It is not
unusual that rap and hip-hop find favour with budding musicians of
Kashmir. World over, starting from the inner city lanes of New York to
the Middle East, these genres of music have been creative tools of
resistance. Through popular culture, a critique of perceived
discrimination takes place, dissent is voiced and racism and exclusion
get challenged. Misrepresentation is also taken to task.
These
genres do not exist in isolation but are embedded in and born from the
socio-political environment of a society. For many years, youth have
taken recourse to these global art forms to engage with and reflect the
reality they see around them. A few years ago, this trend took shape in
the Kashmir valley, where youngsters tried to articulate what they saw
around them through their music.
Soon
Renegade, MC Youngblood, The Revolutionary, Mista Shais, M1B, Haze Kay
and MC Kash became popular stage names of young Kashmiri men who created
music that came straight from the soul of the land and found resonance
with the public, not only in the valley but across India. MC Kash or
Roushan Illahi is a rapper and emcee who released a song, ‘I Protest' in
the Kashmiri unrest of 2010 when hundreds of people were killed in
paramilitary action. He has a huge fan following on the social
networking sites with thousands of followers on Facebook, Twitter and
ReverbNation. His popularity notwithstanding, his studio was raided by
the police and henceforth he has been unable to find a place to record
his songs. But he continues to sing, sometimes about love also, says
Shayan Nabi, his manager.
Haze
Kay or Zubair Magray used to perform with Roushan but has become an
independent artist since he moved to Pune to pursue further studies. He
shot to fame when his song ‘Azadi' uploaded online was forced to be
taken down by the police who were not amused by the lyrics.
He
makes his own music and releases it through his own production house.
His music was labelled anti-government. “I am living and studying in
Pune, which is in India, how am I anti-government? As an artist, it is
my duty to respond to the reality around me and express it through the
art form,” says Zubair.
Other
vibrant artists have now stopped making any music whatsoever. If a song
has the words protest, stones or Kashmir, the police are quick to swoop
down to the studios and threaten the producers to discontinue the
recording. They are instead offered free promotion if they choose to
sing about love and police-people harmony. A number of artists have
stopped making music altogether due to the constant threats.
Only
those artists, who either have some influence or sing about
non-political subjects are able to survive in Kashmir today. A healthy
non-violent mode of resistance guaranteed in any free society is thus
being stifled even before it can take complete shape.
by the Hindu national(divya trivedi )