Meghalaya: Music Recommendations
- Sam Mendelsohn
- Feb 10
- 8 min read
See also my posts on Shillong (which includes films), other parts of Meghalaya, and book recommendations for Meghalaya.
Meghalaya has a lot of wonderful music, both traditional and modern, and listening to it really enhanced my appreciation of the state. This is actually among my best music posts, with a pretty wide range of recommendations that I’m enthusiastic about, which is surprising considering it’s a small, remote part of India. This might not be surprising to some, given that Shillong is widely touted as India’s rock and roll capital and people make a big deal out of it. I’m not that into rock music though and don’t find Shillong’s status as an alleged rock capital to be much more than a quirky fact about the place. But I loved the folk music of Meghalaya, and some of the more modern stuff inspired by the folk music. There’s some cool rock stuff too… including some fun Khasi rock music.
By the way, I don’t really like live music, but there is a lot of it in Shillong and that is a Thing To Do there. The Evening Club was the most commonly recommended place and seems to get the biggest names. At the restaurant Rynsan I got to hear some folk music one night, at a moderate volume level while I ate my dinner, I really enjoyed that. It seemed pretty typical for restaurants and cafes to host local acts, so look around on Instagram to see what’s happening.
I’ll start with some folk music, which is quite unique, different from most Indian folk music but also distinctive from other music from the Northeast. I can listen to simple duitara strumming all day long. I didn’t find any old recordings of folk music, sadly, so I don’t really know what the very traditional music sounded like.
A great starting point is a collection called Backpack Studio: Season 6, Vol. 1 (Spotify / Youtube), which is a mix of folk music from Assam and Meghalaya, both excellent. The Meghalaya artists are Banshailang Mukhim, Da-Thymmei, Mookhuri, and Shillong Achik Cultural Artist Association (I apologize if I missed any). I don’t think any of them have albums but you can find a few more songs from some of them on youtube. The first three in particular make really lovely and interesting music that acts as a great soundtrack to the landscape.
I actually saw Mookhuri perform at Rynsan. Their founder collects lullabies from around Meghalaya, which she’s published into a book, apparently with QR codes that you can scan so you can listen to recordings.
For more folk music, Meghalaya’s Doordarshan youtube page has a lot of great stuff:
There’s more on there, but I'm not sure I need to list more than five!
I also highly recommend the Khasi-Cymru Collective album 'Sai-thaiñ ki Sur, which is a fusion of Khasi and Welsh folk music. I didn’t know what that would be like but it’s very good. Honestly though I would have preferred it if this were a straight up Khasi album, with the same attention to detail, authenticity, and live recording. My favorite song is probably the instrumental opener. Here’s a review from the Guardian. The flute player on the album Benedict Hynñiewta is a well known local artist who did the cover of the folk story collection Around the Hearth.
I found a great modern folk song called Na Rynsan Ki Sur Tynrai. No idea who made this but there’s more good music on that youtube channel.
Going further into more modern takes on folk music brings us to Da Minot, who has made some of my favorite music from Meghalaya. As of writing this they have six songs, and I hope to see a full album from them soon. The music, beautifully produced and I believe all in Khasi, takes traditional sounds in a new and interesting direction that feels more original and sophisticated than most of the folk fusion stuff I hear. The gorgeous Ri Shongpdeng Pyrthei is my favorite of theirs, 10/10, a good contender for my favorite Khasi song and my favorite song of 2024. A wonderful soundtrack to Meghalaya. My next favorite song would be Ka Hok Ka Shi Kyntien. While exploring Meghalaya I would fantasize about a Khasi historical adventure movie, and Da Minot would be the perfect group to do the music.
It turns out the founder of Da Minot, Hammarsing Kharhmar, had a successful career in the indie rock scene in the U.S. before coming back to Shillong. This was a good read. He was part of the touring band of The Strokes’ guitarist Albert Hammond Jr, and he put out a well-received EP called The Last Dance under the name Exhibition (not my kind of music but I like it). Before Da Minot he put out a hard to classify Khasi album called Ki Dak Ki Shin under the name Ñion, which is a collaboration with another artist named Wanphrang K Diengdoh, and local instruments were provided by the above-mentioned Da-Thymmei. This project began as a soundtrack for Diengdoh’s Khasi noir film Lorni - La Flaneur. I can’t say Nion is really my thing either but I kinda like it too. (the Shillong based Diengdoh has a band called Tarik, also not my thing.) And an earlier band from Hammarsing is called Mon Khmer, a nod to the language family that Khasi belongs to. Here’s their EP Dreamers. Again, not my kind of music, but interesting to see the roots. I think I can hear some common threads in all of this that led to Da Minot, and I think this background is part of what makes the group more interesting than most Indian folk fusion artists who tend to feel kind of samey after listening to a few of them.
It also turns out that Hammarsing is the founder of Shillong’s top restaurant, Rynsan (which I wrote about in the main Shillong post). I had loved both the restaurant and the music before discovering this, and once I learned they had the same vision behind them it immediately made sense to me. On an obvious level there’s the great music they played at the restaurant and the good selection of artists they get to perform there, but there’s also a commitment to contemporary expressions of Khasi culture, represented by the music, videos, food, and even artwork and crafts shop at the restaurant. There’s not a ton of this kind of stuff in Meghalaya, so this was nice to see. I also browsed Hammarsing’s Instagram where he posts a lot of interesting, lesser known information about Meghalaya’s culture (including some great food recommendations and offbeat places to visit). Very cool to see. He might be Meghalaya’s top cultural ambassador.
Another modern take on the folk music (though mostly in English) is Rida & the Musical Folks, who have an album from 2014 called Musical Nature (Youtube). Really good music! The group’s frontwoman is also the founder of Dakti Craft, which my wife tells me is the coolest crafts company in Meghalaya, helping to revive traditional styles. Again, it’s great to see people doing modern expressions of Meghalaya’s culture, both in the music and crafts.
And for more in the folk fusion space, I like a Garo group called Ahowee. Only a few songs, but promising!
Now onto the rock music! I had fun with it, even though my preference is for the more local sounding stuff.
The 78 year old (as of writing this) Lou Majaw is definitely a badass! People call him India’s Bob Dylan and he’s known for his energetic performances and short shorts. I like his music. A lot of videos show him playing covers but he has a good catalogue of originals. My favorite song is Sea of Sorrows, I think from the 70s (unfortunately not the best quality recording) with his old band Great Society. I unfortunately didn’t find any other old recordings, though I know they had an album. I did hear his albums of originals which are available on Spotify and dug them all, though I prefer to hear older recordings. I saw Lou Majaw hanging out the one time we went to Cafe Shillong, that was fun.
My favorite of Shillong’s rock acts is Summersalt, which the New York Times described as “Khasi folk music fused with reggae, progressive rock, gospel and blues.” Hmm, not how I’d have described them, but it works. Some of their songs are in Khasi and they make good use of local instruments and arrangements here and there, though this definitely belongs more in this rock section than in the modern folk music section. They have one self-titled album (Spotify / Youtube) which is really good, and I look forward to the long awaited follow-up, which has had good singles so far. They also were part of the Rock On 2 soundtrack, bringing Khasi music to Hindi audiences with Hoi Kiw, a reworking of their song Pyrta Shnong (and if you didn’t realize, “hoi-kiw” is a recurring chant in Khasi music that has shown up earlier and will show up again later).
There’s also the famous blues band Soulmate who I think are one of the biggest successes here, playing at blues festivals around the world. They have four albums, I heard them all. I’m far from an expert here but it all seemed very good to me, if not novel. I loved the more soul-tinged songs, such as Hole in Your Soul, The Price, and Set Me Free, that’s more my thing than the bluesier stuff. I generally really liked it, though. Smile at Me is a jam. The singer Tipriti Kharbangar is great. Here she is doing a wild Khasi rock song, I think a cover of this, also crazy. They sometimes tour as “Soulmate and the Clansmen” doing Khasi songs, I found videos on Facebook but now they aren’t loading, maybe they will for you. Here is a Khasi song from them called Rong Jyrngam Ka Mariang.
I’ll wrap this up with some odds and ends:
Not sure how many of you wanted a neo-soul ode to Meghalaya, but here you are anyway, and it’s actually great. From a young mixed race Khasi woman in Australia named Tiana Khasi.
I kind of love this song Train Shillong Running by some group called Laxmi Bomb from Goa. I don’t think they have anything to do with Shillong. Shillong does not have a train. No clue what the song is about. Life and Death? (The band has cool music from what I heard, but really it has nothing to do with Meghalaya so it doesn’t really belong here. The Train Shillong song is their best, though. What a kickass song.)
Old school Khasi pop (90s?). Cheesy but I like it.
Sken Syiemlieh. More cheesy old school pop. I kinda love Wow Jingjynjar. And he has a Manik Raitong song (I wrote a bit about the famous Manik Raitong folk story in the books section).
Documentary, sounds good.
Snow White seems to be the pioneering Khasi band, combining local and western sounds. I think they’ve been surpassed, but I enjoyed their music and it’s still got a unique sound. They have one album called U Rangdajied, all of the songs are on Youtube but you have to piece them together, or if you have Youtube Music there’s a playlist. My favorite song is… [whenever I wrote this I never completed the sentence, and now we’ll never know].
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