[ad_1]
I met Anurag Banerjee just after his friend’s poetry reading at the Shillong Literature Festival. He has a kind of easy, affable presence that draws interruptions: he left one friend to walk with me, was stopped mid-sentence by another during our conversation, and ran into someone else as soon as we finished. In a few hours, he would be onstage, this time being interviewed by another friemd – novelist Janice Pariat – for a panel.
He describes himself as a dkhar, a Khasi term for non-tribals, a label that marks him as an outsider in a city where belonging is tied to lineage and community. Banerjee is a photographer and writer whose two-volume project, The Songs of Our People, emerged from the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act and the National Register of Citizens in 2020 and his own reckoning with his homeland.
The first volume, published in 2024, focuses on younger musicians and politically charged genres such as rap and R&B, built from 19 extended interviews and collaborative portraits. The second, out late last year, turns to teachers, choirs, and the artists who shaped Shillong’s music scene, while also letting Banerjee write himself into the narrative, making the act of listening as much a part of the story as the music itself.
In a conversation with Scroll, Banerjee talked about how The Songs of Our People took shape, why the itizenship Amendment Act and the National Register of Citizens moment pushed him toward music as an archive, what it means to write himself into the second volume and the possibilities of listening to Shillong’s musicians as a way of thinking about place.
As you brought these stories together, it seems part of the project was addressing gaps in your understanding of your homeland. How did that impulse shape these volumes?
The instigating point for the work was the CAA-NRC protests. I wouldn’t say it was a political awakening for me, but that was the time when I realised that each one of us has a role to play. For me, as a photographer with a little bit of reach on Instagram, a sudden responsibility dawned.
At some point, I realised I did not want to just be a documenter. I wanted a more active role in the movement, for lack of a better word. But then, of course, Covid hit, and the movement, as we know, came to a screeching halt. By that time, I had also begun reading a lot. It became clear that the movement is very personal and that revolution is personal. I wanted to carry on the work for myself. As I read more, it dawned on me that I couldn’t ignore the fact that the CAA-NRC was entirely about identity.
The protests, in fact, started here – in Shillong and Assam. Why Shillong was protesting was very different from why the rest of the country was protesting. There was the fear of becoming minorities in our own land, because we have a very porous border with Bangladesh. For me, as a non-tribal from Shillong, it is a strange dichotomy. I am a minority in my homeland, but the minute I step out of here, I become part of an overwhelming majority: Savarna, Hindu, male, and so on.
So it became important for me to confront my own identity as someone from Shillong. I had to think about how I wanted to negotiate that space. I also looked at my life in Bombay, where I met some of my closest friends through work. That made me realise that if I was going to do people-based work, the first people I should focus on were musicians.
Since the immediate point of ignition was the protests, the first book focuses a lot on rap and R&B, because historically, they are…
Those genres are politically charged.
Yes, the first three profiles I made in 2020 were Sambok Mawnai, Mejied Kyrpang, and Reble, who has since gained wide recognition. It has been a joy to see her career take off, especially since I photographed her for the book at such an early stage.
This is a bit of a detour, but at the time, I didn’t know these profiles would become part of a book. I was trying to figure out whether I could pitch the project as a documentary. Wherever I went, and with whomever I spoke, I would ask, “Can I also record a short video of you performing or singing?” Sambok and Mejied didn’t hesitate at all, but Reble said no. I remember thinking, I see you, I see you.
In the end, the protests informed the artists I chose for the first volume, with rap and R&B becoming the focus because that was what I was paying attention to at the time. But it’s limiting to look only at those genres, especially in a place like Shillong. As I kept working, I realised that one volume, or even two, wouldn’t be enough. I began to think about a second volume that would look at legacy, at the artists who laid the foundation of the music scene.
For me, it made more sense to have two separate books rather than try to do everything at once. It was also a realistic assessment of my capacity as a storyteller. You don’t want to feel depleted when you walk into an interview or a shoot.
As you said, this did not begin as a book. You started with those first three interviews and used them to work out the direction the project might take.
2020 is when I wasn’t sure where this work would go. Then a lot of things happened. 2021 was a year from hell for me. The second wave hit, and my mother was diagnosed with cancer, so her treatment was happening in Bombay. That became a whole other battle. Then it all went for a toss.
By early 2022, I released my first book, I’m Not Here, which I had been working on since 2014. In a weird, paradoxical way, it documented my absence. It was bleak, for lack of a better word. I needed to get I’m Not Here out of my system to get here.
I realised I wanted to become that actively present person. In the meantime, I’m Not Here happened, and I made a couple of books for clients like Payal Khandwala. I made Women of Shillong. In fact, 2022 is when things changed. I had met Janice [Pariat] before, but I did the book launch of I’m Not Here with her. On the first day we met, I thought we were having a work meeting. I was like, “Let’s talk about the book launch.” But we ended up spending seven hours together walking around the city, and I thought, this is a friend for life.
I remember very clearly the morning after the book launch of I’m Not Here at Dylan’s Café with Janice. I woke up, went out of my room, had a cup of coffee, and thought, something has shifted. I had planned to be in Shillong for just two weeks for the book launch, but I ended up staying seven weeks.
For the first time, when I was leaving, I had messages from people saying, “Miss you,” or “Come back soon.” I thought I had longed to hear that for so long. As it happened, I got to Bombay, and the next day I got a message from this client, Payal Khandwala, and Vikram, who is also a partner, saying, “We want to do this project, look at different places in the country through its women, and we want to start with Shillong.”
I thought, “Should I get on a flight now?” Then I thought, no, hang on, it’s going to be raining, so let’s wait. Later that year, I made the zine Women of India: Shillong. Slowly, in 2023, I made another book for Payal. I made Women of Benaras, and then a little book on single mothers called Ma.
By the time I came back to Shillong in June 2023, I had made a few books. I realised that this is my medium. I always knew it, but you don’t really know until you do the first one. You don’t know the nitty-gritty, the practicalities, and it always seems like an insurmountable task. But once you do it, you think, that’s what it is. I knew this was what I needed to do. I like to think in terms of a series of images, I like to use a lot of text, and this is what suits my practice best.
By the time I came back, I was thinking, “What do I do?” I wanted to spend more time in Shillong, but I couldn’t just stay here without doing work or making money, because my place in Bombay is still there and the rents are still monstrous. Then I realised I had three interviews, some base material, and the books I had made. That’s when I approached Meghalayan Age and said, “I think this place deserves its own book on musicians. Here are some profiles I had done and the books I have made.” They said, “We’ll roll with it.” And that is how the book happened.
In the second volume, you don’t address it directly, but you note that the Catholic Church initially objected to one of the musicians using Garo instruments, though they eventually came around. I’m curious about the affinities across the different genres you’ve documented, and the disagreements or tensions that exist between them.
After the release of the first volume, I already knew that the Evening Club is my favourite place in the country. I spend so much time there. I know the table numbers. So when the first volume launched, I knew it couldn’t just be me talking about it. I wanted to do it at EC, and Jeff, the owner of EC and also a very dear friend of mine, decided we needed an evening of songs.
Over two days, we had a kind of mini Songs of Our People festival. Four musicians performed one day, five the next, and they covered everything. There was a metal musician, R&B, rap, and reggae. It was all coming together. It felt like a small window into the larger landscape.
Quite a few musicians came up to me and said, “If it wasn’t for this book or this event, we would never have met.” That is just how a landscape exists. There are different players, and everyone is doing their own thing.
What’s unique about this place is that everyone is incredibly cued in. A young rapper following in the footsteps of someone like K-Bloodz knows the metal musicians here. Someone playing the blues – I’m not just talking about stalwarts like Rudy or Tipriti – has a sense of the wider scene. There is a shared knowledge that a larger landscape exists.
At the same time, cross-communication may or may not happen consistently. Collaborations do occur. For instance, on K-Bloodz’s latest EP, they have Maya, a folk-fusion soul singer, on a track. These connections happen partly because, at the end of the day, it is still a small town, but everyone continues to do their own thing.
I wouldn’t even call it competition. There is a beautiful and healthy acknowledgement of everyone and their work. That’s how I would describe the interaction between these different genres.
I want to linger on that moment when the Catholic Church raised objections. Were there other moments of negotiation with authority, religious or otherwise?
You’re talking about Dewal Sangma’s piece. While his entire village converted from the indigenous Songsarek faith to Christianity, the truth is that the church doesn’t usually intervene in that way. Many musicians actually start out in the church. Very often, the first time a musician performs is there – they practise, they learn.
Take someone like Rudy [Rudy Wallang, a pioneering figure in Shillong’s rock scene]. The church is a very active part of society here, across many aspects of life.
Stories like Dewal’s are not really emblematic of a larger idea of the state, though there are challenges, of course. This is a smaller town, even as it becomes more progressive. In the second book, for instance, there is someone like Gwyneth, who has been openly queer for a long time. She was the first solo woman artist and also the first openly queer artist. In the 1980s and 1990s, she had to negotiate her position carefully.
Now, the city is far more progressive and inclusive, but that wasn’t always the case. That’s why an artist like Gwyneth is so important. She released her album only in 2022, after being a musician for about 30 years. She had released a video called Syrngiew with Sasha, Jeff’s sister, who appears in the video. The song itself wasn’t explicitly about queer love, but the video showed two women in love, and it received a lot of backlash.
At the same time, we’re seeing greater acceptance around these issues. Of course, every society has its conservative sections, no matter where you are.
One thing that stood out to me in the book is the recurring use of the first person. It feels as much about the people you’re writing about as it is about your relationship to them and to your homeland. Was that a deliberate choice?
Yes, 100%. More so for the second one than the first, because I knew I wanted to include myself. At the core, the intention of making this book was to make it known that I am from this place. That’s why it’s Songs of Our People, not Songs of the People. I wanted to include myself in that “our.”
With the first one, I was a little circumspect. I wanted to do right by the musicians and their stories, and it also felt like I was testing the waters.
It was a lot more journalistic.
Absolutely. That’s exactly what I was about to say. The second one is where I got more comfortable, because I knew how the book had been received – not by other readers, but by the musicians themselves, and what it meant to them. That’s when I felt I could own that voice in the second volume and say, “You know what, I’ve proven my point.” I could then be more comfortable putting myself into the pieces.
Even in the introduction, the first book takes a more academic approach – not strictly academic, but along the lines of, “This is what music is, this is oral tradition, this is how these things work.” In the second book, the introduction begins with the day I had to put Snowy, my dog, down. From the start, I knew I wanted it to be more personal. That’s very true, and it was entirely intentional.
Since the volumes weren’t released together, was the second one more retrospective in how you decided which subjects to include?
I wanted to look at the books as a whole and ask what worked where. For instance, the story that opens volume two, Looking Ahead, profiling Khmih, was originally meant for volume one. But there were two issues. At the time, there weren’t many choirs featured, and I couldn’t quite find the right place for it. It became a much better fit for volume two, which looks not only at choirs but also at teachers. By then, I also felt better equipped to write Royal’s story. It’s such a moving story, and the interview itself was very emotional.
When I eventually looked at both books together, I began to see them as a whole. Of course, while making the first book, I wasn’t thinking ahead to a second volume. But taken together, they do something quite specific. On the surface, they are collections of short pieces, but read in chronological order, there is a clear sense of movement. The first volume ends its introduction with the line, “These are the songs of our people, come listen.” The opening story that follows is Sound of Music, profiling Katta Nissa, where he speaks about onomatopoeia and the language barrier. That transition was deliberate.
That sense of movement runs through both books. I was always thinking about the shape of the book as a whole, especially with the first volume. It felt like a daunting task. You receive the grant, and then comes the question of what’s next. You have to do the work and prove that you were worthy of the grant in the first place. I did not want to get ahead of myself. To some extent, I wanted to play it safe and write about things I could relate to.
There was also a great deal of research involved, alongside instinct. Take Nangsan [Lyngwa], for example, who appears in the first volume. In some ways, he might seem more suited to the second book. If you think about metal in Shillong, it is impossible to imagine the scene without him. [For context, Lyngwa handled vocals and guitar in Plague Throat, a three-piece death metal outfit]. He won a competition against bands from Bombay and Bangalore, went on to play at Wacken [one of the world’s biggest heavy metal festivals in Germany], and represented the country. Plague Throat became a defining name for metal in Shillong.
But when I first met him, I had no intention of including him in the book. I approached him as a resource person, someone I could speak to for background research, someone who might point me toward others. Within twenty minutes of our conversation, I knew he had to be part of the book. He began talking about melancholy, about how he picks up the guitar when he feels sad, about sadness as a motivating force. At that point, it was clear that his story belonged here.
Much of the process, then, was about writing from what I knew and resisting the urge to get ahead of myself. It was also about thinking of the book as a cohesive whole, rather than treating it as a checklist of important names. Many people are significant to the scene, but if a story does not fit into the larger arc of the book, it does not belong there.
The books are very design-forward, from the clothbound covers to the fonts. Can you walk us through the choices behind their design?
The design was informed very early on by the format itself. I always knew the book would be a collection of stories, and I decided from the start that everyone would get equal space. That decision immediately dictated the design. I spoke to my printer, figured out the cost, and then asked myself how much space I could realistically give each artist. In the first book, it was ten pages per person. In the second, if you count the gatefold as two pages, it comes to about 14. That gave the second volume a slightly more fluid feel.
Once that was settled, other decisions followed. I knew I would be using multiple photographs per person. The average length of each piece in the first book was about 800 to 1,000 words. In the second, it was roughly 1,200 to 1,400 words. That meant a lot of text and photographs running end to end, so I knew I needed white space. Breathing room was essential. That is where the negative space comes in.
Giving equal weight to every artist also ruled out putting any one person on the cover, which would immediately tilt the balance. A photograph of scenery or clouds felt boring and done-to-death. That left two options: illustration or type. The title itself, The Songs of Our People, is mouthy, and from the beginning, I felt it could lend itself beautifully to typography.
That is where Shiva and Juhi came in. We had started following each other during COVID, around the time of the CAA-NRC protests. There was mutual admiration, but we had never spoken. When I called them about the project, no convincing was required. They are now a very close friend. I am grateful they came on board because the cover has become central to the book’s identity. A book like this depends on a cover like that.
What also mattered was their cultural attunement and grounding in countercultural references. I still wish I could relive the first conversation when they showed me the initial type explorations. I remember feeling completely transfixed and thinking, “Yes, this is exactly what the book needs.”
Ultimately, the work dictated the design, and I let it do so. That came from knowing my limits. I am not a designer by training. My primary practice is photography. But photography cannot exist in isolation. It needs context. I stayed with what I knew. I understand how negative space works and how portraiture works. My core influence is New Yorker profiles, the way they photograph and write about people, so you feel you are getting a window into someone’s mind. I knew I could do that kind of writing.
At the same time, this work carries responsibility. Many of these artists had never given an interview before. For some, this was the first time anyone had truly listened. Praisley, for instance, spoke to me for nearly an hour and a half in the first book. I barely asked questions. He simply trusted me and spoke. I was constantly aware of that trust, and I wanted to honour it. That meant not experimenting unnecessarily, not pushing form for its own sake, and staying grounded in what I understood.
It also meant bringing the right people into the process. Janice is someone I brainstorm with. The QR code in the first book was her idea. Uttam, this brilliant guy who does so many things at once, handled production. November worked on the cover. It was about recognising what I could do, where I needed help, and saying, “These are the people I need.” That is how the book came together.
The interviewing process seems rich and layered. As you note in the book, some people were more reclusive, others more forthcoming. Did any interviews stretch for hours? How did the process unfold and did you meet people more than once? Tell us more about it.
I did meet people more than once, unless they were in Tura, which is about nine hours away. Unless dictated by external factors, I always made sure that interviews and shoots happened on separate days. I avoided doing a shoot on the same day whenever I could.
There were people who spoke more and people who spoke less. I would not say anyone refused to open up, but the range was certainly there. That is why the epigraph of the first book comes from a conversation between Baldwin and Nina Simone: “To have a conversation with someone, you must reveal yourself.” I included it because it is a tool I rely on.
If I am asking someone to trust me with their story, I first make it clear that I am willing to share my own. I open up to a certain degree, explain my reasons for making the book, and talk about who I am, including what it means to be a dkhar in Shillong. That context often helps the other person feel at ease.
Fortunately, people did trust me. I’m so grateful for that. Royal, the choir director of Khmih, was very nervous before the interview. He asked if it would be okay to speak in Khasi. I told him to go ahead, that it would simply be a conversation. For people unfamiliar with this format, the presence of a camera or a microphone can feel intimidating.
Royal began in Khasi, but the conversation soon shifted organically into English. I always start by asking about a person’s first memory of music, which helps set the tone. After about an hour and twenty minutes, I pointed out that we had been speaking entirely in English. He laughed and agreed. I later met one of his choir students, who told me that Royal had asked them to read the piece aloud and had been moved to tears.
For me, the central takeaway was trust. When I was freelancing in Bombay in my early twenties, work was not always steady, so I had to cultivate discipline. I read constantly, especially New Yorker profiles. I was drawn to how they place you inside someone’s mind.
Being at concerts and interviews in this context, not just as a photographer but also as a writer, was deeply energising. I could register small details that mattered.
The terms of trust were always clear to me. You have to earn it, and then you have to honour it. When someone shared something especially sensitive, or something that might invite backlash, I sometimes showed them the piece before publication. Otherwise, the guiding principle was simple: earn the trust, and honour it.
[ad_2]
Source link