serendipityoucity

Imagine my surprise!  I am sleepless, feeling a little scratchy, I have been writing about this relatively unknown place in India called Nagaland in India’s North East non stop for two weeks.  It is the last stretch of this comprehensive paper that has been hanging around for to long.  So I decide to throw all caution to the wind and waste a few minutes by perusing the New Times on line, go to the Arts section to find that one of the remote tribal villages, Shillong in Meghalaya in the North East is considered India’s Rock and Roll capital!

I called my Naga friends living in Ottawa who shrieked with laughter!  Yup!  Music got them into the news not the civil war, the human rights abuses, the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, insurgents nor peace talks, but this 61 year old cut off jeans wearing long gray haired Lou Majaw guy who is devoted to celebrating Bob Dylan’s Birthday Every Year by putting on a Roots Festival!  Unbelievable!

On Mr. Dylan’s birthday weekend a visitor could drive down a narrow, rain-soaked road and hear young men with guitars serenading, or stumble upon thousands gathered under a Christian revival tent, singing modern gospel in their native Khasi. On a football field, at twilight, you might be pulled into a mosh pit of teenagers dancing to a Naga tribal blues guitarist, or on a Sunday morning find schoolchildren in a chorus of 19th-century hymns in a prim Presbyterian church.

And then I find out about this guy Rewben Mashangva, who is the leading exponent of HAO music and performs on the the Tingtelia, a violin type instrument which he modified to suit his music, as well as the modern Acoustic guitar and harmonica. Whenever he performs in and around his hometown, his son Saka Mashangva joins him as percussion player.

and pictures of the kids being alright!