THE HUMANITY OF REBELLION

Two Mumbaikars rave about a new Rock album from Kashmir — Ali Saffudin’s Wolivo

(NOTE: Three prominent Indian publications refused to publish this piece despite its humanist slant. Whether that is a reflection of the piece or their beliefs or their lack of courage, or the ethos in India today, is for the reader to judge.)

JAIDEEP VARMA AND MOHIT KILAM

Jaideep Varma is a writer-filmmaker who has written on music for 25 years. Mohit Kilam is a screenwriter, and also a Kashmiri Pandit. They discuss the debut Rock album by Ali Saffudin, which they both see as a landmark release.

Jaideep Varma: I can’t remember the last time I couldn’t get past the first 3 tracks of an album, only because I was playing them on loop. That explosive beginning is no gimmick!

Mohit Kilam: It’s a grand entrance to the album, and each song is different. Hard-edged rock to folk-rock to rap that becomes groovy, tuneful rock and back again. In 12 minutes flat!

JV: Addictively catchy and substantial at the same time. His powerful passionate voice and the words he sings complement this. Like when he describes Kashmir with “jahaan qaid hai har ek nazara/ aur aazad har ek nazar hai” in that thunderclap of an opening song.

MK: There’s actually a reason why certain songs are in the Kashmiri language — Koshur, and others in Urdu. Which comes from a narrative flow in the way the songs are sequenced. So, the opening track, “Wadiyo Mein”, for me, is like setting up Kashmir like a dream sequence.

In the title track thereafter, “Wolivo”, he breaks that dream with no uncertainty. Where, speaking to his fellow Kashmiris, he urges them to snap out of that nostalgic notion and face up the reality. The choice of language is hence, apt.

The next track, “Jinki Wajah Se” further elaborates that reality of today’s Kashmir. In that, and the track that follows, “Zehni Ghulami”, there is a deliberate use of terms and words that invoke Islam, an essential tenet of Ali’s identity that is wrongfully questioned, day in and day out.

JV: This is probably a good place to bring up the elephant in the room for some. This artist is anti-establishment, which should hardly be a surprise to those following the plight of Kashmiri people. Quite literally, anyone in their shoes would be, for what they have gone through for a long time, and still are. The problem in mainstream India lies in the inability, or lack of intent, to engage with that angst — a deliberate avoidance of empathy, in the name of some kind of national pride. It is the triumph of politics over humanity, which is not just a denial of our very essence it is also very impractical and ultimately damaging for all parties, as the last 75 years have shown. Whether one agrees 100% with an artist’s worldview or not, to not even engage with that, reeks of insecurity and small-mindedness.

MK: To underline this point again - this album and its core message are very emphatically not anti-India. In any case, the essence of Rock is anti-establishment, around the world. It has been so, over generations. So, this is actually the perfect vehicle for the expression of this angst, in the hands of a hugely talented musician.

JV: Absolutely. The quality of these songs demand that engagement in their own right anyway. The whole album lives up to that magnificent beginning; not a single filler anywhere on it. What really sets these songs apart, for me, is how rooted the songs are to its surroundings, despite the universal rock form. He doesn’t seem to care about technical aspects or hygiene factors around the songs, as much as the raw expression of what it is to be alive as a young person in Kashmir today. Conversations about technical aspects around these tracks (and indeed, those in the whole album), their imperfections or aesthetic choices in them seem entirely superfluous. They’re as imperfect as all human beings are. It is soul and authenticity that ultimately characterise an album like this. Which is not to underplay at all the quality of the compositions and the playing on the album, which are outstanding. As is Ali’s singing in all its different shades.

MK: Like his rousing vocals on “Walo Ha”. Through countless versions, this poem has been invoked several times in the context of Kashmir and its physical beauty. Parvaaz did a brilliant version a few years ago. But no one really channelised the rage within the original text and ultimately desisted from an unequivocal expression. Ali reimagines it like a battle cry, and sings it with a palpable urgency and a brutalist rage, both of which it truly warrants.

JV: This fierce authenticity is the point of his music, and what separates it from pretty much all rock or independent music that comes out of our part of the world.

MK: Actually, it is very different from what comes out of Kashmir as well, where there has been an artistic renaissance of sorts in the last few years, especially in music. His tenor is very different. Neither is it dispirited or bleak in its essence radiating (understandable) victimhood, nor is it “high art”, often virtuoso, where the Kashmiri identity is more of a romanticised or even exoticised presence. Ali’s music is explicit on the primary level, unflinchingly political. But it is also deeply humanist.

JV: So, the exact opposite of The Kashmir Files, isn’t it? That exploitative template propaganda film that just happened to be on Kashmir, which distorted real incidents to generate hate through disproportionate victimhood. Which are completely missing in these songs — the victimhood and the hatred.

MK: Unfortunately, the moment we bring this up, in our current environment, it quickly devolves into a reductive “our pain vs your pain” debate.

JV: A rant, rather than a debate, which is, of course, precisely the problem. In these songs, we see all the shades — pride, despair, determination, disillusionment, inner reflection and seething fury of the modern-day Kashmiri. The rough-edged, imperfect, seemingly uncrafted aesthetic actually enhances the power and sheer force of the emotions in play. For example, the deceptively tuneful “Sleep Song” with a range of emotions passing through it, seems to personify the frustratingly passive position of the Kashmiris, in Ali’s mind.

MK: Or perhaps the song symbolises that wishful state of mind where you intentionally block out the gruelling reality of the world outside. Where disillusionment and hope are constantly colliding. Then again, Ali knows that respite is only momentary. As right after, with “Kab Talak” he snaps out, warning the mighty about the ultimate impermanence and friability of their power in a hard core punk soundscape.

JV: The volatility of living in one of the most beautiful landscapes on earth that is also one of the world’s most militarised zones, results in this searing sound, through which so much humanity comes roaring out from. That humanity is the point. Unlike hatred, which was the point in The Kashmir Files.

MK: The last three songs on the album actually make that even more clear. All acoustic renditions in their essence. “Main Nahin Maanta” — which I knew as a landmark nazm of revolutionary poet Habib Jalib against Pakistan’s military dictatorship in the early-1960s. That has found voice through the decades across the subcontinent as a protest against oppression (including the recent NRC protests in India).

JV: With just an acoustic guitar and his soaring voice here, this already iconic poem might have just found its most timeless expression.

MK: Then, there’s “Fariyad” — an old song of Ali’s — I’d heard the demo that’s on YouTube many times, and a couple of live versions as well. This recording is stunning — he has managed to retain that same raw, spiritual vibe from before while beautifully embellishing it with sparse arrangements, and his singing is more powerful than ever, giving it this grand anthemic splendour.

JV: The song is about about channeling one’s faith to deal with external turbulence. Undoubtedly one of his finest compositions.

MK: And finally, “Behta Gaya”, that celebrates the resilience of common Kashmiris in the face of turmoil over the years.

JV: It’s as if the most prominent common threads running through the album — the passionate singing and palpable authenticity find a true climax in these final three tracks (that actually together run for 18 minutes, more than a third of the album). This is where categorising Wolivo as a “protest album” is rendered really reductive. And where, after the fiery rock exertions of the previous tracks, the soul finally settles quietly, shimmering over the whole work.

MK: Which will still be described as an edgy rock album by most people. But there is a unique charge to his brand of rock.

JV: That’s the thing about going through an album — it’s rather like meeting a person face-to-face for a substantial period, human chemistry fully in play. As opposed to listening to a single track in a playlist, which is probably like a Zoom meeting that lasts a few minutes. The various shades of Saffudin’s personality, and his true intent with the 10 songs in the album are much clearer as a whole.

MK: Yes, a single track, or a couple of them, is rather like standing too close to the painting, however enticing or provocative the partial view may be.

JV: It seems as if rock is just a means for him, not the end. This is Rock playing Ali Saffudin, not the other way round. The rock form merely amplifies all his shades.

MK: Again, this is probably because of his very explicit rootedness. There are probably more videos of him on YouTube playing traditional Kashmiri songs than any modern-day artist. It seems to almost have been a mission for him, ever since his grandmother turned him on to his roots and traditional Kashmiri songs.

JV: And he’s been doing it for a while. Like his ethereal, yet visceral version of Habba Khatoon’s “Chol Hama Roshay”. And not just Kashmiri songs. This magnificently urgent version of Mirza Ghalib’s “Bazeecha-e-atfaal” made me a fan of his, way back in 2016.

MK: As he said in an interview — to know where he is headed, he has to first figure out where he came from.

JV: Yes, he was quoting Maya Angelou. He also said in another interview, a few years ago, “Someone like me in the 1990s would have picked up a gun; 20 years later I picked up a guitar with the same ideology — to resist”. And yet, his rage and his form of protest have a deeper dimension to it. It is rather like Bruce Springsteen’s now-classic 2002 album The Rising — his humanist response to the 9/11 attacks. In spirit, that is what this album resembles the most, even if this is more politically direct. And even if the anguish of Kashmiris and their history is deeper and far more complicated than America’s history with terrorism is (or was in 2002). Also, Springsteen was 52 then; Saffudin is 30, that has its own role to play.

MK: Which is also why Ali’s rock influences are clearly different. Led Zeppelin, sure, but more 1990s/2000s — Rage Against the Machine, System of a Down, Green Day, Audioslave — anti-establishment, edgy. But perhaps also Pearl Jam, especially their landmark album Ten, which similarly tackled weighty issues through grunge and alternative rock.

JV: All of it rooted in the Blues though, as he has never failed to remind. And demonstrate too — like in one of his earliest tracks when he was studying in Delhi; his ability to personalise what is fundamentally a foreign form is quite unique in our quarters, and perhaps the real source of his power. Which is why the songs on this album are so personal as well, more rooted, but also more vulnerable. Despite the political directness.

MK: In his essence, he is a singer-songwriter after all. An individual, not a band. So, regardless of how cathartic the songs get, they are always serving a more individual vision.

JV: It’s great that he formed a four-piece band to express these songs so immaculately in just 10 days in Delhi, with Suyash Gabriel, Aman Kumar Singh and Aveleon Giles Vaz. With Ritwik De and Amar Pandey producing it, for Azadi Records, a five-year-old Indian label focussing on independent music.

MK: We shouldn’t forget that it is an Indian album, with Indian musicians on an Indian label.

JV: This music has huge relevance to us all around India. Through the melodic pleasures, thoughtful poetry, moving passages, and the pulse-swiftening, foot-tapping rhythms (sometimes truly headbanging-worthy) emerges perhaps the most articulate cry of anguish from these quarters. Which obviously doesn’t mean other people’s pain is any less, but that also doesn’t mean that this should not be heard. Hopefully this album can sensitise more people to the pain of Kashmiris. Artists obviously do that much better than politicians who seem to give more weightage to the past than the present or the future, and often exploit it for personal gain. Only humanity can engage with humanity; everything else is superficial and fleeting.

Wolivo by Ali Saffudin is streaming on all major music platforms. It can be accessed on YouTube here.