FRIDAY RELEASE - August 17th - Sanghai Express.mpg

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Uramili Project

Miscellaneous


We had put up a song by Rewben many weeks ago. As some of you might remember, Rewben Mashangva sings his own genre of music called Naga folk blues. He started out singing the traditional form of Tangkhul folk, and then found himself being inspired by the music of Bob Dylan and Bob Marley. Over a few days of conversation with Rewben we got a brief insight into his music. Apparently he started feeling a bit awkward after a few of his initial performances. He was very troubled by the differential treatment vetted out to folk performers vs those who sing in English. There is a clear hierarchy he says, the ones who sing in English are given better rooms, better money, different means of transport, but most importantly they seem to be respected more as musicians. Since then Rewben has spent a lot of time learning English and has also added English songs to his repertoire and of late has even started writing his own lyrics in English. But this doesn't stop him from spending time with older tangkhul folk musicians and learning their songs. What to do (something he says quite often, with the 'what' sounding particularly british, like 'huwaht') English brings to me an audience that I wouldn't otherwise have. When he runs out of songs, he sings out the newspaper headlines. The print size is bigger so its easier to read, plus it helps me practice my English, he says. We got quite excited by this and the next time we went to see him, we took along that days local english newspaper, Sanghai Express. Besides the altogether yummy quirk factor, this also gave us an opportunity to bring some of the local news from Manipur out here for you. FRIDAY RELEASE is an endeavour to share raw footage from the u-ra-mi-li project. We'd like to give you a sample of the kind of stories we have and are looking for; some of these stories may make their way into the final film, others won't. Do tell us what you like, what you don't, what links you see between different kinds of music or visuals, what you've seen before, or what the clip reminds you of. To contribute towards the Uramili Project, please visit www.uramili.in