Female rapper emerges in Kashmir
Gives voice to oppressed in majority- Muslim area
SRINAGAR, India- administered Kashmir – A female teenager inspired by Eminem is shaking up this conservative Muslim community with rap to protest oppression in the long- disputed territory.
“Rap ismyway of expressing resistance,” said emcee Mehak Ashraf, who goes by the stage name Menime — American rapper Eminem’s name spelled backward.
The 17- year- old has become a sensation in the region, controlled by India, where girls are sometimes not even sent to school.
Menime, Kashmir’s first known female rapper, is a shy and gangly girl often found in a gray and purple hoodie. She began scribbling lyrics at age 12.
She sometimes puts aside homework to create rhymes about feeling isolated and the freedom hovering nearby.
“A bird in the trap is also sad, it also wants freedom, so bad! It wants to fly high in the sky and tease the people passing by,” she wrote when she was just 12.
The dizzying tempo of her rap first drew attention from local radio producers— but not for the reasons she’d hoped originally.
“I told ( radio producers) that I’m a political rapper and my songs depict the reality of Kashmir,” Menime said, recounting an appearance she made on Kashmiri radio in 2016. “They didn’t want me to touch politics.”
Not wanting to forfeit the rare opportunity, she performed hits by her idol Eminem and rapper Nikki Minaj.
“But I decided not to perform there again,” she said. “All my life I have seen the brutality of Indian occupation. Iwant to be a political rapper and have my voice heard.”
Her appearance on the program didn’t go unnoticed: She was quickly contacted by the rap duo A. H. M Dexterity, who were interested in having Menime join them in founding a triad of political rappers.
“She dazzled me with her rapping skills,” said Aamir Ismael, 23, also known as Emcee Ame. “That, too, at such a young age.”
Emcee Ame entered the rap game as a lyrical activist in 2010 when over 100 protesters and bystanders in Kashmir were shot dead by Indian soldiers during an anti- India demonstration.
Thousands of others were wounded.
Kashmir has been a source of conflict for decades between neighbors Pakistan, which is mostly Muslim, and predominantly Hindu India.
“Some choose to throw stones at the occupation— we choose rhymes,” said Emcee Ame. “Mehak is the latest addition to our artillery.”
Since joining A. H. M Dexterity, Menime has become a larger voice where rap remains on the fringes of mainstream music. She gained attention after releasing a freestyle video online.
“We are creating a platform for the artists, especially women, to help them be heard,” said A. H. M Dexterity’s other member, Mir Imaad, 23, also known as Emcee Husteer.
“Unfortunately, we live in an occupied state, we don’t have resources, and we get no sponsorship,” he said. “But we want hip- hop culture to grow to the level where it can become a huge market in Kashmir.”
It’s a lofty goal here, where dissenters are silenced and pro- independence groups often spar with Indian forces stationed in the region for seven decades. Some 100,000 people have been killed in the conflict since 1989.
Menime’s family feared a similar fate for their daughter when she revealed her passion but eventually gave in to her wishes. It’ll likely be more difficult to win over others in the region, said Amjad Majid, a Kashmiri art critic.
“Kashmir has given birth to one of its first speed rappers,” he said. “What worries me is howall this will play out in Indian media, which seem hellbent on portraying Kashmiri culture under a homogenized tint of conservatism in order to disconnect it from the rest of the world.”
The Indian media are wildly unpopular inKashmir and seen as an extension of the state.
“They label our martyrs as terrorists,” Menime said. But that’s not going to stop her fromfollowing her passion. “I can only laugh at them,” she said. The Indian state has been known to close down what it deems “controversial” rap concerts.
In the southern Indian city of Bangalore recently, police stopped a show amid accusations that Kashmiri rapper Roushan Elahi’s lyrics were “antinational.”
Elahi was among the first rappers to rhyme about the atrocities in Kashmir that ensued during the 2010 protests against the Indian military.
Menime worries about being targeted like other rappers in Kashmir, some of whom have been forced to go underground after being labeled seditious.
“Such threats may scare me — but nothing scares me more than my mother’s scolding,” she said. “I feel reallyweak when I see deaths and destruction. It’s rap that gives me courage, though.”