Hasan Raheem Bewajah roots heartbreak in Gilgit-Baltistan
In the video, Raheem appears surrounded by riders, spectators and sweeping northern landscapes, while the song moves between Urdu and Shina, the language spoken in Gilgit-Baltistan. The Express Tribune reported that the single features Umair and was filmed in Gilgit, highlighting its use of traditional clothing, Gilgiti dance and freestyle polo.
That combination matters. Bewajah is not just using Gilgit as scenery. The video’s emotional force comes from the way the sport mirrors the song’s central feeling: love moving too fast, pride colliding with vulnerability, and people trying to hold their ground while everything around them is in motion.
Homegrown also placed the video within the wider context of northern Pakistan’s polo traditions, noting how the visual draws on Gilgit-Baltistan’s relationship with the sport and the Shandur Polo Festival. That context helps explain why the video lands with such weight: polo is not an aesthetic prop here, but a living cultural symbol.
The power of Gilgit’s freestyle polo in Bewajah
Freestyle polo in the northern mountains is rougher, faster and more communal than the polished version often associated with elite clubs. It is bound to landscape, rivalry, endurance and pride. The official Gilgit-Baltistan tourism department describes the Shandur Polo Festival as an annual event held from July 7 to 9 at Shandur Top, a tradition that has long brought together sport, music, dance and regional identity.
That history gives Bewajah its second heartbeat. The song may speak about betrayal and emotional absence, but the video responds with presence: riders charge forward, crowds gather, the earth shakes, and Raheem stands inside a tradition that is bigger than one heartbreak. The result is a visual that feels both intimate and ancestral.
A later Dawn Images review of Bewajah described the song as deeply rooted in Gilgit-Baltistan, pointing to its Shina bridge, mountain setting and raw polo imagery. That reading captures why the track feels different from a conventional breakup ballad. Its grief does not float in abstraction; it is grounded in place.
A tribute that has been building for years
Bewajah may feel like a major cultural statement, but it is not an isolated turn in Hasan Raheem’s career. Older coverage shows that he has been carrying Gilgit into his music for years. In 2021, Dawn wrote about the then-emerging artist as a soon-to-be doctor from Gilgit making catchy music, while also noting a small section in his native Shina language. That early detail now feels like a seed for the fuller cultural expression heard in Bewajah.
The continuity became clearer later that year. A Dawn write-up on Sweetu observed that Hasan Raheem, Talal Qureshi and Maanu were walking and dancing on the Karakoram Highway in the heart of Gilgit-Baltistan. Even then, Raheem was not separating his pop persona from his roots. He was placing his body, movement and music inside the geography that formed him.
By 2022, he had stepped onto a bigger national platform with Coke Studio. The Express Tribune’s coverage of Peechay Hutt described the track as his Coke Studio debut with Justin Bibis and Talal Qureshi, marking a shift from indie favorite to mainstream youth voice. That moment widened his audience; Bewajah uses that audience to bring Gilgit’s cultural memory to the front.
Then came the viral wedding moment. In September 2025, Geo News reported that Raheem said his wedding gave Pakistan and the world a “crash course on Gilgit”, after dance-filled clips from the celebration drew attention to Gilgit-Baltistan’s rhythms and traditions. Seen through that timeline, Bewajah feels like the next deliberate step: not just showing culture in passing, but building an entire music video around it.
Why Hasan Raheem Bewajah feels so personal
The heartbreak in Bewajah works because it is restrained. Raheem does not overstate the pain. Instead, he lets the production, the pauses and the visuals do much of the work. The horses’ movement gives the song urgency; the wide landscapes give it loneliness; the Shina bridge gives it emotional specificity.
That specificity is the track’s greatest strength. Many pop songs use cultural references as decoration, but Bewajah treats culture as structure. The polo ground becomes a stage for conflict. The riders become a visual rhythm. The crowd becomes a witness. Gilgit is not the background to Hasan Raheem’s sadness; it is the language through which that sadness is expressed.
The video also pushes against the idea that regional culture must be presented only through nostalgia. Its styling, editing and framing are contemporary, even fashion-forward, but the heart of the piece remains local. That balance lets Bewajah speak to young listeners without flattening the traditions it draws from.
A modern pop song with an old soul
Bewajah stands out because it understands that a powerful tribute does not need to explain everything. It trusts the image of a galloping horse, the sound of a familiar language, the weight of a mountain landscape and the silence between two people who can no longer reach each other.
For Hasan Raheem, the song deepens a pattern that has been visible since his early releases: he is most compelling when he lets his softness meet his roots. With Bewajah, he delivers one of his most affecting works yet, a heartbreaking pop song that also honors Gilgit’s polo culture with dignity, drama and unmistakable love.
