Delhi Sultanate & Begum X Take Their Resistance Music to Kashmir

Reporter & Camera: Syed Shahriyar
Video Editor: Rahul Sanpui
Producer: Vatsala Singh

Taru Dalmia aka Delhi Sultanate and Samara Chopra aka Begum X, with their red BFR sound system van, descended on valley with their music of resistance. Kashmir’s young artists, musicians and poets gathered on a lawn by a Srinagar lake to share and listen to each other’s stories.

The event was organised along with Indie label Azadi Records, to connect and interact with Kashmiri artists and musicians.

We are very keen to connect to artists, young people, singers who are talking about what is happening in their areas and in their countries...because the news, you cannot trust. In that situation, we need artists and poets to tell us what’s really going on.

Delhi Sultanate, SKA Vengers

Delhi Sultanate and Begum X are also members of the band SKA Vengers. The band blends ‘SKA’ rhythms with elements of DUB, punk, jazz and rap. Talking about their visit, band member Begum X sang a few lines on Kashmir she wrote last year.

Come winter, come summer, you show no mercy
Let love letters fly into the bodies of babies
This morning I woke in a curfew
Come soldier man
You're a prisoner too

“'Love letters' is a New York gangster way of saying ‘bullets’. I wrote this after the pellet-gun firing as a reaction to the news,” she said.

We are living in times where creative expression is under threat. And frankly, I feel kind of inadequate as an artist to have an appropriate response to the things I am seeing around me. But I don’t know what else to do. 

Begum X, SKA Vengers 

While speaking to the young artists who had come to watch them perform, Taru spoke about how music and poetry tells stories that are often missed or wrongly reported in the news.

“News editors resigning. We have seen journalists being murdered. We have seen writers being murdered. There is an atmosphere of fear. It’s very important that we express ourselves freely. At least in art, culture, music and in poetry there has to be freedom of expression,” he said.

News doesn’t offer a nuanced view of a place, it’s people and their daily lives. Meeting local artists and musicians hence becomes important. To give local voices a platform, Delhi-based music label Azadi Records has signed up a local rapper, Ahmer Javed.

Stories coming from Kashmir lose their nuance even before they reach us. For that, a steady stream of artists – who may have differing opinions on the same issue but want to solve the same problems – is important.

Uday Kapoor, Azadi Records

Hoping to encourage more Kashmiri artists, he said, “Hopefully, Kashmiri artists will get together to create their own platforms, bring their art, bring stories which forms a nuanced narrative, for a better understanding of the situation.”