Untitled//Songs of

Protest

In a world where everything ‘mainstream’ attempts to subsume the niche, does protest and protest music also have a mainstream and a niche, and do they follow a similar relationship?

Does the proximity of protest songs to the centres of powers and decision making, influence their potential?

Is there a way with which we can listen to all songs of protest and remember them?

Do songs of protest evolve to songs of resistance?

This short film follows two songs, both borne out of the need to have their voices heard.

“Kya Hua Tera Wada?”
was performed at the historical Shaheen Bagh protests organised to protest the highly questionable amends to Citizenship laws in India in December 2019. 'Petercatrecording Co.' is a band from New Delhi, the capital of the country, who performed Bollywood songs of unity to the gathering of protestors and address the establishment with the question "What happened to your promises?"

“Pyrkhat Koh Khun?” was recorded two months earlier to this, at the Sacred Khasi Forests of Mawphlang in Meghalaya. The song is sung by a father to his unborn child, and is addressed to it and questions the constant fight which their people have been engaged in to preserve their hills from mining and ecological disaster.

C R E D I T S

C I N E M A T O G R A P H Y
Dhananjai Sinha
Pranoy Kanojia
Unmesh Lamture

S O U N D
Tamzid Rahman

P R O D U C E D. B Y
Instrupad Music