Carnatic rock musician Vasu Dixit’s documentary shows how India’s tribes sing

Country music is full of forms that are yet undiscovered by the masses. Just ask folk-rock musician Vasu Dixit. Famous for his part in bands such as Swarathma and the Vasu Dixit Collective, he asked fellow musicians to introduce him to the tribal music of his land – and realized that they had opened the floodgates.

Now, Vasu’s documentary series introduces the internet to the tribal and folk music of Manipur, Meghalaya, Sikkim, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Each musician involved in the Pada Project introduces a new form of singing, or a lesser-known instrument, or something that is completely unique to his village and culture.

“In Shillong we went to a village where people name their children after a certain tune. They literally hum to the tune of calling their children. There is a term for such a surname; It translates to ‘dhun-name’,” says Vasu.

The team’s list of such discoveries is long. Vasu adds: “The Mikma Tshering Lepcha of Sikkim was playing an instrument called tunbucoone who is like double, In Manipur, singer Mangaka Mayangalambam has a style that is more like storytelling, with dialogue in between. That format is part of his culture, but more than that, it’s a style he personally developed. She says that even when she was learning, her teachers didn’t want her to sing correctly: It’s ideal that you add your own flavor.

When tradition itself emphasizes innovation, you know you’ve done something unique. Vasu admits as much, and explains how, originally, he never intended to make such discoveries.

“My initial idea was to cover only eight to 10 artists in Karnataka because of my familiarity with the language and music here. But I understand why sponsor [Believe India and Ishtar Music, in partnership with Snehadhara Foundation] Wanted a pan-India approach,” he says, “once we decided that, I decided to go to Manipur and Meghalaya. Because when you talk of folk music, the image in the mind of most of the people is of Rajasthan or Punjab. Not that I won’t even cover those states, but I wanted to start with something that hasn’t been explored that much.

Vivek Raina of Believe India reiterates this and says that the team sees this project as a way to “use our marketing and digital expertise to expose these artists to the public and showcase their talent”. They believe that there are some gaps in the market, which they can fill in this way.

Mangaka Mayangalambam from Imphal in a still from the documentary. , photo credit: special arrangement

brass legs

Hence, the first set of Pada project focuses on Mohan Kumar from Karnataka, Sithirai Senana from Madurai, Mikma Tshering Lepcha from Sikkim, Dalarity Kamayor from Shillong and Mangaka Mayangalambam from Imphal. Vasu hopes to get travel and production for another set of episodes in the near future, but he is well aware that the process is arduous.

“The idea of ​​the project has been on my mind for four years. I’m talking to people I can collaborate with, and people who can fund or sponsor. When COVID hit, we could not take the project forward.”

But he admits that the forced break helped him in other ways: “It gave me time to start writing to people, reaching out to them slowly. It was early 2021, because I could have expected that around Things will get better in a year or two. I know these processes take time, and in those months, people with money were naturally more interested in giving it COVID relief than things like this.” and So he waited, and tried, and waited some more. “I contacted over 100 people before I got in touch with Believe India. It was only after they came on board that I started thinking of places, Which we could cover, depending on the funds we have.”

Dalarity Kamayor from Shillong in a still from the documentary | photo credit: special arrangement

spread the word and wings

Once he had decided that Vasu’s years-old musical friendship network helped. He explains: “When I focused on the northeast, I contacted musicians I know in Nagaland and Arunachal, Assam, Manipur and Meghalaya to tell me about folk artists from their state.”

He further added, “The final list was decided on the basis of availability and music performed by them. Every folk music has its own uniqueness, so it’s not like one is better than the other. It was more about the logistics, and what I could bring to it was different. ,

Sithirai Senana from Madurai in a still from the documentary. , photo credit: special arrangement

What the four-man strong PaDa team brought together was technology. The episodes are made for listening, though the visual aspects are undeniably a strong draw. They put out one episode per week and three episodes per artist: “First week only documentary episodes on YouTube; second week artist’s songs only on YouTube; third week, artist’s songs audio-only as singles on OTT platforms like Spotify, In this way, each artist gets his own space and time to reach the world,” specifies Vasu.

tales of hard work

The styles and voices are all unique, and yet, one thread is common throughout. Vasu decided to highlight that aspect – the fact that, whatever your community, tribe or society, you will sing about your daily life and the things you do.

He elaborates, “Folk music – any field – has different subsets and themes. I focused on the theme of occupation. Folk songs are often based on the work that country people do. For example , take the farmers: as they are cultivating, they sing about it; they sing about it as they plow; they sing about it as they sow seeds and saplings. Each occupation has its own music associated with it it happens.

Mohan Kumar of Karnataka in a still from the documentary | photo credit: special arrangement

In Karnataka, it was Kadagulla, he Shepherds. In Madurai, we covered making jaggery. In Manipur it was weaving, in Sikkim it was shamus, and in Shillong, in that particular village, people go to the forest to cut grass for a broom.