Book contents
21 - Being Cool: The Music Scene
from IV - Mizo Modernities
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2015
Summary
A striking aspect of the photographs we have collected is that many focus on young people and their sense of fun and style. In earlier chapters (notably Chapters 3 and 16), we looked at two themes – music and fashion – up to the mid-twentieth century. In this chapter and the next, we follow these themes in more recent times. They reveal the emergence of a youth culture and a strong interest in being ‘modern’ in a distinctively local way.
From violins to electric guitars
From the earliest photographs to the most recent ones, it is evident that musical expression was key to cultural change in Mizoram. Church choirs and Christmas carol parties had been remarkable innovations of the 1920s and 1930s, and the following decades had witnessed an outpouring of new songs and compositions. By the 1950s, however, something very different was taking off. Mizo audiences had first heard Hollywood songs on the gramophone in the 1930s (Figure 21.1) and the encounter with foreign troops during Second World War had further kindled an interest in popular music that was not necessarily church-related.
Mizos studying in Shillong picked up new music trends, and at least one Mizo musician took his talents across the world with a Filipino band, influencing Mizo songs back home. P.S. Chawngthu (stage name: Sino Costelo) was born in 1922. While he was employed with the Royal Indian Air Force in Calcutta [in the 1940s], he walked into the Bristol Hotel in Calcutta and Mr. Roman Francisco, thinking he was a fellow Filipino, came up to him and started chatting with him. When Francisco realized that P. S. Chawngthu had trained as a musician … he asked him to join their family. P. S. then learned to play several instruments and dances and thus became part of a 16-member band named “Roman Francisco and His Hawaiian Serenaders” that included Spanish, English, Jamaican and Goan members.[…]
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- The Camera as WitnessA Social History of Mizoram, Northeast India, pp. 379 - 396Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2015