We remember, and we memorialise the grief—for it needs to be heard. Let’s sing and let them hear the voices through words that are hard to digest. In Kashmir, music is art, and it is survival. From MC Kash to Zanaan Wanaan, the weight of memory lives.
Music for me is a memory that connects me to the summers I have spent in Kashmir. But when I think of summer in Kashmir, I am not reminded of the brisk water of the streams we once swam in or the occasional cool breeze that quells the burning heat of the sun. My memories of summer are fogged by visions I struggled to make sense of—blood, bullets and bodies. That year, summer in Kashmir was no different. Protests in Kashmir were high—initially against the killing of three young men in the north-Kashmir town of Machil. However, the worst was yet to come. What unfolded would become one of the bloodiest massacres in Kashmir’s history. Protests had escalated after the killing of 17-year-old Tufail Ahmad Mattoo, struck by a teargas canister fired by the police while returning home from a tuition class on 11 June 2010. In the protest, 118 civilians—mostly young Kashmiris—were killed.
However, the weight of these memories would not be expunged by state power and media narratives—for this time they will be etched in history by sounds of resistance.
In the aftermath of the bloodshed, the tunes of grief vibrated throughout the valley. A young man from the streets of Srinagar inscribed his grief and gave it a voice. Bypassing the curfewed lanes and dodging the piercing gaze of the state watchdogs, MC Kash—Roushan Illahi—wrote his third song—one that was about to become the anthem of Kashmir’s fight for self-determination. This youth, neither an armed rebel nor a stone-pelter was about to distort the neatly crafted violent Islamist stereotype by the states. Being perceived and presented as violent, religious warmongers, the people were demonised by the state narratives, thus robbing them of their political and cultural agency. Protest songs in Kashmiri and Urdu had always been part of the movement; however, the language barrier did not let it traverse beyond the mountains. And then a cultural rebel, MC Kash, came with zero warnings. He became the face of hiphop in Kashmir and sung in the language that would cross oceans. His songs filled the cultural vacuum that was created due to decades-long unrest, voiced the voiceless and drew parallels with the struggle of Palestine.
“I Protest” by M.C. Kash expressed the collective oppositional resistance against the state. The last part of the rap names all the people who were killed that year. I Protest recorded the reality of Kashmir; it memorialised the injustices meted out against the valley.
“We won’t go down. When we bleed alive in the struggle, even the graves will speak… A Whole Village Gang-Raped, A Cry Still Lingers These are the Tales From the Dark Side of a Murderous Regime…”
MC Kash started a cultural phenomenon that has been taken forward by numerous Kashmiri artists that emerged in the 21st century amidst the tumultuous situation in Kashmir. These Kashmiri artists have absorbed every circumstance that has been etched in their visions.
and forged a culture that has enabled them to articulate their deepest feelings, hopes, and dreams. Kashmiri artists could fill their verses with the beauty of Kashmir, but their songs instead talk of grief—for in Kashmir, even the most breathtaking landscapes are shadowed by barbed wires and bloodstained streets.
It is interesting to note that Mridula Sharma, a research scholar at the University of Manchester, talks about the contrast in the Kashmiri protest songs to the commercially produced protest songs in India, like Azadi from Gully Boy. The ending of Azadi dilutes the vision of the song and highlights the hollowness of the interest in claiming freedom as presented by the song. Also worthy to note is that the word Azadi has historically been used during protests in Kashmir and has been the slogan of the Kashmiri Movement. But the protest culture in the mainland has appropriated the word, disassociated it from its political context and sanitised the political struggle for commercial consumption by turning it into a marketable slogan. The song Azadi ends with “Give me Freedom”, rendering the call for freedom symbolic rather than actionable, thus turning it into a passive, consumer-friendly version of dissent.
Kashmiri songs of resistance, even in the wake of brutalities, censorship and state suppression, have approached the art with an optimistic outlook. The songs are mostly enriched with hope, a powerful refusal to succumb to despair over the ongoing violence. An example of such protest songs is Kashmir: Bella Ciao by Zanaan Wanaan (Kashmiri Women Collective). The song, an adaptation of an Italian resistance song, reclaims the linguistic and cultural identity even in the wake of censorship and suppression. It ends with the reassuring claims of martyrdom being successful.
IMAGE CREDITS: kashmirlife.net
Reeba Khan