Your life is never the same after you have attended The Hornbill Festival in Nagaland and spent some time there. It’s like taking the red pill of the Matrix. Nothing is the same anymore. The first ten days of December, Kohima is an overwhelming blur of activities, fun, music, activities, competitions, drives, runs and what not. It’s like a crazy melting pot of Naga culture. The 16 major tribes put on their best display of culture, food, dance and music. And it draws a larger crowd than Glastonbury has ever done.
December 1 st is the Founding Day of Nagaland state. The Hornbill Festival kicked off in style at the Kishama Village amphitheatre with nearly 45000 people attending the first day on the festival. Nagaland Governor, R N Ravi and Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio formally inaugurated the festival by beating the traditional gong. Aniashu Village Chief, Mongtei from the Khiamniungan community invoked the traditional blessings.
In the past, till 2015, Hornbill Festival and the Hornbill International Rock Festival, used to be held at Kohima. But since 2016 The music festival has been shifted to Dimapur to decongest Kohima and also give Dimapur a larger role to play as it’s the biggest city besides Kohima. From this year
TaFMA(Task Force for Music & Arts) brought lot of cohesiveness into the programming of the music festival at Dimapur as well as the stage pogrammng at the main auditorium at Kishama. The music festival got tagged as ‘The Experiential Festival’ is India’s biggest music festival by TaFMA.
While through the day the different tribes presented dance and cultural performances at the amphitheater, at night the stage would host bands from across the country and made the whole experience wholesome and memorable.
TaFMA advisor Theja Meru, in a press interview to Nagaland Today informed that 50 plus bands from across the country as well as countries like Hungary, Korea and Indonesia will erform at Kisama, Kohima and Dimapur. More than 100 musicians will also perform in cafés and hotels at Kohima during the ten-days festival.
TaFMA also brought in Casio India as the associate sponsor of Hornbill Music Festival with Mahindra, Gaana, Epiphone as event partners and Red FM India and Rolling Stone, India as radio and magazine partners respectively.
Kohima saw varied performers and artists from various genres. Pandit Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, Swarathma, Lords of Rock, Trance Effect, as well as a Box Office featuring the incredible Tetsea Sisters performing two shows every day to near packed audiences. On the 4 th a Hungarian band, Borsa, performed at the main stage at Kishama thanks to a tie up with Indian Council for Cultural Relation (ICCR) who also partnered with TaFMA for the music festival. The foot tapping dance and music was high energy and drove the crowd wild.
Earlier this year Rolling Stone magazine did a story on how Theja Meru and team are changing things around to bring in more opportunities for the music industry in Nagaland besides of course re-programming and sprucing up Hornbill Music Festival. One can read the story Here
While the festival kicked off in style at Kohima, the Hornbill Music Festival was officially launched by the Minister of Housing and Mechanical (PWD), Tongpang Ozukum at Dimapur at the Agri Expo Grounds. He expounded on the talent of the Naga people who possess the gift and talent “to attract International attention to this small but vibrant state of India.”
The first night was titled ‘Crossroads’ and featured artists like Divine Connection, Nagaland’s seasoned Christian rock band who were the winners of the second edition of MTV’s Rock On, Ayim Longchar, Tokaholi Chishi, Tali Angh, and Asin Shurhozelie.
In the next nine days bands from across the world and India played. Some of them were Indus Creed, Swarathma, Tune Up Channel, DJ Kiran Kartika from Indonesia, Polar Stars, Alobo Naga & the band, The Classic Rock Band from UK, DJ Ultra V from Ukraine, Dualist Inquiry, ‘MUSTB’,a K-pop idol group and LiveYubin also from Korea besides many more artists.
The Big Stage held from 7 th Dec till 10 th featuredwinners of Ticket to Hornbill, which singled-out, through a competition, one act each from the eleven Nagaland districts, along with this inaugural editions toppers, Across Seconds, an instrumental rock band from Mumbai, Delhi-based singer songwriter-songwriter, Sanjeeta Bhattacharya) and alt-rocking Bangaloreans, Spacebar.
The enormity of Hornbill Festival hits you once you are there. The multitude of events and activities taking place will leave you gasping for breath and time. You want to soak up as much as you can but you know that you will have to come back. Hornbill Festival is like no other anywhere in the world. It’s the biggest Experiential Festival this part of the globe.
Hornbill Music Festival 2019 Nagaland
The biggest event of course was the closing ceremony in the evning which witnessed Chief Guest Dr A R Rahman sign an MoU with TaFMA. Besides colourful performances like the Unity Dance by the cultural troupe, there was a lso a performance to the Academy Winning track Jai Ho by a troupe f Naga dancers.
