Manipur Nagas’ biggest festival has a song for Wuhan

The Nagas of Manipur on Saturday chose their biggest cultural stage to extend solidarity to the embattled residents of Wuhan, the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak.
At a time when the global conversation around Covid-19 is shot through with racist overtones, and people from the northeast are facing racially motivated taunts in other parts of India, a prayer-song – ‘Stay Strong Wuhan’ – performed by Naga folk blues legend Guru Rewben Mashangva, was one of the top draws at the Lui-Ngai-Ni 2020, the two-day annual ‘seed sowing’ festival of Manipur’s Naga tribes held at the Tangkhul Naga Long ground in Ukhrul town, 2000km west of Wuhan.
Mashangva, one of the best-known musicians from the northeast, performed the song in English, interspersed with Tangkhul, Nagamese and Mandarin. The song has been written by Ngachonmi Chamroy, a well-known Tangkhul lyricist, and the words – “On the empty streets of Wuhan/ Fear and despair roam/ Wearing the face/ Of coronavirus today” – are evocative. They also blend well with the theme of this year’s Lui-Ngai-Ni, ‘oneness through culture’.
“Some friends and I hit upon the idea of writing a song in support of Wuhan on February 13 (Thursday). It took us around 40 minutes to write the lyrics. We decided that the Lui-Ngai-Ni would provide us with a big platform to present the song,” Chamroy told TOI over the phone.
“It pains us to see China being vilified across the world. People are referring to the Chinese as sick Asians and to coronavirus as yellow fever. We from the northeast have faced such discrimination before, and we wanted to send the message of solidarity to the people of Wuhan through this song,” Chamroy said, adding that this was why he decided to add Mandarin lyrics to the song (‘Jianqiang de zhongguo/Jianqiang Wuhan’ or ‘Be strong China/Be strong Wuhan’).
For the Tangkhul-speaking Mashangva, the lyrics in English posed a big challenge. “I spent all of Thursday just going through the words. My English is not good. Finally, I took the help of my daughter and my wife to get the pronunciations right. Even then, I had difficulty with words like ‘heartache’,” said the 58-year-old singer, who counts Bob Dylan as his biggest inspiration.
None of that mattered, however, to the 2,000-odd people who were in attendance when the song was performed on Saturday, as traditionally dressed members of the Naga tribes held up giant banners proclaiming ‘Stay Strong Wuhan, We Are With You’. “The audience reaction was great. We got so many phone calls from our friends across the world, including China, for the song,” said Chamroy.
The performance of the song at the Lui-Ngai-Ni 2020, organised under the aegis of the United Naga Council, the apex body of Manipur’s many Naga tribes, is just the first step, the singer-lyricist duo said. By Monday, they hope to give a studio finish to the song, add more female vocals and release it as a video online.
The Lui-Ngai-Ni, often described as the second most important festival of the Naga tribes after the Hornbill Festival, is a state holiday in Manipur. Besides the coronavirus epidemic, the other development that multiple speakers at the event referred to was the much-awaited Naga peace accord signed by the Centre with various Naga groups.