Naga Hills · Northeast Hill Massif
Love, separation, the ancestors and the year's labour, sung in interlocking parts with the tati fiddle.
Sung at: Courtship, harvest, mourning, work. Carried into recorded music by the Tetseo sisters of Phek, who sing it in the original Chokri.
Songs that set the tempo of collective work. The rhythm is functional — the group swings the dao or the pestle to it — and the text is usually teasing or competitive.
Sung at: Jhum clearing, weeding, paddy pounding.
Genealogy, migration, village founding and the deeds of named men, transmitted from elders to boys in the building they slept in. This was the region's history syllabus.
Sung at: Nights in the bachelors' dormitory.
Praise of the giver and of the mithun, and the counting-out of what the household has given the village.
Sung at: When a household gave a feast, and at stone-pulling.
Spring, the completed sowing, courtship, and the year ahead.
Sung at: Aoleang Monyu, early April.
Thanksgiving, reconciliation between households, and the licence of a week without work.
Sung at: Post-harvest, early November.
Four-part hymns translated into each language from the late nineteenth century. They now function as folk repertoire — sung at home and at gravesides, and often the only music a whole village knows in unison.
Sung at: Church, funerals, Christmas.
The folk songs of Naga Hills — what they are about, who sings them and when. (7)