As the streets of Kathmandu kept swelling with young protestors last week, a Nepali rap song filled the air: “Malai bolna de sarkar.” Meaning, O Government, let me speak.
The singer is Balendra Shah, better known as Balen or Balen dai, the 35-year-old mayor of Kathmandu. Dai in Nepali means older brother.
In 2022, contesting as an independent candidate, he defeated candidates of Nepal’s dominant parties — the Nepali Congress and the Communist Party of Nepal (UML) — to become the 15th mayor of the capital.
Balen in a rap battle with Litl Grizl
For many of Nepal’s youth, Balen is perceived as embodying what the establishment is not — unpolished, unaligned and unafraid to speak up.
A lot of this impression has been courtesy his music and the celebrity status that has come with it.
The Nepali hip-hop scene also known as the Nep-hop scene is robust — rap is the music, hip-hop is the culture around it. Experts and those who have researched the trend say that booming as it did post the civil war, which lasted from 1996 to 2006, “Nep-hop often demonstrates an ethos of peacebuilding through popular culture… many songs explicitly criticise violence, war and the political leaders”.
Still from his music videos Balidan
All this musical expression was aided by the advent of YouTube at the turn of the millennium. And then around 2009, Raw Barz, the first rap battle league to organise rap battles in the country, was founded by Nepal’s rap icon Anil Adhikari aka Yama Buddha. Balen burst onto the Nepal youth scene with his rapping prowess soon after.
The face-off between Balen and rapper Nihesh Maharjan, whose stage name is Litl Grizl, is from around that time and should you see it on YouTube, you will see a much younger Balen sans those trademark dark glasses and fitted suits. Balen won the second season of Raw Barz. In a 2014 article, Ross Adkin writes in The Caravan, “Balen is one of the few bridges between Kathmandu’s rap battling and slam poetry scenes, and is also a prominent singer”.
As rap battles incorporate boasts, insults and wordplay, they did — and still do — strike a chord with a section of the youth. But the majority of Balen’s music eventually turned out to be more of a reality check for the general population.
Still from his music videos Haseko Nepal
Take for instance the song Balidan. It goes: Let me speak, O Government, it is not a crime/Let me open my heart, I am not a curse to your palace/My heart is not bad, I don’t fear to speak truth/Will law be enforced just for raising one’s voice?
The song is from 2019, but it could well be speaking to what has been unfolding on the streets of Nepal recently. Angry demonstrations triggered by the government’s decision to ban 26 social media platforms, for failing to register with the country’s ministry of communication and information technology as per deadline. News reports suggest this was the government’s way of snuffing out an anti-corruption campaign.
In any case, Balidan is said to have played a crucial role in Balen’s mayoral victory in 2022. According to one report, “Nepali youth who do not feel represented by major parties and seem to be fed up with the status quo of Nepalese politics” voted for Balen. And those who were not eligible to vote, persuaded their parents to cast their votes for him.
Balidan continues to resonate. In the past five years, it has been viewed 13 million times, and ever since Balen shared a portion of it on his Facebook page last Monday afternoon, it spread like wildfire.
The lines hammer on thus: “Congress, UML (Communist), Maoists/All collude to circle around and devour the nation/Always spoiling cases as if puffing a pipe/Cheap clothes, expensive cars/Stripping laws and rules bare in public.”
In Haseko Nepal or Smiling Nepal, which has been written by Balen, he exhorts his country to rise above all adverse circumstances. He sings, “What good is that glory to grieving mothers drowning in sorrow?/ The poor are happy with just two meals,/But the greedy only want chairs of power.”
In the same song, in the same breath, the rapper holds out hope to his young audience. The lyrics go thus: “When fulfilled, Nepal will smile/If we understand each other’s hearts/We will live every moment fully.”
As the battle for Nepal’s top post heated up through the week, Balen became one of the main contenders. In his Facebook message on Thursday, he writes: “To those friends who wish to rush into leadership right now, I would like to say that your energy, your ideas, and your integrity are what the nation needs permanently, not temporarily. For that, elections will certainly take place. Please do not be in a hurry.”
This is very much in keeping with the message of patience underlying his songs. In Sabai Lai Hataar Chha, a song from 2020, Balen expresses a sense of disillusionment with a world that is in a hurry. The song goes, “People trample on people,/ The big look down on the small,/So many kinds of oppression/And everyone is in a rush.”
After days of negotiation, Sushila Karki, who is the former Chief Justice of Nepal, took oath of office as interim Prime Minister late on Friday. Balen, despite all that Gen Z clamour, had reportedly turned down the offer. Instead, he endorsed Karki’s candidature.