Rhythm and clues: Saving songs, uniting tribes in Manipur

Meet musicians fighting the clock to preserve rich and endangered oral heritage, and trace a common history, in the northeastern state.

What do we lose when we lose a language? In Manipur, the Tarao tribe is down to fewer than 900 members, and just one musician. Vast parts of its history are stored in its folk tales and music. After Ch Lamtachao, the 60-something chief of Heikakpokpi village, there will be no one left who remembers it all.

Ch Lamtachao, chief of Heikakpokpi village, is the last musician and thereby the last keeper of the oral history of Manipur’s Tarao tribe.

Will that mark the end for this intangible heritage? Manipur-based musician Akhu Chingangbam hopes not. For six years, he’s been meeting folk artists from across Manipur to collect and preserve the music (and thereby the stories and histories) of different tribes, before it fades away.

“There has been so much ethnic conflict between the tribes of Manipur. The Meiteis won’t get along with the Nagas, the Nagas won’t get along with the Kukis. This has always bothered me,” says Chingangbam, 40, founder, singer and lyricist of the band Imphal Talkies and The Howlers. “Through music I am trying to create a platform through which I am able to tell stories of our shared history and collective past.”

In 2015, Chingangbam launched the Native Tongue Called Peace project, to teach songs from different tribal languages to Manipuri children at a shelter home. The peoples of the state can learn something from these children, who live together, different but in harmony, he says.

In 2019, Chingangbam set up the Foothills Community Centre 12 km from Imphal, with the goal of archiving the folk music he is recording, as well as hosting concerts and events, and creating a museum of indigenous musical instruments.

Folk music and instruments are the best way to piece together the whole story of Manipur, he says. For instance, his Meitei community plays a bowed mono-string instrument called a pena. It’s played by the Tangkhul Nagas too, but they call it the tingteila. The Tarao community also plays this instrument but they have yet another name for it. “This is one way to track our past, back to where we were all sharing this instrument, and see how it evolved from one community to the next,” he says.

Chingangbam hopes to eventually share these histories through an online audio archive that will allow people across the country and around the world to “listen to our stories”.

“So many indigenous languages across Assam, Manipur, and Nagaland are on the verge of extinction due to their lack of formal recognition,” says Madhumita Barbora, head of the department of English and foreign languages at Tezpur University, Assam, and coordinator of the university’s Centre for Endangered Languages.

The Constitution, for instance, recognises Manipuri or Meitei as an official language, but no others in Manipur. In Assam, Manipur and Tripura, English is the second official language. This causes a forced linguistic shift in which smaller communities have to adopt the dominant or official language for better educational and employment opportunities.

“When you’re looking for a way to advance in society, you’re not as aware of who you are,” Barbora says. “Gradually, as you settle in within a larger group, you begin to question who you really are.” By then, the link may be broken; the language itself may have dwindled to one or two fluent speakers. Lost with it are rich and vibrant oral and other traditions.

Chingangbam is determined to staunch the loss and preserve, at least for the record, what can be salvaged.

It’s a worthy cause, says Barbora, but she fears it can, at best, turn living heritage into static museum exhibits. “If these languages fall out of use, a certain linguistic diversity and bio-diversity are lost,” she adds. “The identity of the linguistic group is lost.”

Because when you lose a language, you do not just lose words, stories and songs. As a country, you lose a part of who you are.