The cost of keeping a language aliveYaseen’s songs are finding listeners, but he still struggles to afford studio time.He normally lives in Srinagar, more than 160km (100 miles) from home, where he studies music at Cluster University and performs at local events. When Tanveer approached him in Buglinder, he was visiting his family to help with the annual harvest.His interest in singing began at school.
Standing on a hill above a neighbouring village, he points towards his childhood school and remembers Rasheed Samoon, a teacher who gave him 10 rupees to sing his first poem, Aavo Mil Kar Kam Karain (Let’s work together).Now, when he can afford it, Yaseen rents a studio in Srinagar. Producing a song, including studio time and production costs, runs him between 30,000 and 35,000 Indian rupees ($318–$372), he says.The cover of Yousuf Naseem's first cassette, Dardistan, produced by the Kashmiri folk-music label Music Tape Industry in Srinagar in the early 2000s.
This recording introduced Shina music to audiences across Kashmir. Today, young artists struggle to afford studio time and production costs [Ishtayaq Rasool/Al Jazeera]Musicians share microphones, speakers, instruments and editing skills to reduce costs.
For his song Malalak, released in April, for example, Yaseen shared the cost of video production and editing software with fellow musician Zia Ul Alam.Younis Majeed, 27, from Izmarg village, is part of the same emerging generation of musicians in Gurez. He blends Shina folk melodies with contemporary beats.
His song Tamah Hoon (I Have a Desire) has reached more than 21,000 viewers online.“The internet lets us get to know each other again,” he says. “It reconnects us emotionally and culturally, both across and within borders.”But the infrastructure supporting that connection is fragile. Some villages close to the Line of Control have little or no mobile coverage.
Artists may have a smartphone but no quiet place to record, or they may be able to upload a song but not earn from it.Further east, in Drass in Indian-administered Ladakh, 24-year-old singer Zain Drassi faces similar problems.In early September, he performed with a local band at the Drass and Suru festivals. For him, the performances were a chance to bring a shared musical tradition back into public view.“It was a small recovery of our cultural space after it had been limited for so long by war and political borders,” he says.Drass was a key theatre of the 1999 Kargil War, and residents have lived with displacement and restrictions on movement.
Today, Drassi says, local musicians also struggle to find the resources needed to make professional recordings.“The internet has brought us closer to our people in Gurez and Gilgit, but practically we have different challenges,” he says.Musicians can record vocals locally, he explains, but must travel elsewhere for composition, arrangements and professional production, seeking services in Srinagar, Bhaderwah or neighbouring Himachal Pradesh. Traditional instruments and musicians skilled in playing them are also difficult to find.The younger performers are finding new ways to record and distribute Shina songs.
Much of the repertoire they draw on, however, survived through singers and writers who had no digital audience.