Folksy Harmony

The choir group Nagaland Singing Ambassadors will represent India at a World War I commemoration festival in Belgium

At the closing ceremony of the 2014 Northeast Film Festival in New Delhi, something remarkable happened. The stage-curtains were drawn open to reveal a male- female singing duo with an ensemble of around twenty singers in the background. The singing duo—Judi Honor as soprano and Emmanuel de la Rosa as the tenor—began what appeared to be a solemn opera set. The soprano then broke away from the duet to join the group of singers and launch into a sprightly, high-pitched rendition of Glory to God, alternating the prayers with Naga folk tunes and hits by Abba. The performance which wove in spirited acapella vocalisations and starred the bamhum (a Naga wind instrument made of bamboo) left the Delhi audience struck—as much by wonder as by the infectious music.

The Nagaland Singing Ambassadors (NSA) are a choir group that not many in India may be aware of. The group is made up mostly of students in their early twenties who will dazzle the world stage in November this year. They will represent India at the festival 1000 Voices for Peace—to mark the hundredth anniversary of World War I—in Belgium. The festival will have 20 Belgian and 15 international choirs from around the world sing with the Brussels Philharmonic the newest composition of the celebrated Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki. NSA would be the only choir representing India at the event.

The predominantly Christian states of Northeast India, like Nagaland, Mizoram and Meghalaya, have a tradition of choir groups and choral singing since the arrival of Baptist missionaries in the early twentieth century. Yet, very few professional choir groups have caused a big stir outside the region, with the exception of Meghalaya’s Shillong Chamber Choir. With their debut performance in 2001, the Shillong Chamber Choir sprang into the limelight in 2010 when they emerged the unlikely winners of the second season of India’s Got Talent which was broadcast on Colors TV. Today, this multi-genre choir group’s re-arrangement of too many popular Bollywood numbers might endanger the disciplined moorings of classical singing that traditional choral music necessarily demands.

In order to gain a professional edge, most choral groups in Northeast India face a severe dearth of performance venues or studios for recording, editing and documentation. As Ricky Medom, Delhi-based pastor with the Naga Christian Fellowship, explains, “Every Baptist church is semi-autonomous, unlike other denominations, and thus every church has its own choir to fulfil local consumption. As of now, there hasn’t been much of an attraction to form full-time choir groups in the absence of corporate sponsorships and other kinds of infrastructural back-up.” Most choir groups tend to disband post-performance and re-group as and when the occasion demands. Governmental support to enable choir groups to gain greater professional finesse has been rather slow. Gugs Thishi Sema, project director of the Music Task Force in Nagaland, says, “Our basic thrust for now is music literacy. Our efforts have led so many individuals to go abroad to study music. Some have come back with their professional expertise to develop their home state.”

The NSA as a choir group was formed in 2010 as an initiative of Lipokumar Tzudir, a National award winning conductor and presently the director of North East Zone Cultural Centre, Dimapur. Comprising well-trained and experienced musicians from Nagaland at the time of its inception, it had a successful run for two years, after which it was disbanded. It was later reborn as the performance wing of the newly set up school Nagaland Conservatory of Music, Dimapur, which offers a Bachelor’s degree in music. The Conservatory, set up in 2013 by Tzudir, serves to train aspirants in the quintessence of Western classical music, choral conducting and composition, apart from imparting high-powered training in violin, piano and guitar as part of a rigorous course spanning four years, the completion of which produces competent musicians ready to be employed in any part of the world.

It took Tzudir 12 years to realise his dream of setting up the Conservatory. Scrambling enough resources to study in the Philippines and England to become a composer and conductor, Tzudir is acutely aware of the obstacles in his home state that eager music learners face. “Music should be part of the school curriculum here. But how can that happen without a pool of qualified and well-trained musicians? And how can everyone gather enough wherewithal to pursue music courses abroad? The school is the only one of its kind in the region to [impart] world-class music education,” Tzudir explains. Armed with a Master’s in Ethnomusicology from Sheffield University, Tzudir is an exponent of Naga folk fusion and encourages the integration of Tribal folk tunes to create original masterpieces through the medium of Western classical music. The NSA, in its concert in Delhi, performed a breathtaking choral rendition of the Naga song Mejemsanger Naro with one of the male singers striding forward at the head of the stage to play the bamhum, which added a deeply rustic touch, recalling an Arcadian vista of rolling mountains and verdant pastures.

Well known filmmaker Utpal Borpujari has extensively explored folk music revival in Northeast India in his documentary Songs of the Blue Hills, which will be competing in prominent international film festivals of Gothenburg and Washington. His documentary features the Nagaland Singing Ambassadors along with a few other choir groups that are incorporating folk music in hymns—a practice which was once forbidden. “It is only in the last two decades that the younger generation of musicians are bringing to the fore what was lost a century ago,” he says. Borpujari, as curator of the film festival, chose to invite the NSA to the closing ceremony as he is fully convinced of their potential.

It is important to bear in mind that the NSA is not a professional choir group today. Most of its members will graduate soon and be replaced by the next batch of students. But as Rosa states, “The quality of music education at the Conservatory is unmatched in Northeast India.” Going by the number of calls the Conservatory has already started getting for choir conductors, it seems like choral singing in India is set for an impressive revival.

BelgiumChoir groupNagaland Singing AmbassadorsWorld War I commemoration