Mohammad Gowhar Farooq Bhat

This Grant was amicably cancelled based on reasons mutually agreed upon by the Grantee and IFA due to unavoidable circumstances.

Mohammad Gowhar Farooq Bhat is PhD scholar at AJK Mass Communication Research Centre (AJK MCRC) Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. His research focuses on the experiences and associations of people of Kashmir with the ‘landscape of conflict.’ Gowhar has taught at the AJK MCRC, National Institute of Fashion Technology, New Delhi, and Jamia Hamdard, New Delhi and worked as a journalist with Hindustan Times and Thomson Reuters. In continuation with his ongoing research in Kashmir, Gowhar is interested in the relationships between humans and technology in the region.  

This grant will enable Gowhar to trace the history of the music labels of audio cassettes in Kashmir and explore the articulations they fostered. He will focus on the marginalised communities of Kashmir, whose interventions challenged the existing social and cultural norms and cultivated a new genre of a popular music culture in the Valley. Gowhar aims to put in perspective how these forms impacted the production of media initially, and how they continue to influence the contemporary local music culture.

Over the last three decades, violence has altered every sphere of life in Kashmir, including the socio-cultural milieu. In the absence of a local film industry, closed cinema halls and a handful of struggling theatre groups, traditional music has been the only means and source of entertainment. Towards the end of the grim decade of the 1990s, the nascent Kashmiri music industry cropped up to provide succour to people in times of despair. While the fetishised representation of Kashmir’s picturesque landscape sans people has received considerable attention from scholars and practitioners, music and sound remain underexplored domains. This exploration is Gowhar’s attempt at understanding the soundscape of Kashmir.  

Gowhar will conduct in-depth interviews with a select set of artists across different geographical locations in Kashmir focused on caste, class and gender dynamics. He will inquire into their personal journeys, issues and challenges they face, and how they overcome them. He will probe the aesthetic choices they make, the content of songs and conceptualisation, how they position themselves and their work vis-à-vis the prevalent socio-political and cultural scenario, and how caste, class and gender come into play in their context. He will also examine the overlaps from the existing musical practices like Sufi, Sufiyana Mausiqi and Dastan, and the role of organisations like Doordarshan and All India Radio. The consumer practices and expression this genre has influenced and cultivated, its industry’s economy and its impact on the larger cultural repertoire of the Valley will also be looked into.

The outcome of this project will be an essay. The Grantee’s deliverables to IFA with the final reports will be the essay and audiovisual documentation of the interviews.