Trans rappers Kinari and Shehzor drop beats and truth bombs

For many years now, artwork and media have been wrestling with the illustration of communities on the margins of our societies. However the pendulum has principally swung between completely saintly and completely sinful characterisations; each extraordinarily vexing. Over the previous 5 years, the queer topic has begun to turn out to be just a little extra difficult, with queer folks in positions of authority taking cost of their very own illustration. Two hip-hop/rap albums by trans rappers — Kinari’s Kattar Kinnar and Shehzor’s The Lady with Sideburns — that launched earlier this 12 months are brilliantly articulated inventive arguments that present that illustration doesn’t should be tokenistic.

“The queer artwork and media round me was channelling happiness and delight. However for me, this isn’t your entire reality. The on-ground actuality of being a trans girl on this nation isn’t all sunshine and rainbows,” says Kinari, the Chennai-born, Delhi-based trans girl rapper, producer and DJ, over an 11 p.m. phone name. She has a fashion of talking that’s matter-of-fact, musical and doesn’t mince phrases — very similar to the rhymes and bars she spits. In her debut album, Kattar Kinnar, she got down to seize “this actual temper” of creating a spot for herself on this “merciless, hate-filled world”. The result’s an album that’s compositionally lush, lyrically fireplace, and layered with wealthy references that talk to India’s homegrown queer popular culture and camp histories.

Dialogues and musical samples from the 1988-Rekha-starrer Khoon Bhari Maang, for instance, are peppered all through the 12-track album. “This was a really inspiring movie for me as a result of it confirmed me beauty surgical procedure for the primary time. Additionally, I recognized with Rekha’s character, a lady wronged by society; I really feel it’s a very trans movie,” she says. “The music cues and sound results within the movie have been kattar [dangerous] and that was the temper of the album, too”.

Freestyling on a Scooty

Reminiscences and mundaneness of residing are magically combined in every of those albums. Hyderabad-born and primarily based rapper-producer Shehzor’s debut album, The Lady with Sideburns, was created within the six months she was “pressured to maneuver again in” together with her beginning household. “I started to mess around and make beats on my laptop computer and watch Bollywood movies to snip samples from them.” She would then play these self-produced tracks and “freestyle the lyrics ” to herself whereas using her mom’s Scooty by means of town, earlier than recording them. “That is how I developed every of the 11 tracks on my album,” she says.

Within the album, apart from the sounds of town thrumming by means of it, she additionally has unbridled enjoyable with language. Shehzor performs in Hyderabadi dakhini “as a result of I noticed Hyderabadi rappers solely utilizing this language to do crowd-work or banter with their audiences, however they don’t rap in it”. She thinks “it’s as a result of they’ve internalised that one can’t be critical in dakhini”. So, for Shehzor, selecting dakhini due to “its inherent humour, playfulness, vulgarity and the enjoyable of it” has opened up brisker methods of telling “the intense poetry” of her personal queer identification and gender journey.

Shehzor

These two albums additionally utterly side-step one other niggling shortcoming of illustration politics: Kinari and Shehzor refuse to carry out the position of sufferer or good particular person. As an alternative, they current advanced critiques of their very own communities and society at giant. Over a musical panorama that brings collectively the sounds of her present-day life in Delhi’s Khirki Extension, Bollywood beats, and her Tamil influences — using parai drum beats and gaan-inspired musicality — Kinari doesn’t let the reality bombs miss anybody. She’s defiant and braggadocious. She talks about her on-again-off-again relationships with males: “Your man’s secure solely trigger he’s ugly”; the double-standards anticipated from marginalised individuals: “Mai boli child jhukne ki zarurat nahi/5 inch heels pe principal kaafi tall” (Let me let you know child, there’s no have to bow down/I look down on you in my 5-inch heels).

Whereas there’s a horny swagger and hazard to Kinari’s tone, Shehzor’s model has a extra sinewy storytelling. She pastiches her personal private tales with these from myths and her non secular upbringing in her tracks. For instance, with ‘Waat’, she relooks on the story of prophet Ayyub “who’s like Job from the Bible”. In addition to being her “playful take” on this Islamic fable, it’s also her disagreements “with this concept of sabr or persistence, or that each one struggling is a take a look at from God”. She succinctly summarises with the road, “Sabr ka phal aaya toh zubaan jal gaayi” (by the point the candy fruit of persistence arrived, my tongue was already on fireplace).

Curiosity as information

The 2 artists aren’t curious about being pigeonholed both — they’re letting their curiosities outline their upcoming initiatives. Shehzor remains to be going to be working in Hyderabadi dakhini, however she’s “shifting to Goa to begin a rock band with pals”. She’ll even be popping up in several cities en path to carry out tracks from her album, as “an unplanned, impromptu mini tour”.

For her subsequent mission, Pinjre Ke Geet, Kinari is shedding swashbuckling self-assurance for melodic meditations. In two tracks, already launched — ‘Bhakt’ and ‘Khvab’ — one can see the imprint of her model, but in addition a shift. The lyrics are extra susceptible, nearly an invite to her listeners to see past her persona.

The writer is Bengaluru-based poet and author.