A Fusion of Shahiri With Rap Shows Political Music Has Interesting Times Ahead

Chakka Jam song in Netflix's ‘Murder in the Courtroom’ combines vidrohi shahiri from Maharashtra with American rap.

(Illustration: Vibhushita Singh)

Netflix released ‘Murder in the Courtroom,’ the third episode in its series Indian Predator, on 28 October 2022. The episode starts with a 3:50-second catchy song ‘Chal Chakka Jam Kar,’ motivating people to get up and fight against oppression.

The song’s lyrics are written by Sachin Mali and his partner Shital Sathe, the singers are Sathe and the rappers MC Mawali and Vipin Tatad, while the music has been composed by Mangesh Dhakde. These artists, in the past too, have used their music to express dissent against systemic oppression and issues of the marginalised.

‘Chakka Jam’ can be seen combining ‘vidrohi shahiri’ from Maharashtra, which speaks against the class-caste oppression, with hip hop, which started in the West as a protest against anti-racial oppression. Both art forms have their relevance to their respective cultural movements.

Origins of Shahiri

Shahiri (the name comes from  the Urdu word shayari) is the music tradition in Maharashtra, which can be traced back to Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj’s period. Yogita Salvi, a social and cultural analyst, in the documentary film Shahiri made by Aashit Sable says, “Kavi (poets) can be divided into three types as per the era and type of content: there are sant kavi and pant kavi — ones who have been writing about saints and their sacrifices are sant kavi, while pant kavi engage in topics related to knowledge and science. Whereas shahirs can be termed as tant kavi, who write and sing about real-life incidents. We see vitality in their poetry.”

Shahirs perform on streets and in public programmes, hence they are called people’s poets. Maharashtra’s Ambedkarite movement has reinvented shahiri tradition to protest against social injustice. Changing its subject matter from mythological to social, Maharashtra has seen its shahiri tradition staying relevant to its time period.

These songs are mostly sung with at least a daph (popularly known as dafli), tuntuna, jhanjh (cymbal), harmonium, and dimdi (folk instrument made of animal leather). Unlike the Savarna shahirs who narrated stories from Puranas and about saints through public performances such as tamasha, bharud and ballad, shahirs from the marginalised communities performed shahiri to fight against caste and class.

New-age shahirs adapted the old framework to speak about contemporary sociopolitical issues. Around the 1920s, Ambedkari jalsas began to be performed. They gained more popularity and relevance after Dr BR Ambedkar’s death and have become an integral part of the Ambedkarite movement.

“The shahiri that we compose comes from the legacy of the Satyashodhak jalsa from Phule’s times which later got fused with the Ambedkari jalsa from Babasaheb’s time, which was taken forward by Amar Sheikh, Anna Bhau Sathe… and it kept growing. Our generation is trying to continue this legacy.”

– Shahir Sachin Mali

Besides Lokshahir Wamandada Kardak, Bhimrao Kardak, Anna Bhau Sathe, Vitthal Umap, Amar Sheikh, who are amongst the most well-known names, there have been hundreds of shahirs from rural Maharashtra who have dedicated their lives to the social movements through their songs. They sang to convey the thoughts of the Buddha, Phules, and Ambedkar. They travelled and performed across the state so that the radical ideas of the great leaders could reach every household. Shahir Vitthal Umap died while performing at Dikshabhoomi in Nagpur in 2010.

American Hip-Hop Rooted in Black Culture

From the street corner to the world stage, hip-hop has grown into one of the world’s most prominent musical genres and cultural influences. Just like the other forms of expressions within hip-hop, rap too is undeniably tied to the Black culture. The history of rap can be traced to the history of Black anti-racial movement.

In the West, we have popular artists like Tupac, who is celebrated for his hard-hitting raps against systemic racism. Not only men but women rappers like Sister Souljah had made their mark by singing about politics and race.

Post the 1980s, as hip-hop expanded its wings and leaped beyond its geographical boundaries, it became more raw. Youth of various social identities adapted the genre to their own context as a means to express their views on self, community, and politics.

Hip-hop was not your usual entertainment music – its content was radical. But it gradually lost its essence as rappers started including misogynistic lyrics in their songs and commercialisation distorted the meaning of phrases like thug life, which earlier had a deeper meaning. The Indian commercial rappers made rap all about daru (liquor), gaadi (luxury cars) and stalking young women. All this is nowhere close to what rap is actually meant to be.

New Generation Is Reinventing Music

As already elaborated above, protesting and expressing dissent against social and political injustice through music has existed for a long time in India. In recent times, rap has again emerged as a powerful medium to propagate progressive thoughts among the masses. 

Unlike the popular Bollywoodized rappers, the underground rappers look at hip-hop as a culture. Aklesh aka MC Mawali says, “I wanted to be true to hip-hop, and thus I had a clarity about what to write.”

He says that he received the legacy of music and thoughts of saints like Kabir and Tukaram through his family, which also instilled a sense of responsibility in him to write lyrics that would awaken people’s conscience. Books like Jotiba Phule’s Gulamgiri shaped his thoughts and passion to write.

A still from the trailer of 'Indian Predator: Murder in a Courtroom'

(Photo Courtesy: Screenshot/YouTube) 

There is a growing list of Indian rappers who are reclaiming hip-hop culture along with their assertion of social identities. Rappers like Arivu, Isaivani, Sumeet Samos, Ginni Mahi, Vipin Tatad, Vardhaan, Gaurav Ingole aka Charlie, Tauseef Khan, Shubham aka Rekoil Chafe, Mahi, and Harish Kamble are all setting fire through their voices and strong lyrics against caste oppression from an Ambedkarite perspective.

Vipin Tatad aka VIP says, “Rap started with a revolution. It spoke like a mirror that shows the ugliness of the society and so was our vidrohi lokshahiri culture.”

“We were initially introduced to rap in a very wrong way. Children of our bastis are so much in awe of those raps which lead them in the wrong direction. We wanted to bring them back to reality – the reality that was sung by lokshahirs like Wamandada Kardak decades ago. The words of shahirs are still relevant as the situation more or less remains the same. But the kids and youth won’t listen to them. So we are trying to disseminate those revolutionary thoughts again but wrapped in the new popular genre of rap music.”

– Vipin Tatad

Since there are many similarities between the anti-race rap music and anti-caste Ambedkarite shahiri, the Ambedkarite rap can be perceived as the fusion of the two. Both the forms talk about real-life incidents that may not be pleasant to listen to but important to be known. Shahir Sambhaji Bhagat says it loud and clear every time he performs, “I am not here to entertain you, I am here to disturb you.”

As we see in the Oscar-nominated Marathi film Court, vidrohi shahiri is so powerful that the reality portrayed through music disturbs you to the extent that this disturbance further boosts the courage to fight against all odds. ‘Chakka Jam Kar’ is such an example of powerful shahiri, combined with yet another powerful medium – rap, narrating the real-life incident from Nagpur’s crime diary where women took charge to get their deserved justice. 

Shahir Sheetal Sathe, who takes inspiration from Krantijyoti Savitribai Phule, stands out when she fights gender, caste, class issues with her strong voice. She says, “Rap has reached the world and so in India, Indian social changemakers have respected and adopted the style. Through Netflix, it is now time to export our revolutionary music culture of lokshahiri to the world.”

Like Babasaheb Dr. BR Ambedkar used to emphasise on putting the country’s plight of the broken society in front of the world, he had also said that shahir’s one song is more impactful than his 10 speeches. The fusion of shahiri and rap has the potential to take the sociocultural legacy of the Ambedkarite thought and music to the world.