“When I was little, I would hear my father recite the ritual chant close to the hearth and sleep to the sound of his voice dissipating into a lullaby”, recalls Dobom Doji, a folk singer from Arunachal Pradesh.
His father, 68-year-old Kendo Doji, is a shaman from Doji Village in Aalo. Shamans in Tanii (descendants of primordial ancestor Abotani) clans occupy a central religious position. Recounting myths in a language understood by a few, a shaman sings and uses chants to engage the spirits. Since his formative years, Kendo has replicated his predecessor’s affection towards shamanism and grew up to follow suit. Today, alongside his shamanistic duties, he recounts histories and pens them in a script he conceived himself. Many of these histories and stories are preserved in Dobom Doji Collective’s folk music. “Asi Noru Eh”, a DDC original, was written by Dobom’s father and now finds a second life on stage. He detailed the rituals of benediction to the deities for the conduct of a successful event in his lyrics. The music video depicts how Galos perform these rituals to bring good fortune in events such as hunting, childbearing, etc.
However, outside the village hearth, oral traditions are slowly dissipating. Shamans, along with their vast repository of traditional verbal knowledge and practices, stand precariously. Where chants once echoed the euphoria of festivals, attention has now shifted to modern displays of tribal identity, where symbolic gestures such as wearing traditional attire and sharing local food at festivals have become common. At this critical juncture of seemingly losing traces of the knowledge that made them, Dobom Doji Collective (DDC), through their adaptation and rendition of folk songs, is reviving our lost prayers.
Dobom is a converted Christian despite his father being the clan’s shaman. However, any perceived clash between their beliefs is irrelevant. Dobom said,
“My father always told me, you choose your religion, but your traditions and customs are inherent. Remember that we are born of extraordinary culture and we ought to keep it alive.”
This, he says, resonated over the years. Eventually, when he released a rendition of the popular Galo folk tune “Jimi Ane” (originally sung by Jomnya Siram) on YouTube, it gained massive popularity, and his work began to be appreciated widely. Audiences invariably loved the shamanistic tonal quality of his voice, a vocal resonance inherited from his father’s recitations, which further roused his motivation to keep folk music alive.
*According to Galo cosmology, the world was created by Jimi Ane (Ane means mother in Galo), regarded as the Supreme Being. The history of the Galo tribe, therefore, in the original genealogy, essentially begins with her (Jimi Ane).
Dobom was earlier a member of the band called “Brickcity Boyz”. However, the band disbanded in 2019, and after a two-year hiatus, Dobom Doji Collective formed. They first performed together as a band in 2022 during BasCon 5.0, in Basar. Since then, they have performed at numerous other events and music festivals, including Siang Fiesta 2.0, Goonj Arunachal, and IndiaVision Mandala Festival, Dirang. Their forthcoming performance will be at the “Orange Festival of Adventure and Music” (OFAM) in Dambuk, the first-ever Adventure and Music festival in India. The band will perform alongside popular artists such as Bombay Vikings, Ritviz, and others.
“I am content with our work. My bandmates are the best. It hasn’t been an easy ride, but we love what we do and enjoy it. This feels like my purpose. My father’s encouragement has always been a driving force for my music career, and it is to him that I owe my everything.” Dobom explained.
Dobom Doji Collective is a folk-fusion, 5-member band from Arunachal Pradesh. Inspired by his father’s tonal quality, Dobom emulates a similar musical tone and pitch as the band’s frontman. Joe Kabak plays lead guitar, Nyaamo Jini plays rhythm guitar, Papu Dolo, a former member of Alien Gods, plays bass, and Samuel Laye plays drums. Collectively, they have been performing for less than a year; nevertheless, the band’s popularity has been evident in the audience’s appreciation. Their work has garnered the attention of people and artists who appreciate folk art and tradition. Their songs at large reflect the saga of our ancestors, the lives they lived, and the myths they created. These myths and stories represented the absolute of primordial times.
DDC’s music reflects the dynamics of how traditional societies persevere. In the study of religion, scholars like Mircea Eliade suggest that, in traditional societies where the sacred is valued, its appearances are contained in myths. He demonstrates the “Nostalgia of Origins”, where traditional world religions desire to return to the “Primordial Paradise”, referring to a longing for a future that is reminiscent of the past. These histories then appear time and again, reshaping our culture, in an overlapping process that offers remedial corrections to contemporary issues. The Collective’s music brings out that oral memory through their songs that resonate with the larger impulse to preserve culture.
Culture is most widely made up of ‘tangible’ and ‘intangible’ aspects. Tangibles include food and clothing, whereas intangible forms of culture include our customs, traditions, narrations, and oral histories. Although the definition of folk art is not unique, it is commonly defined as a form of artwork produced by groups within the larger cosmopolitan society, primarily isolated from the fast-paced notion of contemporary city life. Although attempts have been made to preserve folk art in its pristine form, contemporary realities leave little space for older traditions to proliferate in ways they did before. Therefore, prayers and chants are slowly being recuperated into widely accepted forms of cultural expression as folk songs, engaging and energising audiences in ways they did decades ago.
Manorama Sharma, in his book, “A Comprehensive Study of Indian Folk Music and Culture”, states, “Folk traditions are contributions of cultural variety, agricultural methods, communal groupings, religious and social organizations, festivals and seasons. These activities and the emotions involved need to be conveyed by humans via sound.”
However, because social change is never a linear process and complexities designate the socio-cultural interactions between people, any change is, therefore, a by-product of these interactions. These interactions are a dialectical process of dialogue, debate, action, and reflection, occurring often within indigenous expressions of culture. Traditional folk songs are one such form of communication that retains this dialectical process and ascertains proximity between people and their cultures.
E.H. Carr writes that “History is a continuous process of interaction between the historians and his facts, an unending discourse between the present and the past, a dynamic, arguing process,” simplifying what had been said before; cultures and humans are production and reproduction of each other, one engendering the other and in turn creating possibilities in the understanding of cultures. Thus, folk songs have remained a crude representation of any tribal culture. All events begin and end with melodies of tradition. Played and sung during events such as weddings, baby showers, housewarmings, and even funerals, folk songs have remained a way of life unchanged ever since. These songs are often reminders of the interaction between humans and nature; a recollection of indebtedness to our ancestors for their struggles. However, not all folk songs are memories of the past; many offer insights into future expectations, changing over time and reflecting the societal norms and values they encounter.
Tradition, therefore, as the basis of cultural preservation, is a complex process. It requires constantly (re)interpreting what we understand as ‘traditional’ and worthy of ‘preservation’. As such, newer renditions of these expressions become essential in small-scale societies, where oral literature was once transmitted and inherited as folklore and folk songs. As anthropologist Eugeen Roosens observed, “Ethnic groups are affirming themselves more and more. They promote their own new cultural identity, even as their old identity is eroded… To be sure, the process of acculturation will continue to cause many cultural differences to fade away. Nevertheless, new cultural differences will be introduced, sometimes in a deliberate manner.”
Today, DDC performs folk songs by pairing traditional vocal delivery with Western instruments such as electric guitars, bass and drums. Contrary to how folk songs were performed with isolated vocals, this caters to a wider audience, transcending state and national boundaries, immediately engaging listeners with genres and tunes they are familiar with.
“To keep folk music alive, we have to respect the present epoch and move along with it,” the band notes. Today, with the growing popularity of folk songs, folk songs stand the test of time and remain a testament to the fluid nature and expression of indigenous identity.
Indigeneity cannot be materialised as something static. It is expressed in reformation and change. Traditional religions all over the world have been institutionalised in one form or another to prevent their death. Similarly, like any other form of culture, religion or folk art requires alterations to survive. Because folk art and music lack prescribed rules, they lend themselves easily to fusion and mixing. “Oral traditions offer room for improvisation. Therefore, any eclectic vision of folk music renders subjectivity and personality. The songs can feel to be ours again by singing it the way we love.”, says DDC.
This creative arrangement doubles as a strategy for language revitalisation in the region. As folk songs are sung in local dialects, it initiates the absorption of the natural rhythm and sounds of a language. Across Arunachal Pradesh, indigenous languages are seemingly dissipating from public domains into domestic conversations at home, giving way to lingua francas. Labels such as “endangered” do little for revitalisation. In the region, the disappearance of local dialects is seen as inevitable. This normalises external influence and occupation by foreign languages, which also actively impedes any attempt to save traditional languages. As linguist Cynthia Groff opines, “To legitimise a language, one has to acknowledge its existence.”
By performing Galo lyrics on the stage, DDC actively challenges modern linguistic hierarchies. “When people heard our songs, it evoked a sense of curiosity as to what our songs inferred. A hum here and a hum there, although slowly but steadily, feels like a folk revolution is imminent.”, says DDC.
Language creates the world we inhabit, and as such, it is an external manifestation of our mind. Our thoughts and expressions are limited to the languages we speak. Indigenous languages and dialects offer a multitude of these expressions, where every emotive expression is communicated in indigenous dialects. Therefore, reviving our chants, myths, histories, and dialects in folk songs is an active endeavour to preserve and propagate our culture and traditions. Their recent release, “Melo Jajine”, is a rendition of an old classic by Moge Doji that narrates the story of migration. It enunciates the profundity of our forefathers’ struggles and, eventually, their settlement in the hills. The song rekindles storytelling as an integral part of our culture. Thus, a fluid transposition of traditional elements into contemporary expressions does not warrant dismissing culture; it enhances it. Indigeneity is independent of change. In contemporary times, this change often engenders indigeneity in ways customs and mores would not.
Therefore, to claim that culture dies when older traditions break down is a defeatist overstatement. Although some customs may recede, their decline warrants the need to advance our culture in acceptable forms. Because how long can any community or group cling to something that doesn’t materialise into contemporary needs? And who is to say that culture and traditions are finite? We need to understand that identities and such indigeneity are fluid concepts, and so is the need to adapt our culture to them. Therefore, in an attempt to keep our traditions and culture alive, DDC reviving the lost prayers of our forefathers will memorialise our ancestors’ spirits and ethos in us forever.
