlighted in January 1997, when Kiani became the first Asian singer to perform at the British National Lottery Live on BBC One (a program with an estimated viewership 16.6 million at that time). Afterwards she worked on two more shows with Bally Sagoo for BBC and ITV before going on her first U.S. tour in 1997. Her U.S. tour covered 15 states and a few cities in Canada. The same year Kiani performed many other international events in the United Kingdom, Australia, and China. By the summer of 1997, Kiani was representing Pakistan as the only Pakistani singer to perform at "Celebration Hong Kong 97" at Happy Valley Race Course, an event to celebrate Hong Kong's freedom from the United Kingdom. Kiani performed alongside other International singers like Lisa Stansfield, Wet Wet Wet, Michael Learns to Rock, All 4 One and The Brand New Heavies.
By the end of the year she became the first Asian female singer ever to be signed by Pepsi Cola International.
In 1998, Kiani recorded the official theme song for the 1999 Cricket World Cup. The Pepsi-sponsored song was titled "Intehai Shauq", written by Kiani's mother, Khawar Kiani, and composed and produced by the famed Nizar Lalani. The song was filmed by Jami and Imran Baber.
Whilst recording "Intehai Shauq", Kiani released her second album, titled Roshni. The third single from the album was "Dupatta". The video was inspired by the sci-fi film The Matrix. Nadeem F. Paracha listed the song as number 15 in his article "The Twenty Best Pop Songs Ever". Paracha attributed the success of the song to its quasi-bhangra rhythm with "fat, funky techno beats" and Kiani's "dreamy-meets-husky vocals" which made the results "stunning".
Capitalizing on the success of "Dupatta", Kiani went on to release two other hits, "Roshni" and "Woh Kaun Hai". Her sixth single of the album, "Boohey Barian", became an even bigger hit for her than "Dupatta". To date, "Boohey Barian" is widely accepted as Kiani's best single, and it is noted as being a prominent Pakistani song. It was filmed in 1998 at the Haveli Barood Khana in Lahore.
The Roshni album sold over a million copies in Pakistan alone, certifying it as platinum. The album is listed in "The 20 Best Local Pop Albums Ever" for the country, positioned at No. 15. Kiani is just one of two female singers in the entire list.
Kiani's success led to her being signed by Unilever for celebrity endorsement of Lipton in 2001. In 2002, she was signed again by Unilever for Sunsilk Shampoo after the results of Unilever's national survey to find the "Most Popular Woman of Pakistan".
Kiani released her third album Rung in September 2002. She returned to promote the album in June 2003, almost 10 months after she'd released "Yaad Sajan" with a new single "Ranjhan" and several stage performances and tours around the country. She then released other singles off the album throughout 2003 and 2004. These included "Jogi Bun Kay Aa", "Mahi", and "Dholan". In "Jogi Bun Kay Aa", Kiani plays various women's roles, including a traditional Japanese, an Arab, and a tribal woman. She played a vampire in her video for "Mahi" which was directed by top director Asim Raza. The video showed that it is harmful to judge people of different faiths and castes and also bad to stereotype. It was the highest budgeted video of the year 2003. During this time, Kiani was in the midst of her first divorce, however Kiani's album sales continued to pick up through 2003 and 2004. In 2004, she received the Best Female Pop Singer Award by Indus Music, the first 24-hour music channel of Pakistan. Asim Raza won an award for best video for directing her critically acclaimed video Mahi.
Shortly after the release of Rung, Kiani was mentioned in "Pakistani Pop's 10 most Influential Acts Ever", in which she was ranked ninth. She is also one of just two female singers in the list, the other being Nazia Hassan. A UK-based Magazine declared Kiani the 22nd greatest music maker of South Asia out of a total of fifty artists, also mentioning how she raised the standard of music videos in the country.
Several years after the release of Rung, leading Indian Sufi singer "Harshdeep Kaur" covered Kiani's self composed "Jogi Bun Kay Aa" on a leading Indian television show.
In 2007, Kiani released her fourth studio album, Rough Cut, a collaboration with Aamir Zaki. With the release of Rough Cut, Kiani became the first mainstream Pakistani artist to release an album completely in English.