Underground cyphers are helping young Kashmiris reclaim their voices

Set against a backdrop of conflict and crackdowns, rappers in Srinagar are speaking truth to power in secretly organised freestyles.

Spaces Between the Beats is a series spot­light­ing music and cul­tur­al com­mu­ni­ties around the world, explor­ing their sto­ries as they build resilience and find mean­ing and hope in connection.

Against the back­drop of a dilap­i­dat­ed silk fac­to­ry in Sri­na­gar, a group of young peo­ple assem­ble on aban­doned ground on the out­skirts of the city. The speak­ers blast old-school hip-hop while the event organ­is­er helps peo­ple nav­i­gate their way to the loca­tion via Insta­gram. The stage is now set for anoth­er cypher in the cap­i­tal of con­flict-rid­den Kashmir.

Stand­ing near a rust­ed car body, 18-year-old Iqra Nis­ar – the youngest rap­per in the group, who goes by the name Yung Illa – takes the spot­light and spits about her expe­ri­ence of com­ing of age in rur­al north Kash­mir. Her moth­er watch­es in awe. Young kids play crick­et in the dis­tance, and a few near­by shep­herds occa­sion­al­ly glance over towards the hub­bub while tend­ing to their sheep.

I love hip-hop. It’s the only thing I want to do with my life, and my fam­i­ly sup­ports me,” Yung Illa tells me, adding that she’d take up music pro­fes­sion­al­ly. In Kash­mir, talk­ing about human rights brings trou­ble and being a girl is even more difficult.”

From a hard­line gov­ern­ment at the helm in Kash­mir to a con­ser­v­a­tive soci­ety, young rap­pers face a lega­cy of free speech crack­downs. The gov­ern­ment sees Kashmir’s hip-hop move­ment as a threat to their author­i­ty, as artists often use the genre as a vehi­cle for address­ing human rights abus­es by the Indi­an state. Rap­pers have been harassed, intim­i­dat­ed, and had their stu­dios raid­ed by the gov­ern­ment agencies.

Organ­is­ing a cipher is even more dif­fi­cult since India revoked the region’s lim­it­ed auton­o­my in August 2019 and clamped down on civ­il lib­er­ties. How­ev­er, in the mid­dle of an over-three- decade-long armed con­flict, young peo­ple in Kash­mir con­tin­ue to find their voice through hip-hop.

Top to bottom: Fahad Idrees aka K2 rapping in a cypher. Children watching a cypher held on the outskirts of Srinagar. Iqra Nisar aka Young Illa performing in a cypher.

Looming Threat

Amid intim­i­da­tion and the con­stant threat of being arrest­ed for crit­i­cis­ing the gov­ern­ment, young hip-hop artists come togeth­er when­ev­er they can, with the aim of pre­serv­ing the Kash­miri expe­ri­ence, the region’s his­to­ry and, more impor­tant­ly, to express their frus­tra­tions with the sta­tus quo.

To organ­ise a cypher, the com­mu­ni­ty remains in touch on social media and meets at least once a month with­out dis­clos­ing the loca­tion until the last moment.

Wear­ing a den­im jack­et with a map of Kash­mir embroi­dered on its back, 28-year-old Fahad Idrees, also known as K2, didn’t cut any slack as he high­light­ed the human rights vio­la­tions that the Himalayan region has wit­nessed over the years.

I’m the cof­fin of free­dom cov­ered on the mar­tyr / And writer of the truth cause the truth speaks loud­er / I’m the sword of the faith n prayers are my armour / Flail in my hands will bleed every mon­ster / Cur­few in my city, scari­ness every­where / Arrest­ing lil kids, won’t lead you any­where / Cause I’m gonna bomb your régime / And Mar­tyrs will hear your scream.”

I’m sor­ry, but I can’t rap about peace and love when I don’t see it around me. It is injus­tice to this art. It is dirt on jus­tice,” Idrees tells me. Rap is not to abuse, pro­mote drugs, or car­i­ca­ture a woman as a sex-sym­bol. Rap is an art of speak­ing truth to pow­er, which was the pur­pose it was born for.”

“I can’t rap about peace and love when I don’t see it around me.” Fahad Idrees aka K2

Idrees got into hip-hop when the genre took the val­ley for a spin in the 2010s. In the midst of a civil­ian upris­ing, in which over 120 peo­ple were killed in street protests, Kash­mir heard I Protest”. Shared wide­ly via Blue­tooth, the song imme­di­ate­ly became an anthem of the peo­ple and shot the artist, Roushan Ilahi, pop­u­lar­ly known as MC Kash, to fame.

Since then, Kash­mir’s rap scene has seen sev­er­al upheavals. Artists have faced state intim­i­da­tion, gone under­ground, or peeled off to pur­sue careers in oth­er fields and earn a sta­ble income. For Illahi’s part, he con­tin­ued to rap about the civil­ian dis­ap­pear­ances, mass graves and the strug­gle in Kash­mir until 2016, when state intim­i­da­tion became so bad that he, too, called it quits.

Scared of get­ting arrest­ed, Idress also left the scene. I’m a rebel­lious rap­per. I rap about the blood­shed in Kash­mir. I have writ­ten 125 songs and all of them talk about Kash­mir pol­i­tics, sup­pres­sion and human rights vio­la­tions,” he tells me. One has to be hon­est to his art.”

Idress first rose to promi­nence in 2013 when a human rights organ­i­sa­tion asked him to per­form in one of their events, which was arranged in tan­dem with a gov­ern­ment-spon­sored con­cert in Kash­mir fea­tur­ing the renowned con­duc­tor Zubin Mehta. In front of a ban­ner dis­play­ing pho­tos of young peo­ple killed dur­ing the 2010 protests, accom­pa­nied by the words Haqee­qat-e-Kash­mir’ (Real­i­ty of Kash­mir) in big bold let­ters, Idress per­formed his pow­er­ful song Resis­tance is a Choice,” which talks about fight­ing against the oppres­sion and bru­tal­i­ties of the Indi­an state:

When rules are so obnox­ious you have to become an out­law / What will you do when your throat is being slit with a sharp saw / You are left with a choice to hold, dri­ve and fight / So tell me why won’t you fight for they have snatched your birth right / They kill you, they maim you, they mur­der you, they tor­ture you / So just go and fight broth­er there is no one to assist you.”

Inspired by the British rap­per and activist Lowkey, aka Karim Den­nis, Idress believes that rap is the voice of the voice­less. That’s why he chose K2 as his stage name – in hope that his voice can reach the same scale as the sec­ond-high­est moun­tain on Earth. “[Lowkey] doesn’t rap non­sense. He talks about the plights of Pales­tine. Intifa­da. Killings. Same thing I want to do for my peo­ple,” Idress says.

Top to bottom: Ahmer Javed performing in Srinagar.

Koshur Nizam (Kashmiri Culture)

A week before the event near the silk fac­to­ry, Koshur Nizam – a promi­nent hip-hop col­lec­tive home to some of the most inno­v­a­tive and best-sell­ing artists, like Ahmer Javed – organ­ised a gig in Sri­na­gar. Dusk fell as eerie silence engulfed the venue, a large flock of birds flew over­head, and Javed took to the stage. The crowd rushed for­ward to get a close glimpse of the newest hip-hop sen­sa­tion in Kashmir.

In his 45 minute per­for­mance, Javed sang many of his hits. The young crowd waved their hands in the air and nod­ded their heads in sync with a rap­per who was rap­ping back-to-back to keep the momen­tum going till he fin­ished his set with Rov” – a song fea­tur­ing the poet, musi­cian and film­mak­er Faheem Abdul­lah, which starts with a woman singing soft­ly about a gar­den of flow­ers where every­one is invit­ed to laugh and play togeth­er. Then the beat drops in, and Javed starts rap­ping: They took my beloved / And my bones become ash / I lost my beloved away from this world / He made me help­less / Who is this thief in my house…”

Talk­ing with Huck after the per­for­mance, Javed says that Kash­miri hip-hop draws its inspi­ra­tion from the same sense of social injus­tice that birthed the genre in the US. When Black peo­ple were treat­ed like sec­ond-class cit­i­zens by whites and nobody was lis­ten­ing to their griev­ances, they came up with rap to tell their sto­ries. Sim­i­lar is the case with us (Kash­miri),” he says, adding that the scene in Kash­mir is still very much under­ground.”

“We live in the most volatile area in the city, and we have seen so much turmoil right from our childhood. This music gives us a chance to listen to our own feelings.” Arsalan (age 18) and Dawood (age19)

Javed came into the lime­light in 2019 – a time when the Gov­ern­ment of India had uni­lat­er­al­ly abol­ished the spe­cial sta­tus of Kash­mir and there was a wide­spread crack­down on free speech in the Himalayan region. His debut album Lit­tle Kid, Big Dreams, was an instant hit, but back home things were get­ting worse. After releas­ing his album in New Del­hi, Javed came home and saw peo­ple restrict­ed in their houses.

There wasn’t much to do dur­ing the cur­few days. So, I used to go near the Jhelum Riv­er for leisure, where I found oth­er rap artists look­ing for a plat­form to exhib­it their tal­ent,” he says. There, they came togeth­er to form a hip-hop com­mu­ni­ty called Kashur Nizam (Kash­miri Culture).”

Com­par­ing their moti­va­tion to Rage Against the Machine, whose unapolo­getic rock tar­gets every­thing from Amer­i­can cor­po­ra­tions and war­mon­ger­ing to racial dis­crim­i­na­tion and police bru­tal­i­ty. Like them, Javed says, Kash­miri hip-hop also refus­es to shy away from reality.

We (rap­pers) are not polit­i­cal peo­ple. We just rap about what we see and observe,” he explains. And if our cir­cum­stances led us to rap about the atroc­i­ties that are hap­pen­ing around us, it is not our fault. It is con­scious music.”

Hip-hop first made its way to Kash­mir in ear­ly 2000s when the val­ley was intro­duced to rap­pers like Eminem, 50 Cent and Tupac. The lyri­cal themes of oppres­sion, pover­ty and racism res­onat­ed with young peo­ple, who saw mir­rors of their own experiences.

Thir­teen years since Illahi’s pop­u­lar­i­ty threw a light on Kash­miri hip-hop, the scene is small but pas­sion­ate. There are around 40 rap­pers in Kash­mir today spit­ting about pol­i­tics, human rights vio­la­tions, mil­i­tari­sa­tion and speak­ing truth to pow­er. In doing so, they are inspir­ing gen­er­a­tions to come.

Among the crowd to watch Javed are two young boys from down­town Sri­na­gar nod­ding their heads to beats. Arsalan (18) and Dawood (19) have been friends since child­hood and lis­ten­ing to hip-hop for eight years now. For them, Kash­miri hip-hop reflects what young peo­ple like them go through in their day-to-day lives.

It’s like some­one is singing our sto­ry,” they say. We live in the most volatile area in the city, and we have seen so much tur­moil right from our child­hood. This music gives us a chance to lis­ten to our own feelings.”

Fol­low Junaid on Twit­ter.

Enjoyed this arti­cle? Fol­low Huck on Twit­ter and Insta­gram.

You might like

A man with long curly hair and a beard wearing a green jacket against a dark blue background with "Analogue Appreciation" text in yellow.
Music

Analogue Appreciation: Joe Armon-Jones

All The Quiet (Part II) — In an ever more digital, online world, we ask our favourite artists about their most cherished pieces of physical culture. Today, it’s keyboardist, producer and Ezra Collective member Joe Armon-Jones.

Written by: Joe Armon-Jones

Saturated green and white image of a person's face with text overlay stating "CAPITALISM IS EXPLOITATION, PERIOD"
Music

Yaya Bey: “Capitalism is exploitation, period”

do it afraid — Ahead of the release of her second 18-track odyssey in just over a single year, we caught up with the prolific singer, discussing the pitfalls of the music industry, European ‘voyeurism’ framing her previous album and breaking narratives set upon her by others.

Written by: Isaac Muk

A woman with curly blonde hair wearing a black dress and making a peace sign gesture in front of a dark background.
Music

Nina Utashiro builds disquieting, macabre sonic worlds

Huck x Eastern Margins — We caught up with the Japanese-German rap experimentalist ahead of her performance at Huck’s SXSW London joint event with Eastern Margins.

Written by: Isaac Muk

Smiling people enjoying a night out, one person wearing a red hat and jacket.
Music

Huck teams up with Eastern Margins for a special SXSW London showcase

From Shibuya to Shoreditch — Taking place at Village Underground on Monday, performances will come from MONO, Nina Utashiro, Ena Mori, Jianbo, LVRA & Soda Plains.

Written by: Isaac Muk

A person in a grey jacket stands against a mountainous, foggy landscape. The image has the text "huck presents Analogue Application" overlaid in yellow and green.
Music

Analogue Appreciation: Shura

I Got Too Sad For My Friends — In an ever more digital, online world, we ask our favourite artists about their most cherished pieces of physical culture. Today, it’s English singer-songwriter Shura.

Written by: Shura

Music

Jack Johnson

Letting It All Out — Jack Johnson’s latest record, Sleep Through The Static, is more powerful and thought provoking than his entire back catalogue put together. At its core, two themes stand out: war and the environment. HUCK pays a visit to Jack’s solar-powered Casa Verde, in Los Angeles, to speak about his new album, climate change, politics, family and the beauty of doing things your own way.

Written by: Tim Donnelly

Huck is supported by our readers, subscribers and Club Huck members. It is also made possible by sponsorship from:

Signup to our newsletter

Sign up to our newsletter to informed with the cutting edge of sport, music and counterculture, featuring personal takes on the state of media and pop culture from Emma Garland, former Digital Editor of Huck, exclusive interviews, recommendations and more.

Please wait...

Accessibility Settings

Text

Applies the Open Dyslexic font, designed to improve readability for individuals with dyslexia.

Applies a more readable font throughout the website, improving readability.

Underlines links throughout the website, making them easier to distinguish.

Adjusts the font size for improved readability.

Visuals

Reduces animations and disables autoplaying videos across the website, reducing distractions and improving focus.

Reduces the colour saturation throughout the website to create a more soothing visual experience.

Increases the contrast of elements on the website, making text and interface elements easier to distinguish.