SRINAGAR, India — Farooq Ahmad Shaksaaz presses a button on his 1970 Sharp cassette participant, and with a hefty clack the machine whirrs to life. Because the Kashmiri tailor stitches, the machine crackles for a second earlier than Ghulam Ahmad Sofi’s otherworldly voice fills his store with verses about divine love and the ache of separation from the beloved creator of the universe.
Shaksaaz, a tailor within the Kashmiri metropolis of Srinagar, inherited his ardour for native Sufi music from his grandfather together with a meticulously preserved assortment of audio cassette tapes from the Seventies, which he usually listens to as he works.
He is a part of a small, devoted group that believes cassette tapes are one of the simplest ways to hearken to and archive the Sufi music of Indian-controlled Kashmir, the place music impressed by native and central Asian Muslim saints has lengthy been a deep expression of spirituality and emotion. Many individuals flip to the music for non secular steerage, or in search of an escape from the area’s lengthy intervals of street battles, shutdowns and security clampdowns.
For many years, cassette gamers have carried the soul-stirring poetry of Sufi saints and the paranormal melodies of Kashmiri devices just like the sarangi and santoor, and it is lengthy been an area ritual for households to assemble across the heat hum of a tape participant. Even right this moment, the area’s conventional Sufi music gatherings are sometimes recorded solely on the disappearing audio format, which was extensively used from the Seventies to the Nineties.
Whereas the music is more and more out there on digital codecs, many Kashmiris say that it is best heard on cassette tapes.
“There’s something distinctive about this machine that for me performs recordings of non secular guides,” stated Abdul Ahad, a carpet weaver. “It’s a sacred ritual in itself to press the play button of a cassette participant to hearken to a music on non secular moorings.”
Most of the most beloved albums have been launched by native document labels through the heyday of the audio cassette, however devoted devotees of the style are nonetheless bringing tape recorders to gatherings. Digital recorders are sometimes unwelcome at these nightly music periods, as Sufi music lovers say they blur collectively the distinct sounds of the totally different devices.
“It’s a totally different expertise to hearken to music on a tape recorder,” stated Abdul Hamid Khan. “Tapes are clean and you’ll really feel the sound of each instrument, you don’t get that really feel in these new gamers.”
Nonetheless, as tapes put on out and extra music strikes to digital streaming platforms and smartphones, the tactile and deeply private listening expertise of cassettes is turning into tougher to maintain going.
Many households have been pressured to half with their gamers because of mechanical failures, whereas others wrestle to protect their cherished cassette collections, a few of which maintain uncommon and irreplaceable recordings handed down by generations. Some collectors have turned to digitizing their outdated recordings to safeguard them for future generations.
Only some retailers in Srinagar, the area’s essential metropolis, promote tape recorders or clean tapes, and the supply of spare elements and expert restore technicians has drastically dwindled.
A handful of mechanics within the Kashmir Valley nonetheless cater to a devoted inhabitants of Sufi music lovers, painstakingly restoring machines made by beloved Japanese manufacturers like Sharp and Kenwood within the final century.
Mohammad Ashraf Matoo, a self-taught mechanic, has spent years conserving decades-old cassette gamers working at the same time as spare elements develop into more and more scarce. He purchases non-functional recorders to extract usable parts, and manufactures some elements himself to maintain his clients’ gadgets going. As soon as repaired, a well-functioning tape recorder is bought for a worth between $150 and $850, relying on its model and situation.
Shaksaaz, a lifelong Sufi music devotee, referred to as it a “private mission” to protect the legacy of cassette tapes.
“It’s a bridge to the previous, a method to stay related to our non secular and cultural roots on this ever modernizing and digital world,” he stated.
