dailyO
Variety

How a Delhi hip-hop group is reclaiming art and the city

Advertisement
Chinki Sinha
Chinki SinhaJun 14, 2017 | 20:46

How a Delhi hip-hop group is reclaiming art and the city

"Why do you rap? Because you got so much to say," he says.

And why have you got so much to say?

"Because I come from here, he says."

On his T-shirt, Delhi 17 is scribbled across the chest. The white's cadence is broken in bold letters by a couplet, a rap sequence from his latest work. It is the pin code of Khirki, a part of Delhi that is across the street from a mall that sells luxury and aspiration, and in itself it could be called an urban ghetto, a place of extremity where graffiti speaks of its disjointed experience in a city that's a collective of identities and villages and colonies and where the children from the neighbourhood rap about their lives and tell stories of extreme experiences. This is an extreme place.

Advertisement

hiphop4_061417081712.jpg
The urban youth from the periphery of the city are taking over, laying claim to the city through their art.

In this neighbourhood, streets are flanked by badly designed buildings jostling for space and sunlight. Cars can't go in. But on a wall, there is a bird in flight painted by an unnamed artist. Perhaps that's what indicates the spirit of this place, a squeezed in kind of place across a range of malls selling aspirations and luxury and here, an old cart gathers dust in an open space and in one-room tenements young boys and girls are composing and compressing their stories. They must be heard, they say.

Sometimes, the three boys sneak into the air-conditioned mall and place their boom boxes and break into a dance. Then, they run and disappear into the lanes of Khirki. They have disturbed the tandem of the city's well-heeled. They are the new disrupters. A city only exists for those who can move around it, they say.

In bold letters, the message is sprayed across their chest. This is the manifesto of the urban youth, mostly from poor localities, pushed to the periphery by the lopsided development in this city, which is the canvas for the youth, disgruntled with their situation, victims of fear and crime.

Advertisement

Colourful, outrageous, ugly in a few instances, and very, very honest in their being, the art is disturbing, but it wasn't devoid of hope, of assertion in the face of what has become a painful reality for those on the other, darker end of the spectrum, the growing inequalities of our times.

The urban youth from the periphery of the city are taking over, laying claim to the city through their art, spraying walls, climbing up buildings and writing their names in black, bold paint. This is their way of seeking and proving their identities. They almost wear it as a badge of honor.

And now, to register they are here, they are going to claim their pin code and wear it on themselves, even sell it so they are not forced to leave this passion hounded by poverty and circumstances of their lives. Delhi's first hip hop group launched its T-shirt line in order to support themselves and keep telling their stories.

MC Hari, 23, of Khirki's B-boying group smiles, and says it is the next step - to sell the T-shirts to fund their passion. For years, the B-boy has been rapping, and says they have forgotten what hip hop is about. The likes of Yo Yo Honey Singh, he says.

Advertisement

The truth is if you have not got that experience of yearning for that self-confidence because you came from a perplexing kind of place where there are no fashionable cafes, or air-conditioned rooms, you will fight for it, and in that freestyle way become the spokesperson of your experience.

***

His father is a rickshaw-puller, and last year when I met them, he was doing a correspondence course from Delhi University. But ever since B-boy Hari Singh saw other boys from the neighbourhood dancing in the park with boom boxes, he knew this was what he always wanted to do - break free in a way where you could inspire, shock and awe people. In an upscale hotel called Andaz by the Hyatt Group, they had been asked to perform to shock the audience at its launch.

The audience was the city's poster children of the art world, the movers and shakers and what they call "socialites" and there were gasps and sighs. Rich people look a certain way. I have always felt they can fight the sun, too. The few who had come from Khirki looked confused. They looked "unbelonged". MC Hari was drunk by the end of it. But he had recognised me. Things were fine but they could be better, he had said.

The trio - MC Freeze, Akshay Tashan, and MC Hari - have just launched a range of T-shirts under the brand name Delhi 17, which is the pin code of what they believe is the natural birth place of hip hop in Delhi. It travelled outward from here, and in this neighbourhood with Khoj Studio that supports underground artists, disorientation is a given fact. Just outside where we are sitting, a building is broken in a way where just the front facade is gone making it seem like a stage divided into many parts. Wires hang loose, and a wall is covered in graffiti. Outside, a red chariot lies in the sun in forgotten patch of land, which is now a dump yard. A temple is there, and in the alleys, Nigerians have opened a bar.

Isn't this exciting, Akshay Tashan, whose real name is Sandeep, says.

"If we are to do this, we must find ways to make money. There is a lot of pressure. I am doing my distance education course from IGNOU, but we are responsible for our families. So, we decided to launch this line and hope it works out for us," says the 22-year-old. The logo is like the gumbad of a building from the past. It is not cluttered design, and Akshay Tashan wears a green coloured T-shirt with the logo and Delhi 17 running across the chest.

***

When the Commonwealth Games happened in the city and the poor, homeless and the migrants were forced out of the national capital because nobody wants to showcase poverty in the face of such extravaganza, the city woke up to a few graffiti. These were angry outpourings on the state of the affairs, a lament on the corruption that was rampant.

There are many reasons why unlike Kolkata and a few neighbourhoods in Mumbai that are breeding grounds for such expressions of the street, Delhi remained largely untouched until recently.

They say Delhi within its walls, within its confines, houses more than 30 cities, its layers pronounced in the way its residents live and behave.

hip-hop2_061417081736.jpg
A boom box is cheap. The park is a public space.

Social scientists say the sense of belonging to Delhi is lacking. For many, it is rite of passage. They would move on. For migrants, it is like camping in a city and then moving on to the next one till they can find a holding somewhere. The class hierarchies in Delhi are pronounced, and demarcating unlike Mumbai where slums flourish, even thrive next to highrises.

So, there is no involvement with the city. There are unauthorised colonies that are demanding regularization and there are the numerous RWAs that are promoting participatory citizenship among the residents within its gated confines, but beyond those littered examples, there are not many instances of the poor trying to assert their right to the city, which is brutal in its discriminations, in its whimsical attitude towards the poor that it can throw out anytime by thrusting a ticket in their hands or rounding them up and transporting them to the train stations as it happened during the CWG.

Street art isn't the Art for Art's Sake variety. It is about getting reactions and these can range from the wow of admiration to disapproval.

***

When they were looking for collaborations, the supporters had reached out to a bunch of Indian fashion designers to see if they would be willing to help but they found no takers. Help came from a Chelsea College graduate and a designer Yemi who flew down from London two weeks ago to help the trio launch the line. She has put in her own seed money along with another woman who has known the boys from their childhood days.

The hope is we can overcome the hurdles of poverty, and continue our disruptions, MC Freeze, 19, says. His real name is Sandeep.

Freeze means the end of a typical B-boy phrase. It is an exclamation point. It is like saying "deal with it" and it is this challenge that forms the heart of the genre.

He says the beautiful part about hip hop and B-boying is that you are not limited to performances, and stages and sponsors. All the world's your stage, they say.

"We have just done it in the mall across the road, and at bus stops, and sometimes, the police comes chasing. But that's this whole thing is about. Shock, inspire, love and break dance," he says.

They are now a known group having performed with some of the best in the country. Their "battles" where two such groups do a kind of competition like jugalbandi is fierce and famous. The boys are members of SlumGods, a Delhi-based B-boying group formed at Tiny Drops, a hip-hop community centre in Khirki village where there are rappers, breaking boys and street art.

Tiny Drops was founded by 31-year-old Netrapal Singh (aka He Ra), India’s b-boy, who was based in New York and was the son of undocumented Indian immigrants and then came here and started teaching about hip hop to the eager youngsters.

There are at least 30 such groups in Khirki alone. They call it reality rap because that's the only thing that defines this genre. Not the rap with girls and gold chains and luxury cars, MC Freeze says.

"That's mockery. We want to tell everyone what we see, what we feel, and maybe through the songs and the T-shirts, we will be able to reach out to those who are interested in what we have to say. We say out of compulsion of our blue-collared lives because we need to do this and that, and we can't let go of this passion," he says.

"A B-boy is free. We sing and we dance because that's what we want to do. To shock, to let it all out," he says.

Their parents don't understand their passion. But they don't pull them back. A boom box is cheap. The park is a public space. The world is your own. Claim it, and let it not forget the corners, the streets, the alleys and the invisible people who also inhabit it, they say.

"If they wore these T-shirts, we would be happy. We have decided on the price range yet," MC Hari says.

The initial investment was for 23 T-shirts. It is the reaction that will make or break us, they say.

"We are hip hop. We are the real deal. We want to tell stories," they say.

Hugely influenced by Korea, they say Indian hip hop scene is great, but they have no support from the government. In Korea, there is the story of a ballerina falling in love with a B-boy.

For now, they have kept love aside. But there are these stories, too. And only if you heard and believed in them.

For now, they walk the thin line. The parks are still full of eager youngsters breaking into this dance which also incorporates martial arts with the boom boxes and the other rituals.

The three sit and hope the future will be kind to them.

***

And in wandering through the city, there was yet another story of hope and faith in the slums of Nizamuddin. Conflict is a flavour here. No more, no less. Vendors blast sermons – do this, don't do that like lower your gaze when you see a woman, and fatwas against unIslamic things, and dark tales about hell in case of deviance.

But in the same space, in the narrow alleys that lead into the dargah, others sell CDs of qawalis by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Sabri Brothers, and Abida Parveen.

The call of the muezzin. There will be roses, and genda flowers, and dancing fakirs, and sema. Music will assert itself. They will be here. Doing khidmat, and praying their songs be heard.

I met Nadeem and Sahil, the two singers, in 2014. They had their band called Painfull Rockstars. They were singing against the odds.

Under the small patch of evening sky in between the corrugated iron roofs, and tarpaulin sheets, the two sang a song...

“Woh jo maanga tha khuda se ...”

Around them, with their backs against the sooty walls, other children from the basti congregated. They joined in.

Songs of love, and betrayal. Songs of hope, and fear. Songs of faith, and defiance.

Like the three boys in Khirki. Sometimes, stories are sung if you are prepared to hear them, witness them and see the lives compressed in the lyrics. Sometimes a writer stumbles upon these stories of faith and resilience and then you know the city is a universe and there are many songs to be heard and written.

Last updated: June 14, 2017 | 20:47
IN THIS STORY
Please log in
I agree with DailyO's privacy policy