Kashmiri Singer Aadil Gurezi Is the Next Youtube Star to Add to Your Playlist

On April 1, 2018 Aadil Gurezi, 24, lay bedridden at his home in Bandipora district in Kashmir, battling vocal cord strain. He had set that date to release his song ‘Dupte Nunem' on the Youtube.

That day, however, parts of Kashmir were reeling under internet shutdown following a bloody gun battle in Shopian, a district to the south of Srinagar city. He was also unaware that the internet was blocked in parts of Kashmir. He found out minutes after uploading the video and felt he had made a mistake. "I’d thought the song will not find any traction in such a situation,” Gurezi told me when we met at a cafe by Dal Lake in Srinagar in July. But life had other plans. It was all over the internet in Kashmir, and with it Gurezi shot to fame. “It crossed the one million mark in the first week on my YouTube channel,” Gurezi said with a tinge of surprise in his feeble voice. Now the song is nearing 5M views. It will become the first video in Kashmir to reach that mark.

‘Dupte Nunem’ is a rendition of the famous Kashmiri song ‘Dupte neunam Dalke waavano’ originally written and sung by Sheikh Fayaz, a little known Kashmiri song writer. When I asked Gurezi why he chose this song, he said it is a tribute to his mother. He recalled her humming it while doing household chores when he was kid. His real name is Aadil Mudasir Lone but he prefers to be identified as Aadil Gurezi as a “mark of respect to my roots”. His family originally comes from Gurez, a picturesque frontier valley in Kashmir where people speak Shina, a tribal language.

Gurezi’s “musical journey” started in the winter of 2015-16 in Dehradun, where he was pursuing a Masters in Environmental Science at a private college. Dehradun hosts hundreds of Kashmiri students for college and Gurezi was just one of many when he went there in the autumn of 2015.

On a ‘Welcome Freshers’ night in his college, Gurezi found himself at the receiving end of massive applause on stage when he performed a 20-minute mimic act. “The hall reverberated,” Gurezi recalled. Weeks later a friend put Gurezi in touch with a film director Irshad Hijazi, also a Kashmiri, who introduced him to Dehradun’s indie acting cum music scene. “He also gave me a chance to act in a short film,” Gurezi spoke of Hijazi with reverence. Once during auditions, Gurezi’s voice caught the attention of a music director who asked him to sing a couple of lines from his favourite song. He advised Gurezi to improve upon his sur and taal. “He became so passionate about music, he would spend days and nights away and skipped classes sometimes,” said Gazi Nayeem who shared a room with Gurezi in Dehradun. Within a few months Gurezi has sung in two music videos including one directed by Hijazi. He was also featured as a lead actor in them.

In January 2018, with the Dehradun experience in his kitty, Gurezi booked a train ticket to Mumbai to “chase his dream”. For the first couple of months he worked as a junior artist before he found a music label to work with. He immediately signed a contract with them and recorded ‘Dupte Nunem’ in mid-March. But all did not go according to plan. Gurezi fell ill and his his family urged him to return home, where he was told his voice box needs surgery. Gurezi’s aspirations “fell apart”. Despite the “unbelievable” response his Youtube single generated, his health kept deteriorating. It led his family and him to believe he had caught someone’s ‘evil eye’. “I consulted faith healers for a potion to get my voice back,” Gurezi said.

The family urged him to quit music but he didn’t budge. On a friend’s advice he consulted an ENT specialist in Kashmir, Dr Rouf Ahmad. “He recommended medicines and said there was no need for surgery,” Gurezi said, adding that the doctor’s words motivated him to continue singing.

It was quite a disturbing period for Gurezi. “When I read the messages of love and support from random people on social media, tears would roll down,” Gurezi recalled. “I would sob for hours alone in my room and pray to Allah to give me my voice back.” It took Gurezi nearly three months to recover his voice. He said it was the love from people that motivated him to “stand and sing again”.

Gurezi returned to Mumbai in July and within a month recorded his next song, ‘Pyar Kashmir da’— a mix of Kashmiri and Punjabi—which speaks of his love affair with Kashmir. “I see myself as a representative of my society and culture,” Gurezi said. “I want to show the world that Kashmir’s got talent.”

Follow Zafar Aafaq on Twitter.