‘Songs of Paradise’ review: A demure personal revolution with gorgeous music

When Zeba Akhtar wins a singing competition organised by a radio station, she is mortified.

She hadn’t expected this, even though she knows that she has a brilliant voice. What will she tell her mother, who doesn’t know that Zeba sings, let alone that she has has enrolled in the contest?

It’s 1954 in Srinagar, Kashmir. Women are expected to cook and clean and generally stay out of sight. No woman has sung on Radio Kashmir before. When Zeba (Saba Azad) does start performing for the station, she finds herself alone in a crowd of men. She eats lunch by herself. There is no separate toilet for her.

Small details like these make up the mosaic of Danish Renzu’s Songs of Paradise. The Prime Video release is inspired by legendary singer Raj Begum, among the earliest female professional singers in the Valley.

The Hindi-Kashmiri movie is framed as a quest by music researcher Rumi (Taaruk Raina) to seek out Zeba. The older Zeba (Soni Razdan) looks back on a time when random strangers could insult young women in public. At home, Zeba has the support of her loving father (Bashir Lone) and her biggest opponent in her orthodox mother Hameeda (Sheeba Chaddha).

Zeba’s journey is guided by other men – her music teacher (Shishir Sharma), the progressive poet Azaad (Zain Khan Durrani). Polite, reserved, always mindful of her surroundings, Zeba nevertheless gets her way – but without raising her voice. The only time that happens is when she is in front of a mic.

Has a personal revolution ever been more demure? Songs of Paradise, written by Danish Renzu, Sunayana Kachroo and Niranjan Iyengar, is an engaging portrait of a woman who inspires without appearing to. However, some of Zeba’s fire is doused by the film’s insistence on showing her as unfailingly proper, without a word or step out of place.

Clad in Sheetal Iqbal Sharma’s tasteful costumes, Zeba is the very picture of gentle resistance. But beyond her engagement with music, there is little else we learn about the mind of this working-class trailblazer.

The emphasis on etiquette appears to have a larger purpose. Songs of Paradise isn’t just a throwback to classic Kashmiri songs that have been lovingly recreated by Abhay Sopori. Masrat-un-Nisa, who performs Zeba’s songs, has the kind of haunting, old-world voice that is suited for the radio sets that were around in Zeba’s time.

The film also suggests a syncretic Kashmiri culture that is seldom seen in terrorism-obsessed Bollywood. The mist of nostalgia sometimes obscures the harshness of Zeba’s travails, but it does produce vignettes of a heritage steeped in beauty and spirituality.

Danish Renzu’s classic storytelling approach allows his actors the room to expand their characters. The secondary actors – notably Ghulam Lone, Sheeba Chadha and Shishir Sharma – ably back up Saba Azad’s finely tuned performance.

Azad marvellously brings out Zeba’s wonderment at her progress, her discreet disobedience. Azad has Zeba’s humility and tucked-in body language down pat.

There’s a lovely moment in which Zeba, when she meets the music composer Bhan (Lalit Parimoo), perches at the edge of her chair, careful not to get too close to him. Azad’s modest demeanour is echoed by the veteran Soni Razdan, seamlessly creating a bridge between generations.

Except for a flare-up or two, the 106-minute movie is an understated affair, finding its own voice in the gorgeous songs that linger all the way to the closing credits. Renzu replaces outrage, an emotion inevitably associated with works on Kashmir, with restrained remembrance for a rare moment of triumph.