The Ao Naga Choir will be performing for the first time in Goa at the Monte Music Festival on January 30
KALYANI JHA | NT BUZZ
When the Ao Naga Choir was approached to be a part of the upcoming Monte Music Festival organised by Fundacao Oriente, Panaji, the group was excited.
“The purpose of this festival is exactly what our choir is about – cross-cultural bonding and building bridges,” says the founder and president of Ao Naga Choir, Lanutemsuyaden.
Formed in 2009, the choir originally consisted of musicians, working professionals and students predominantly belonging to the Ao Naga tribe as well as other tribes of Nagaland in North East India.
It was started with the aim to bring people together to renew hearts, reform the communities, revive the cities, and reach to the nations. But over the years, this choir has opened up its membership to other communities.
“What specifically started off as a church choir, went on to recruit many other members and communities including those from the other north-east states like Tripura, Nagaland and Mizoram. We also have members from Punjab, Haryana and Tamil Nadu,” says Lanu. Based in Delhi, the choir has performed extensively in India
and abroad.
In addition, the choir members undertake an extensive programme of choral music education in a number of schools and institutions.
For the Monte Music Festival, only 16 members will be performing on traditional instruments made from bamboo called BamHum and shofar, and western instruments like the piano and the djembe.
“We will mostly perform folk songs from the Northeast as well as some of the folk melodies from our neighbouring countries in Southeast Asia and a couple of sacred gospel music tunes,” shares Lanu, who is currently the vice – principal of the Mount Carmel Schools, Delhi. Lanu has been to Goa in the past on a personal trip and has many musician friends. He is excited that this time around, he gets to perform here with his choir.
“As a choir, we are now developing ourselves into a very unique sound by blending a lot of our folk traditions from the northeast. At the concert, we will be incorporating certain cultural things like our dance moves. It will not be just about singing, there will be some kind of a narration,” he says. We will be blending all these along with our influences such as the gospel songs to resonate with the theme of our performance which is ‘Changing Horizons’.”
(The performance will begin at
7 p.m. at the Chapel of Our Lady of the Mount, Old Goa)
