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https://reasonstobecheerful.world/rewben-mashangva-recording-folk-songs/>
"It was the winter of 2011. The stage was set, the audience in place on a cold
Delhi evening. The audience gasped audibly when Rewben Mashangva walked into
the spotlight with his son Saka. Oblivious to the chill, he was dressed in the
sleeveless woven red and black jacket worn by his tribe, the Tangkhul Naga.
Father and son sported the traditional hairdo, with long ponytails and
clean-shaven sides, called
haokuirut.
Between songs evocative of the mountains and valleys of the northeast Indian
state of Manipur, Mashangva spoke about the Tanghkhul Naga, who form about
seven percent of Manipur’s population. Like many other Indigenous peoples in
India and across the world, their culture, estimated to be over 1,000 years
old, has been orally transmitted across generations through songs and stories.
But the fragile links of transmission were being severed, little by little,
every day.
It began in the 1890s, when the colonial British took control of Manipur and
its adjoining regions. A young Scottish missionary, William Pettigrew, began
converting entire villages and tribes to Christianity. Visible cultural markers
of tribal identity like headgear and intricate beadwork, once worn as symbols
of status, lineage and achievement, were actively discouraged, even destroyed.
Oral tradition — often perpetuated by elders sitting around a fire, singing old
songs and telling stories that carried their history — gave way to
church-centered practices.
“By the 1980s, very few elders who even remembered the old songs and stories
were left, and they lived in remote villages untouched by proper roads and
means of communication,” Mashangva says. “I couldn’t let that happen.”"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
