Faqat by Alif

Alif is the brainchild of singer-songwriter and poet Mohammed Muneem Nazir. Born and raised in Srinagar, Jammu & Kashmir, Alif moved to Pune to study and work,  and found his calling in music. Initially inspired by legendary band Queen, Alif took on a rock sound with Kashmiri, Urdu and Hindi lyrics. From campfire jams to sprawling tunes and poignant ballads, songs like Lalnawath from the 2017 album Sufayed earned a Dada Saheb Phalke Film Festival award for best music video.
 
The measured urgency of songs like Ride Home – made with veteran Kashmiri artist Noor Mohammad – cemented Alif’s status. With a penchant for the visual, albums like Siyah spawned a number of powerful music videos, including Azizo, shot in the Rub’ al Khali desert in UAE. While there is no detaching Alif’s identity from the Kashmir Valley, the music – now genre-agnostic – has steadily expanded into the soul-searching trenches of the ego, vulnerabilities, and the future.
 
Alif’s journey has had an increasing brush with the mainstream, appearing in famed collaboration performances on Coke Studio, and working on dialogues for Bollywood movies, as well as lending songs to shows such as Made In Heaven on Amazon Prime Video. Up next, Alif’s music will be heard in a feature film, co-produced by auteur Anurag Kashyap, and directed by Shlok Sharma.
 
Since 2014, he has taught songwriting and poetry at Symbiosis College of Arts and Commerce, Pune. He is an adept film-maker and scriptwriter, conceptualizing and directing videos, in addition to playing various protagonist characters in his films and videos.