The musical movement emerged in the late 2010s on YouTube and Facebook, serving as an indirect channel for families separated since Partition. Performers like 25-year-old singer Aasim Yaseen continue their craft despite erratic internet connectivity, financial difficulties, and skepticism regarding music as a viable career. Their creative output takes place alongside traditional farming in heavily fortified border regions. An April 2025 attack near Pahalgam recently intensified military strikes, forcing residents into bunkers and evacuation camps.
Key points
Producing Shina-language songs serves as a safe method to maintain cultural ties without…: Producing Shina-language songs serves as a safe method to maintain cultural ties without triggering security repercussions.
Performers must balance their artistic work with traditional farming while navigating bor…: Performers must balance their artistic work with traditional farming while navigating border checkpoints, fences, and bunkers.
Creators pursuing music along the heavily militarized frontier contend with unstable inte…: Creators pursuing music along the heavily militarized frontier contend with unstable internet access and local doubts about its viability.
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This feature is part of a series examining how artificial borders reshape daily life, divide families and force loved ones to navigate the human cost of political geography.
In the remote Tulail Valley close to the Line of Control in Indian-administered Kashmir, 25-year-old singer Aasim Yaseen was walking through his village, Buglinder, when a college student from a neighbouring hamlet stopped him.
The young man, Tanveer, took out his phone and played Sangh Mukh Shamah, a song Yaseen had recently released in Shina, their shared language.
The encounter motivated Yaseen.
“People here don’t consider music work,” he says.
“Sometimes I think about going into another profession, but then someone plays my song on their phone, and I keep going.”
Across Gurez in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir, Drass in Indian-administered Ladakh, and Pakistan-administered Gilgit-Baltistan, young musicians like Yaseen are sharing Shina songs on social media. They are helping keep their language alive and renewing ties within a community that has been divided for generations.
The songs cross the Line of Control, which divides Indian- and Pakistani-administered parts of Kashmir. But the…
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