SRINAGAR, India – Sarfaraz Javaid beats his chest rhythmically in the music video, swinging his guitar and letting his guttural voice play through the forest: “What kind of lightning has hit the sky? It has turned my dark world. .. Why was the house entrusted to foreigners?
“Khuaftan Baange” – Kashmiri for “the call to night prayer” – plays like a gem for Muslim-majority Kashmir, the Himalayan territory of great beauty that is home to decades of territorial conflict, soldiers armed and harsh repression of the population. . It mourns in tone but lavishes in lyrical symbolism inspired by Sufism, an Islamic mystical tradition. Her form is that of a Marsiya, a poetic rendition that is a lament for Muslim martyrs.
“I just express myself and cry, but when harmony is added, it becomes a song,” Javaid, a poet like his father and grandfather, said in an interview.
Javaid is among a movement of artists in disputed Kashmir, divided between India and Pakistan and claimed by the two since 1947, who form a new musical tradition that combines progressive Sufi rock with hip-hop in one expression. assertive of political aspirations. They call it “conscious music.”
Based on elements of Islam and spiritual poetry, it is often interspersed with religious metaphors to circumvent measures that limit a certain freedom of expression in Indian-controlled Kashmir that have led many poets and singers to insult their words. It also seeks to break the tensions between the Muslim tradition and modernism in a region that in many ways still clings to a conservative past.
“It’s like twenty decades of pent-up emotions,” Javaid said.
Kashmir has a secular tradition of spoken poetry that is heavily influenced by Islam, with mystical and rhapsodic verses often used to make supplications in mosques and shrines. After the rebellion against the Indian kingdom broke out in 1989, poetic rites about liberation paid for by mosque speakers and elegies inspired by historical Islamic events were sung at the funerals of the fallen rebels.
Two decades of fighting have left Kashmir and its people marked with tens of thousands of civilians, rebels and government forces dead before the armed struggle dries up, paving the way for unarmed mass demonstrations that have rocked the region. 2008 and 2010. the rise of protest music in hip-hop and English-language rap, a new anthem of resistance.
Singer-songwriter Roushan Illahi, who performs under the name MC Kash, was the pioneer of the genre, making angry, you-you-by-the-neck music that has become a rallying cry for young people to use rhyme. and sharp rhythms to challenge India’s sovereignty. above the region.
Kash’s chants have fallen dangerously close to sedition, however, since the interrogation of India’s claim to the troubled region is illegal. The country has drastically restricted freedom of expression on the issue in Kashmir, including some restrictions on media, dissent and religious practices.
Frequent interrogations by police pushed Kash to a point where he almost stopped making music. Some colleagues continued to record and perform, but began to incorporate a coded language, or move away from politics at all.
“It used to be a suffocation,” Kash said, “but now it’s a pillow on his mouth.”
Tensions rose in 2016 when Indian troops abandoned another massive public uprising, leading to renewed militancy. Three years later, in 2019, New Delhi revoked the partial autonomy of the region amid a communication blackout and harsh repression of the press and other forms of free expression.
Since then, the situation has been exacerbated by India’s aggressive counterinsurgency operations leading to an increase in clashes between rebels and Indian troops. Fatal attacks by rebels have also increased against Kashmir police officials, Indian migrant workers and the region’s Hindu minority.
The recovery that began in 2019 has persisted. However, many artists have been attached to music and have been catapulted to fame, their songs being widely shared on social media. “Conscious music” flourished even as artists more recently began incorporating lyrics into Urdu and Kashmiri.
In the late afternoon, a cohort of young artists gathered in the home studio of composer Zeeshan Nabi on the outskirts of Srinagar, the main city of Kashmir. Filling the room with cigarette smoke reels, they passionately discuss the essence of metaphors and religious references in their work.
“What (religious symbolism) does is constantly weigh on the door, either in the form of remembrance or remembrance of the past,” Nabi said.
He expressed optimism that the gag is temporary: “How long can you keep the grip? The oppressor can oppress you for a while.”
“We’re dreamers,” Arif Farooq, a hip-hop artist who uses the stage name Qafilah, said with a laugh.
Qafilah’s music video “Faraar” – “the fugitive” – begins with a shot of a concertina string and he standing in the courtyard of a shrine to Kashmir’s most revered Sufi saint, Mir Sayyid Ali Hamadani. He invokes the ancient Battle of Karbala, where the nephew of the Prophet Muhammad was martyred and which symbolizes the fight against injustice and oppression.
“Our disease can only be cured by revolution, friend. Every answer lies in Karbala, my friend,” Qafilah urges in the song.
Religious symbolism, Qafilah said, is a creative device to reflect the pain of Kashmir and also evade the gaze of the state.
“You want to steal, but you don’t want to be caught,” he said.
The symbolism of faith as subtext is hard to miss in this new form of music.
A recent video, “Inshallah” – “God willing” – has texts that evoke monotheism, the basis of the Islamic faith. In it, singer Yawar Abdal imagines a Kashmir where people, blindfolded and with their heads around their necks, are released amid the chants of “Everything will be free”. The “inshallah” refrain is set against a growing chorus of morning prayers sung in mosques.
Another song – “Jhelum”, called for Kashmir’s main river – has become an instant hit to contrast the banality of everyday life in Kashmir with the ongoing mourning for the dead. In online videos, users have since set the song in motion pictures and stills of fallen fighters to commemorate them – it’s partly a way of resisting the authority’s policy since 2020 to bury rebel suspects in cemeteries of remote mountains, denying their families the opportunity to do so. last rites.
“There’s this tension in the air that forms you in a certain way,” said poet and singer Faheem Abdullah, the man behind “Jhelum”.
Poets and musicians receive state patronage in Kashmir, and government-sponsored music events continue to be held regularly.
At least some Indian authorities take a dim view of the growing movement of protest music, however; at a recent event, an Indian army general praised the region’s rich artistic heritage, but deplored “the kind of rap songs that bring only sadness”.
One recent evening, Javaid, the artist behind “Khuaftan Baange,” sat on the shore of the picturesque Dal lake of Srinagar and belted an elegy for his homeland. When the sun shone behind the mountains and a rain began to fall, he ended up reciting the names of the missing. A distant relative was among the names.
“I reflect on what I see,” Javaid said. “I see pain, agony and loss.”
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