Rhyme, rhythm and Dakhini rap: Meet Bengaluru’s Wanandaf’s cyphers

At her first cypher, Anushree Acharya was, to quote Eminem, nervous but on the surface she looked calm and ready to drop bombs. The 21-year-old, who goes by her rap name Putti, had walked into the rap battle in August intending only to watch. But as the musicians around her freestyled in English, Hindi, Kannada and Tamil, she decided to step in too.

“I felt that I could spit a verse of mine with their beat, and I went for it,” she says. Putti rapped in Kannada about her abiding memories from the pandemic years.

“Belig-beligge yeddid koodale maarukattege ota /

Sanje shaamiyana yersi dhanigalu bedutthiruvaru vote-aa.”

(Early in the morning, people run to the market /

And in the evening, politicians put up tents begging for votes.)

People cheered. Someone else picked up where she left off. And on and on it went, for about three hours. This is typically how a cypher goes. Someone introduces a beat, others jump in when they have something to say.

The cypher Putti attended was organised by an unusual collective called Wanandaf, which uses public spaces in Bengaluru to bring voices together to riff on themes of corruption and divisive politics, money and invisibility, patriarchy, racism, casteism and complacency. The idea is to get young people to engage more with issues and with public spaces, by watching and participating in rap battles and the occasional dance-off.

Wanandaf cyphers are held every other Sunday at public venues such as the MG Road Metro station, the Cubbon and Lal Bagh gardens, at basketball courts and skate parks. Rappers show up to tell of the dysfunction in their societies or their lives, sing of abusive families or broken hearts. “The only thing we don’t allow is the N word,” says Farhan Ahmed aka Agaahi Raahi, 29, a banking executive and co-founder of the collective.

The collective, founded in 2019 and then forced off the streets by the pandemic years, is inclusive by design. People turn up to have their say in Kannada, Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, Urdu, Nepali, Arabic, French, English, Hindi, Bengali, Marathi and Dakhini.

The name is hyperlocal: a jibe at and a tribute to the city’s autorickshaw drivers, who are infamous for charging 1.5 times or “wanandaf” the meter fare.

In November, two members of the collective took that sense of hyperlocalism and inclusivity a step further, releasing what is arguably the first-ever Dakhini rap album.

Dakhini is a language of the Deccan that draws from Urdu and Hindustani and is spoken in pockets of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Tamil Nadu, particularly among Muslim communities. Because of the similarities with Hindi, it’s also relatively easy for Hindi-speakers to understand.

The Dakhini album Bangalore Ka Potta (Bangalore Boy), by Mohammed Affan Pasha aka Pasha Bhai, 24, and Syed Awaise Pasha aka Demixx Beats, 24, is as much a self-portrait of young men growing out of the confines and conservatism of Neelasandra, a predominantly Muslim neighbourhood in Bengaluru, as it is a powerful portrait of the city at large.

Kab kab tation se phone daaltin jaana /

Ghustes-ghuste bhout maartin maar’an /

Ghar ke sarka hogaye, roz ka thikana /

Khudka rakha daliun odna bichana…

(Then and now cops call me to the police station /

As soon as I enter, they beat me up /

Lock-up feels like home now, I go that often /

With my own bed and bedding there, even a bathtub…)

…go the lyrics to the song Tumhare Bawa Part I, written by Pasha Bhai, who grew up in Neelasandra and is a co-founder of Wanandaf. Demixx Beats grew up speaking Dakhini in Chintamani, a small town about 70 km outside Bengaluru. The two met at one of Wanandaf’s cyphers.

People compare Dakhini to and mistake it for a variant of Urdu, Demixx says, “but Dakhini is raw”.

In addition to the unusual language, the 14 songs on the album are infused with sounds from Neelasandra and the city at large. “I wanted to capture the sonic atmosphere,” says Demixx Beats. “I walked around… the police sirens never stop. So I built a beat around it. At night, the frogs came out to call, just as the Shia households start their qawwali sessions, which all show up in the album.”

Bangalore Ka Potta was released on the Wanandaf distribution channel within the digital distribution platform Symphonic, which is open to rappers.

“A lot of times, cyphers lead to artists collaborating, crews forming and albums dropping,” says Agaahi Raahi. “On Symphonic, we upload our original songs, retain the rights to them, and put them up on music-streaming platforms.”

If you’re in the mood for some true novelty rap, you can listen to the album on Spotify.