Mohammad Muneem

Mohammad Muneem Nazir (born 1983) is a singer, songwriter and poet from the Indian-administered Kashmir who sings and writes in the Kashmiri, Urdu and Hindi languages. Hailing from Srinagar in the Kashmir Valley, Muneem founded Alif, in 2008. He is known for making music that combines Kashmiri traditional and folk styles with western and contemporary genres.

Early life and education Mohammad Muneem was born in 1983 in Srinagar in the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir in India. Muneem attended the all-boys Tyndale Biscoe School in Srinagar. At age nine, he was sent to a boarding school in Dehradun, Uttarakhand, where he felt abandoned. He moved back to Srinagar after two and a half years. He performed for the first time at the age of 15 in 1998, at the Sher-e-Kashmir International Convention Centre in Srinagar for a NIIT event. Muneem grew up in Srinagar amidst the violence of the 1990s and early 2000s insurgency in the region, which has had an influence on his artistry. In 2000, he began learning how to play the guitar, on his own. He moved to Pune in 2001 for higher studies, graduated with a degree in engineering and went on to pursue a master's degree in business administration. He states that he suffered a hate crime in 2003, in which he was badly injured. He co-founded a rock band called Highway 61—a reference to the Bob Dylan album— with Hardik Vaghela and other college friends of his in Pune in 2008, after quitting his job at a MNC. Other members of the band include Amit Gadgil, Aman Moroney and Karan Chitra Deshmukh.

In December 2018, the band released a single called Ride Home featuring Kashmiri folk artist Noor Mohammad. It was a recreation of an older version of popular ballad Wafadar Mouji.

Muneem has stated that he wished to document old-school artists and preserve their artistry. Such traditional artists declined due to imposition of conservative social codes during the militancy.

2023: "Kya Karie Korimol" In May 2023, the band collaborated a second time with Noor Mohammad for the song Kya Karie Korimol for an episode of Coke Studio Bharat, which also featured Aashima Mahajan, a singer from Jammu, on the lead female vocals. The song is a remake of an original 2018 single by the band.

Artistry Muneem and his band Alif make music that combines traditional Kashmiri and sufi elements with contemporary Western and rock styles. Muneem draws from his experiences growing up in Kashmir during the insurgency. He states that he seeks to project his homeland in a better light and build compassion through his music. The band's music also often tackles societal issues. Their song Jehlumas, for example, is supposed to be an homage to 'the resilience' of Kashmir's women during and after the 2014 floods there, while another song, Malaal kya hua, revolves around clinical depression. Similarly, Kya Karie Korimol is supposed to be both a celebration and critique of weddings in Kashmir.

Personal life Muneem is Kashmiri. He divides his time between Mumbai, where he makes his music, Pune, where he teaches and Srinagar, where his family lives. His course “Sarir-e-Khamma” is the first of its kind in India - bringing equitable access to poetry and technical creative writing to people across all strata.

Filmography Film Year Title Song Notes 2018 Laila Majnu "Katyu Chuko"

Television Year Show Song Notes2023 Coke Studio Bharat "Kya Karie Korimol"