Young musicians connect a community across the Line of Control
In Indian-administered Kashmir, 53-year-old singer Yousuf Naseem has spent three decades preserving the Shina language through music, while Fareed Ahmed Kaloo leads efforts to keep the culture alive within the valley.
Naseem was born in Dangithal, near the Line of Control in Gurez Valley, where he remembers long winters and songs passed down from older relatives. During the 1999 Kargil conflict, his family was forced to leave Gurez and resettled in Kangan.
He began taking Shina music to new listeners in Srinagar, giving a shopkeeper in Bohri Kadal a copy of his first cassette, Dardistan, and asking him to play it every morning.
Cultural preservation in Gurez
While Naseem carried Shina music beyond Gurez, Fareed Ahmed Kaloo works to preserve it within the valley. He leads the Habba Khatoon Dramatic Club, a cultural group founded in 1976 to keep Shina folklore alive.
Kaloo travels between villages on foot, carrying a harmonium and a tumbak naari, a clay percussion instrument. He performs at weddings, fairs and local gatherings, accepting food, a place to sleep or a small honorarium as payment.
Teaching the next generation
Some of the club’s earliest members have died. Others left amid cross-border shelling and never returned. Kaloo stayed, teaching folk songs to younger generations at the Shina Cultural Centre near Dawar.
He now listens to new tracks on his phone and admires how musicians in Gilgit have developed their sound while retaining elements of traditional Shina music.
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