Notes of Dissent

In 2008-09,Kannur districts Mohammad Fayaz was one of the four Malayalees allegedly killed in an October 2008 shootout in Kashmir Native Bapa,a mix of hip-hop,rap and voiceover,is inspired by the incident. Fayazs mother allowed the government to bury him in Kupwara district she reportedly said she didnt want to see the body of a terrorist a decision much celebrated in Kerala.

She,his Mom,says:

sound of shotgun cocking

I wanna neer see his body

Traitor that he is

Fayazs mothers reported quotes were a gunshot that rang across Kerala, says Muhsin. It was reported later that she withdrew those comments,saying she had said so in a frenzied environment. His family had to reject him without having been offered the opportunity to find out the truth about him8230; to ensure that they remained secularists, says Muhsin,who wrote the poem in response to this incident. Its title is an echo of Pakistani novelist Mohsin Hamids novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist: The reluctant secularist is doubtful; he is hesitant.

Mamukkoya agreed to be a part of this song as it echoed his experience. Two or three years back,I was not allowed to enter Australia. As it turned out,their problem was that I had a Muslim name on my passport. Their problem was just with my name. My fathers name was Mohammed. Thats how my name came about Mohammad Koya,Mamukkoya, the actor said in an interview to a Malayalam news channel.

Native Bapa takes on the images and words casually used in the post-9/11 narrative of terrorism; the stereotyping through images and assumptions. In Afzal Gurus case,there are many pictures of him as a clean-shaven man. However,there is an obsession with him being bearded and wearing the keffiyeh in media representations, says Muhsin. The song is a message of hope and caution. It describes the journey of a doubtful father grudgingly accepting his situation,while the video shows his trip to buy a sapling,which he plants in his yard.

Mappila Lahala prefers to be called a movement,with its Facebook page describing it as,engaging in multiple genres of music,upholding Collective Self-Respect of the oppressed. It plans to release Malayalam poet K Satchidanandans 1972 poem Kozhippangu in rock,along with a re-telling of Kambalath Govindan Nairs protest songs. The response has been overwhelming. It was as if people were waiting for something like this, says M. Noushad 34,one of its core members. We first thought of naming the group Dissident Voices. Then along came Mappila Lahala and a recognition of its historicity, he adds. The 1921 agitation of Malabar Muslims was triggered by the British crackdown on the Khilafat movement,but it soon became one against the British and feudal structures. It was a lahala a rebellion only for the British. In that sense,our use of the term is a postmodern deconstruction.

Imphal Dispatch

A lilting voice,the sound of the acoustic guitar and mouth organ,and lyrics sharpened by sarcasm,is the signature of Akhu Chingambams music. The 31-year-old from Manipur is one of the most prominent contemporary protest musicians. A singer-songwriter based in Imphal,Akhus musical journey has been defined by his growing up years in his troubled home state. I took part in a lot of student protests in Imphal while I was in school. I came to Delhi in 1999 to pursue a bachelors degree in physics from Delhi University DU and I realised student life was so different here. There were few strikes,regular classes and no guns were pointed in your face, he says.

The grinding poverty,the sense of injustice at the power of security forces over Manipur and the 12-year-long hunger strike of Irom Sharmila form the background to the songs that he writes. Its very personal for me and I easily relate to people and lands undergoing the same turmoil be it Kashmir,Jharkhand or Chhattisgarh, says Akhu. The dark and cruel humour sets his music apart. Take Qutab Minar,for instance. Sung in Manipuri and English,it is framed as a message to New Delhi: Carry a tower on my back,Ill carve your names; all you snakes,hang your head in shame. Due to the immense power of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act AFSPA,a lot of people have lost their dear ones. The song is about the journey of a person who brings the Qutab Minar from Delhi to Imphal. Would New Delhi now understand what its like when your dear one is snatched away? says Akhu. In Eche,sung with Delhi-based Indian Ocean,he pays tribute to Sharmila and her fight against AFSPA.

As a undergraduate student,Akhu listened to the likes of Bob Dylan and Rage Against the Machine,read Manipuri poets of the 1960s and watched movies by David Lynch. Their radical politics went on to influence his writing. In 2007,Dr Binayak Sen got arrested from Chhattisgarh and I was contacted by Peoples Union for Democratic Rights to perform at a protest rally in DU. That was my first public performance of protest music, he says. A year later,he formed his band Imphal Talkies,with his sister and a childhood friend; he recorded his political,folk-oriented songs and released the first album titled Tidim Road. It is a road that connects Myanmar and Manipur,where 10 people were mercilessly shot down by Assam Rifles more than a decade ago, he says. Imphal Talkies is now working on a second album,tentatively titled When the Home is Burning.

The Ballad of Sambhaji Bhagat

Every day,he would walk from his home in Mahu village of Satara district to his school in Panchgani. In order to do so,the 12-year-old would have to cross a hill. He was often late and,therefore,would be beaten by his angry teacher. One day,he wrote and sang a song that recounted this daily ordeal,speaking of the difficulties village students face to educate themselves. The performance drew laughter from an audience of teachers and students,but it was perhaps the first protest song by Shahir Sambhaji Bhagat.

A noted Mumbai-based singer and performer,Bhagat is perhaps among the most prominent Dalit protest musicians in Maharashtra today. He is a peoples poet and,therefore,referred to as shahir in the Tamasha folk form who sings powadas ballads in Marathi to the tune of his favourite accompaniment,the harmonium. Through his songs,Bhagat speaks against issues such as caste-based discrimination and crimes against the marginalised,while urging the Dalit youth towards education. Bhagat,however,claims to be only a follower of an old tradition. Music that denounced the caste system dates back to the 17th century in India when Sant Tukaram spoke against it. Later,Jyotiba Phule used music for his Satyashodak anti-caste movement to spread the same message. Our greatest reformer and revolutionary,Dr BR Ambedkars poetry too,is often rendered to music, he says.

The Dalit community in Maharashtra has had many revolutionary bards. Amongst the most prominent artistes were Amar Sheikh,also a known freedom fighter,DN Gavankar and Annabhau Sathe,who are credited for mobilising people for the Samyunkta Maharashtra movement. But there are many from the interiors of the state or followers of the Left ideology whose names we may not even be aware of,who do not come to the forefront, says documentary filmmaker and activist Anand Patwardhan,who made Jai Bhim Comrade,a documentary on Dalit protest music last year. Other prominent musicians include Anand Shinde and Vitthal Umap,while groups such as Dalit Panther,Vidrohi and the Pune-based Kabir Kala Manch KKM also organise musical events.

In keeping with the objective of reaching out to the masses,Dalit protest music is steeped in folk tradition. My education in folk music began when I was little over a year old, says 53-year-old Bhagat,The son of a cobbler and a landless labourer,I was from a modest background. But a teacher from the neighbourhood would carry me on his shoulder,taking me from village to village,singing songs. The members of KKM,Sheetal Sathe and Sagar Gorkhe,started out as religious singers. It was a collaboration with a group protesting the Godhra riots in 2002 that politicised them.

Their music is simple. Words and ideas are strung together and set to tunes that the audience is familiar with or will easily remember they are meant to instill pride and courage in the listeners. Shahirs travel extensively to spend time with their audience in order to understand both their issues and their music. The lyrics and tunes reflect those experiences. It was a shahir who first brought to notice the 2006 drought and farmer suicides in Vidharbha. Even the instruments dhol,iktara,tuntuna or taal are easily accessible to the common man. The duff,a form of a tambourine,however,is a constant companion and defines a shahir.

The message is no longer limited to Dalit issues. Depending on the ideology,musicians and groups address several subjects relevant to the poor. For example,Sheetal in KKM talks about womens rights. Land acquisition that affects farmers is another subject, Patwardhan says. Their audience,says Ghanshyam Sonar of Dalit Panther,is not limited to the Dalit community. The music addresses the issues of the marginalised,sometimes as basic as hygiene. And the universality of the music as well as the message draws an audience of the upper-caste poor too, he says. This fame,however,comes at a price. Dalit groups in Maharashtra have been at loggerheads with the police and their extreme Leftist leanings often make them vulnerable.

The musicians sometimes also face the ire of those whom they fight for. Bhagat recounts how,during the Narmada Bachao Andolan,he was turned away from villages in Gujarat protesting against the dam. We were volunteers,but they turned us away because we are untouchables and we were left stranded without food or water, he says.

Rage Against the Machine

In 2008,when most boys of his age were out on the streets of Srinagar throwing stones at the police and paramilitary forces,Zubair Ahmad Magray was at home,struggling to polish his lyrics and find the right beats. Born in 1990,the year a generation of Kashmiris took to militancy to demand independence,Magray also grew up with the spirit of that time. But he chose music as a form of protest. I wanted to take my message to the people outside Kashmir, he says. A stone was not a medium to talk to them. I chose music.

He became Haze Kay,one of the first rappers from the Valley. His name is a combination of words,where Kay stands for Kashmir and Haze for the bloody smoke that blurs your eyes. Inspired by the music of American rapper 2Pac,he chose to rap as it was the best way to tell stories. I could tell the stories of my people to the outside world.

The son of a lawyer-turned-businessman father and a teacher mother,Haze Kays first track Puff Endorsed was released in July 2009 a time when Kashmir had erupted to protest against the alleged rape and murder of two Shopian women,Asiya and Neelofar. The deaths of the women recur in his music. When protestors took to the streets of Delhi in anger against the gang rape of a student,it reminded him of the Shopian women. The song he wrote,Justice for Asiya and Neelofar,was his attempt to steer the protest towards other,forgotten,victims of sexual violence. I released a track on the Delhi gang rape victim and through that I sought justice for Asiya and Neelofar, he says. When you ask for a right,you are denied. But if you ask for justice for one,it is possible you will get justice for the others, he adds.

Music as a form of protest is not new to Kashmir. The valley has a long history of bhand pather,a popular form of musical theatre by minstrels,who would criticise rulers and kings through their music. Haze Kay is a part of a new generation of young musicians in Kashmir,who are politically conscious and who use the internet as their stage. It includes rappers like MC Kash,and less famous ones such as MC Youngblood,MC Renegade and Shayan.

Over the years,like other musicians,Haze Kays anti-establishment lyrics have gotten him into trouble. His lyrics would be screened by studio owners before he was allowed to record his tracks. If they found any words of protest in it,they would simply ask us to leave. After the street protests of 2009 and 2010 simmered down,he found studio doors shut. Whenever we went to any studio,they refused to entertain us. They told us the police has asked them not to allow us inside, he says. So he turned to his mother,who bought the equipment he needed and turned a room in his house into a studio.

In 2010,he moved to Pune to study engineering. But his music continues to be about the Valley and its politics. I protest against what I see around me,what my people see around them. I tell it to the world. I am Haze Kay but I am also one of them.

Original Soundtrack

The first protest song that Sumangala Damodaran sang was Jane wale sipahi se poocho,written by Marxist Urdu poet Makhdoom Mohiuddin Huzri after World War II. It was 1983 and 16-year-old Damodaran was an active member of PARCHAM,a group which used culture as a tool of protest. Safdar Hashmi,cultural activist and founder of Sahmat taught me the song and I would recite it at our gatherings. There would be several requests for it,even though it was not a very typical protest song, says the 45-year-old associate professor of economics at Ambedkar University,Delhi. A year later,after the anti-Sikh riots had ended,when she sang it at a Sikh gathering,Damodaran recalls how encore requests would not stop. Usually,protest music is set to a lively rhythm to capture public imagination. This song was mellow,but it never failed to move people, she says.

Granddaughter of Keralas first chief minister EMS Namboodiripad,Damodaran was never a stranger to mass movements or their literature. But her grandfathers influence on her was only oblique. Damodarans thoughts were moulded by her interaction with theatre activists like Habib Tanveer,Prasanna and Hashmi. My politics was my music. So,in later years,when I found rich documentation of theatre traditions of the era,and little on how music was also a political tool,I knew there was work to be done, she says. So,a few years ago,Damodaran began a personal project of archiving the popular music traditions of Indian Peoples Theatre Association IPTA,an off-shoot of which was the album,Songs of Protest 2010. The 40s and 50s saw mass movements. The earliest protest music in India could be traced back to the Independence movement. Protest music was a form of cultural activism people like Sahir Ludhianvi,Salil Chowdhury,Ravi Shankar every artist,musician or theatre director of repute was a part of the movement,unless they were right-wing. Which is probably why the repertoire of organisations like the IPTA was so rich, says Damodaran,who has trained in Carnatic and Hindustani vocals and opera.

Her search took her across the country,to old stalwarts of the IPTA. In Kolkata,Shobha Sen,wife of actor Utpal Dutt,introduced her to a host of forgotten melodies,including Aar koto kaal,a song sung by Reba Roy Chowdhury of the IPTA on the Tebhaga peasant movement in pre-Independence India. There were others,who helped with scratchy recordings,old,tattered notebooks full of songs,even tunes to help her project along.

One of the things that came out of the project was an understanding of how the earliest protest songs were also populist songs. Resistance music was music of the people,and historically involved nationalistic sentiments. It was also a look at nationalism from the bottom-up. They cut through genres and forms and included songs of love,of separation songs that had no defined allusion to politics,but that were a reaction to contemporary politics, says Damodaran. She cites the example of Pandit Ravi Shankar,whose initial plan to work on raga-based protest songs was shelved,because it might have been difficult for the common man to pick them up. In her album,she deliberately picked songs which defied categorisation a Punjabi folk song,Kinno phool dassan written in 1943,recalls the terrible Bengal famine,but is sung like a heer; a popular Malayalee marching song,Bali kudeerangale Martyrs memorial is robust and determined.

Damodaran says even though shes interested in protest music as a genre,its scope has waned over the years,particularly because cultural activism has lost its zing. There are campaigns and meetings to rally the public now. So even if people are still going out on the streets with their theatre and music,its not as effective, she says. Would she be interested in another protest album? Only if I find someone who can come up with strong lyrics, she says.