“We should promote young people but only those who are deserving and talented. Not every one who holds a guitar is an artist. It takes a lifetime to become an artist. Here anyone who does not have a basic understanding of Sur and Taal is rewarded with an audience,” said a prominent singer Munir Mir, who has been in the field for over 30 years now.
Mixing modern melody with prose and poetry, Kashmir’s new-age singers and musicians have resurrected folk songs in a different way. Creating their own platforms, this new breed of artists is reaching out to audiences using social media. While keeping alive art and culture of the place, they are finding success as well, reports
Khalid Bashir Gura
Photographs of the Kashmiri singers whose numbers figured in the top 10, most-watched numbers on the internet in 2020. Graphics: Malik Kaisar
As the world is passing through apparently, the fourth industrial revolution, life is increasingly getting; virtual. While the process remains the same, systemic shifts now change the delivery. One of the hugely impacted spheres of activity that has undergone a Himalayan shift is the mass media.