How do you say, “I’m a conservative Muslim, but I’m also cool?” Perhaps you should rap it. The medium, after all, is the message. This is certainly what one young woman, Sofia Ashraf, believes. When on stage with her band Peter Kaapi, she raps, clad in a burqa, about what it is to be a traditional Muslim who is also modern and trendy.

“I can’t sing to save my life. In college, when we wanted to try something for a cultural programme, I tried rapping and it went well,” says the 22-year-old freelance graphic designer and copywriter, who is also the lyricist and rapper of the Chennai-based ethnic rock band Peter Kaapi. Incidentally, Peter, in city slang, is a person who speaks in English as if it is a matter of prestige, while the word kaapi is synonymous with the state.

“When I started trying rap during my college years, I was not trying to register a political message or social protest. It was more about teenage ideas like creating an identity. Even the crowd was not right for our songs about Islam. Along the way, somewhere, I started talking about myself.”

Ashraf hates her faith being attacked and is annoyed about how her religion is hyphenated with terrorism. She talks about this through her lyrics, from behind the black burqa that she started wearing five years ago, which even inspired her mother to follow her footstep.

The significance of her appearance is not lost on her. “Art speaks for itself. But in a way, the burqa helps create shock value. I doubt if I would get the same response if I went out to rap in my jeans, T-shirt and bling. That’s is how the whole Islamic rap identity came about.”

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