By BUDHADITYA BHATTACHARYA
Special Arrangement
FROM AFAR A Naga folk group in a still from the film
“Songs of the Blue Hills” looks at the contest between tradition and modernity in the music of the Nagas.
“All songs, be it of harvest, love, war and festivals,
were sung in the community dormitory for the youth,” says Guru Zachunu
Keyho, who has collected nearly 600 Chakhesang folk songs. He is
remembering the days before the coming of schools and churches in
Nagaland, when cultural wisdom was transmitted to the youth through folk
songs and dances, at the morung or dormitory. For Keyho, those days are
over. “Today’s youth don’t have any interest in these things. Thus,
with every generation, we are losing our songs and tradition.”
Tradition
is a word that recurs frequently in “Songs of the Blue Hills”, a new
documentary by film critic and filmmaker Utpal Borpujari, which journeys
through the music of Nagaland. Through interviews with musicians, music
teachers and ethnomusicologists, the film looks at what ‘tradition’
entails, who lays claim to it, and how endangered it is.
Although
popularly perceived as a single tribe, the Nagas comprise more than
40-odd tribes and sub-tribes, spread across North East India and in
Northwestern Mynamar. Like ethnic communities the world over, folk music
and dances are at the heart of Naga culture. Also, Nagaland is perhaps
the only State which has a Music Task Force, which functions under the
aegis of the State Government to promote music in the State.
“What
is very interesting is that since the Nagas do not have written history
– or the written word – traditionally, it is their folk music that
helps orally pass on their history from one generation to another,” says
Borpujari, who has previously made the documentary “Mayong: Myth and
Reality”. “The idea was to maybe make a 40-minute-odd-long film. But as
my team and I started researching and contacting people, I realised that
it was not going to be as easy as it sounded. Every day we found new
groups, new singers, and more and more interesting music.”
While
the culture Keyho describes passed with the coming of the missionaries,
whose influence coloured the music of the Nagas, lately there has been a
revival of folk music with several young groups taking to it. Some of
them are the Tetseo sisters, who belong to the Chakhesang tribe and sing
Li; Purple Fusion, whose members belong to the Ao, Lotha and Sangtam
tribes, and who borrow from the repertoire of each other’s tribes; and
Moa Subong and Arenla Subong, who blend their traditional Ao sounds with
rock influences.
While their efforts have not been
received enthusiastically by some folk practitioners, who worry that
fusion could destroy the “real Naga tradition and culture”, they are
convinced that fusion is also a way of keeping tradition alive. The
older and younger generation may disagree about the means of preserving
tradition, but they are both acutely aware of its importance, and the
need to sustain it.
In fusion, according to
musicologist Abraham Lotha, “Certain element of dilution is there but I
would see it in a positive light in terms of the artistes trying to be
creative in their musical talents, and in creating such kind of fusion
music there is a market for it too. So it does help spread Naga music
beyond the borders of the Naga areas.”
The film,
which has been screened at film festivals in Warsaw, New York,
Gothenburg and Kochi among others, had to be confined within the borders
of Nagaland owing to budget constraints, but Borpujari hopes to take
“this journey further into Naga singers in other parts of Northeastern
India, someday in the future.”
