As we are progressing towards global village, and the era of CD’s and Cassettes is gone to be cringe and to not be is an artist’s hard choice in Kashmir. Especially Modern Music except Hip Hop that too to a little extent is not being accepted by common crowd. Sibtain, who started singing R&B songs from 2015 and is the one who brought concept of Rhythm & Blues to Kashmir, initially started as a Rapper but changed his genre to R&B, despite knowing that people are less aware of genre. Though some tracks like “Ankh Ch Nasha”, “Tu Soniye”, “Tere Warga” & “Khoobsurat” have managed to grab 3 Lakh+ Plays On YouTube and Streaming Platforms, R&B genre still remains to be an evolving genre in India.
In Kashmir, we see Old Kashmiri Songs, being modernized with modern music, it’s now kind of trend and people love it, but Sibtain feels, people of Kashmir, should focus more on conscious music and understand that Music is not only that dance upon it’s an art, which many have forget. In Kashmir majority of the songs which people like are remakes of Old Kashmiri Songs and if there is any original it stays too cringy. Sibtain lefts out some artists and says that He feels that true gems, in which he mentioned of “Alif”. He said “Look at “Alif” (Mohammad Muneem) see how conscious music he is doing, but his every track doesn’t go that hit as of these singers I talked about before”
He added “I recently released a song called “Barish Kay Mausam”, it was pure poetry and beautiful melody, which shows beauty of my genre, but didn’t got much attention”
He has also done an EP of 6 R&B Kashmiri Songs, to promote original music, but failed to do so, due to lack of money resources and audience not connected with it.
At the end of conversation he said “It will (R&B Music) will evolve with time and people will recognise it, In other regions of country in youth Hip Hop is admired still alot and is on top, but who knew about Hip Hop in India before; people used to take Rap as in somebody said Rape, and said time evolves and R&B and Originals will find ways soon, it’s all about time”
