A chorus in the valley

Kashmiri band Alif sings songs about lost dreams, strong women and more, in three languages. There's headbanging too

- Riddhi Doshi

The 18th Century Gobindgarh fort in Amritsar is an unlikely venue for a headbanging concert. Much less at the Sacred Amritsar music and poetry festival, where the evening acts typically cover Kabir couplets and renditions of devotional poetry and folk and classical songs.

So, when Kashmiri singer-songwriter and composer Mohammad Muneem, took the stage, dressed in a black suit and trousers, his feet bare, audiences had no idea what to expect. “How many of you have heard us before?” he asked the crowd. Only two hands went up.

ONE'S STRUGGLES OF BEING OR NOT BEING A KASHMIRI DON'T MATTER. EVERYONE EXPERIENCES STRUGGLE, VULNERABILITY, ABANDONMENT

It didn’t bother him. Muneem goes by the stage name Alif and is the founder and vocalist of Alif, a four-person band that also includes pianist Aditya Bhandarkar, drummer Kabeer Singh and guitarist Shivam Pant. They perform rap, rock and Kashmiri folk music in Urdu, Koshur and Hindi. For the next 90 minutes, they got right down to it, playing songs about women’s hardships, the rat race, grief, college memories, hope and love. Mun e em occasionally translated a few lyrics from the Urdu and Koshur songs in his deep baritone. The audience started out clapping along, and ended up, yes , headbanging.