VISIT SHILLONG

Rock and roll is alive and well in Shillong. As, for that matter, are country, blues, folk, prog rock and heavy metal. Even Elvis lives in this cloudy colonial hill station. Lately, Shillong’s trademark mists are being replaced by smog, and cabs meander through their own emissions blaring Deep Purple and Jethro Tull on their stereos as they weave past well-muscled bikers in their AC/DC T-shirts.

It’s a place where people take to the floor listening to 12-bar blues. Where one politician (and ex-minister) is an ace blues harp player. The town teems with bands with names like Mojo, Meghalaya Love Project, The Honey Drippers, Euphonic Trance, Brain Damage and Jerk.
Fifty-nine-year-old Lou Majaw is Shillong’s premier rocker-poet-troubadour and its biggest Bob Dylan fan. For the past 34 years, Majaw has been belting out the essential Dylan songbook on the legend’s birthday on May 24. The Dylan fest has been played out at Majaw’s hillside home, parks, halls, nondescript dusty auditoria, wherever. The set list has been regulation 1960-70s edgy, angry Dylan.
This May 24 was no different. Majaw with his old band of self-effacing rockers, Lew Hilt (Kolkata’s elegantly ageing bass legend, who later moved to Delhi), the deadpan Arjun Sen a.k.a. AJ, who tears into searing electric riffs without much ado and Nondon Bagchi (Kolkata-based math teacher-music teacher-food writer and ace drummer) take the stage at an auditorium and play out yesterday once more. Majaw and his friends call themselves Ace of Spades and generally have a good time. “Dylan’s songs light up my life,” says Majaw.
On stage, Majaw is the antithesis of the frail, stoic legend whom I saw last year kicking up a storm with his loudest electric band yet on what he calls The Never Ending Tour at London’s Hammersmith Odeon. His apostle in Shillong doggedly continues with his once-a-year ‘Never Ending Tribute’ gig in his trademark frayed denim shorts, yellow socks, white sneakers, and a short blue-specked T-shirt. With his fast greying locks flying all over his face and a manic stage presence, Majaw stalks his musicians relentlessly, shaking his head, dancing like a rock and roll dervish, all the while playing the troubadour’s troubled classics, never mind the muddy sound and an audience of a few hundred fans.
And when a three-year-old boy cries “Papa!” from the audience as Majaw launches into a surprisingly ferocious version of ‘Forever Young’, Majaw doffs his tambourine to his three-year-old son, whom he fondly calls Little Dylan and says, “One day, I hope Little Dylan will come up and play with me.”
As Majaw tells it, he was born in a “poor family” in Shillong and grew up listening to Bill Haley and Elvis Presley on a friend’s transistor radio. He says he didn’t even have a radio at home, but began strumming a solitary guitar in the school’s music room. He formed a group called Dynamite Boys, playing swing and rock, and then went on to form another one called the Vanguards. Somewhere down the line, he heard The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, the album that he says changed his life. Majaw went to Calcutta, worked for daily wages by day and played in the city’s smoky bar rooms at night. He formed a few more bands with names like the Vaudevilles, Supersound Factory, and Blood and Thunder, till he discovered that his métier lay in performing the Dylan songbook.
So, in the late 1970s, Majaw decided to get some street cred and formed a band called Great Society playing, what else, but the blues. And he hasn’t stopped since. Some day, he hopes Dylan will grace the Never Ending Tribute—there have been attempts to get through to the singer’s management but to no avail. “I’d like to see Dylan come here, not as a performer, but an observer to check out what we do to keep his legacy alive. And I’m sure he’d say, ‘Hey, these guys aren’t too bad, they are cool!’”
On a balmy weekend night I step out to Cloud Nine, a cavernous pub housed in an unremarkable hotel, to catch Tipriti Kharbangar and her band, Soulmate. The audience is a happy, moody mix of the young and old, with some wandering bohemians thrown in—like a young French singer who’s made a musical journey to Shillong via Africa, Varanasi and the coffee houses of Kolkata, playing a hybrid string instrument that sounds like Brian Jones’ sitar in ‘Paint it Black’.
Cloud Nine is still Shillong’s only pub with live music and it’s packed and raucous. There’s a cover charge of Rs 200 to get in and the audience take their music seriously—as do the performers. “It’s a way of reminding ourselves that we haven’t lost our roots,” says Ferdy Dkhar, who produces programmes for All India Radio by day and plays bass with Soulmate at night.
It is difficult to pin down precise reasons but observers reckon Shillong, like many northeastern towns, got its bluesy musical groove from a strong Christian missionary movement in the region, and a consequent affinity to western cultural mores. Many of the musicians cut their teeth in church choirs singing gospels—like Soulmate’s sassy singer Tipriti. She writes a lot of her own songs because “covers can be such a bore”. She says some of their music is influenced by Khasi tribal folk, but in the end all musical roads lead to the blues. “When I listen to my local Khasi folk, it reminds me of the Mississippi delta blues,” she whispers, before going onstage. “The blues is my teacher,” she begins in a voice that is big, grainy and authoritative enough to make me pay attention. “The blues is my friend. The blues never hurts me, it just heals me in the end...”
Next up is Mermaid, a grungy girl band playing out the lead singer’s Gwyneth Mawlong’s angsty takes on life alternated with her bandmate Lolly’s sedate guitar licks. They close their set with a cover of Dylan’s ‘Licence to Kill’.
But Dylan is not the only Bob in town. The music of Bob Marley also hangs heavy over Shillong. So much so that one fan, Keith Wallang, grew dreadlocks, read up Rastafarian texts, until he decided that the reggae legend’s music was the better part of his Rastaman vibrations. Ten years ago Wallang launched a music festival on the reggae star’s birthday, February 6, where three local bands participate regularly and a few thousand fans turn up at a lakeside farm.
Wallang, who mixes sound for gigs and is an event manager, also hosts a folk and roots music festival a day after the Marley fest, where local and some international singers perform. He says a dire shortage of venues also means that the town’s enthusiasts cannot really host all the music they want to—a couple of creaky auditoria, a few farms and a watersports complex in pretty Barapani, a 20-minute drive away, is really all they have to showcase their talents.
Despite all the passion and virtuosity, Shillong’s music scene is overwhelmingly retro—and it can get downright anachronistic. On a slate-grey afternoon I visit Felix Ranee, who is 47, short, squat and balding—and an Elvis clone. Ranee needs little encouragement to start belting out ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ with frenetic air guitaring and nifty pelvic thrusts and footwork.
He tells me his life changed after watching the singer’s concert movie that’s The Way It Is. He got himself Elvis suits, glasses and silver belts, and began singing his songs. And nothing else mattered to him after that, he says, in his Elvis baritone. “Nothing at all.” Then there’s 61-year-old Shandaland Talang, who began worshipping Elvis ever since he read somewhere that the star “loved his mother, only later fell in love with his wife, and gave away charity to friends”.
The King may be dead, and Marley too, but Shillong’s defiant love for these icons and guitar-based music in general is finally getting noticed. Some spotty international acts like Michael Learns to Rock, Firehouse and Air Supply have played in town. Local bands are getting invited to clubs and festivals outside the state. And maybe, just maybe, the town’s musical time warp could be unravelling. Felix Ranee says his children don’t appreciate his Elvis routine anymore. “They listen to hip-hop and rap,” he complains. Well, as the man said, the times they are a-changin’.
THE INFORMATION
GETTING THERE
Guwahati has both the nearest airport and train station. Indian flies from Kolkata (Rs 2,975 one-way on ‘Easy Fares’ Level 3) and Delhi (Rs 4,325 on Level 4). The Kamrup Express from Howrah Junction is one of the several trains that run between the cities (Rs 1,326 on 2A). The Guwahati Rajdhani runs thrice a week from New Delhi (Rs 2,565 on 2A). From Guwahati, Shillong is 101km/3hr away. Buses and shared taxis are available for this journey.
WHERE TO STAY
The Pinewood Hotel (from Rs 1,100 for double; 0364-2223116/146) is an atmospheric turn-of-the-century building set in a pretty garden. Hotel Polo Towers (Rs 1,450 for standard double; 2222341/42) is a comfortable, reputable hotel. Centre Point (from Rs 650; 2225210/0480) is well located. Book ahead at the Shillong Club (from Rs 565; 2226672) for a charming colonial-style stay. If you’re on a tighter budget, Hotel Broadway (2226996), Hotel Monsoon (2500084) and Hotel Pine Borough (2220698) have rooms for Rs 200-600. For more options check out meghalaya.nic.in/ tourism/accomodation.htm
WHERE TO EAT
There are plenty of good, affordable restaurants to choose from. Trattoria Dukan Ja Doh (near Centre Point Hotel) dishes up good Khasi food. Broadway Restaurant is a popular hangout, and serves tasty Indian and Chinese food. Check out the little Hong Kong restaurant in Police Bazaar. Hotel Centre Point’s La Galerie and Palace Restaurant are also popular.