Years of bloody conflict and unending uncertainty have shaped the sensibilities of Kashmir’s young artists

Though it is the suffering around them that spurs their creativity, the end result is a vehicle or outlet for pent-up feelings

For young artists in Kashmir, art is both an escape and a refuge. They are barely 20 or 30, yet it is not love and romance but pain and rage that dominate their work. Singer, song-writer and composer Mohammad Muneem is 37. In May, a fortnight before the release of his musical album Siyah (black/ darkness), he had to go into quarantine with COVID-19. But that did not deter him; by May-end his album had premiered on online platforms to much acclaim. Siyah, Muneem says, is where everything happens. “Darkness gives you a strange strength but there is no doubt it also drains you,” says the artist, who lives in Srinagar’s Hyderpora area. With 18-plus songs, the album has four parts — ‘Haal’ (present), ‘Maazi’ (past), ‘Musqatbil’ (future) and ‘Hayaat’ (Existence). It laments a bygone life and childhood and has a melancholic tone. Like Muneem’s other albums, including Ride Home, Jhelumas, Main Aur Tu and The Union, a pained voice and grim images are the leitmotifs of Siyah too, almost like a Muneem hallmark. “It often feels like cause and effect,” says the artist, an engineer by profession, who started his musical journey 19 years ago. “Effect perhaps could be the tone of the work. Cause is what is within and in your life, what has happened to you.”