RhythmsOfNortheast.com to be Launched in April

My name is Dhritiman Deori and I’m a musician/audio engineer based in Delhi. I’m writing to you because I’m presently doing a cultural preservation project on Northeast India that your magazine might be interested in covering. It is a completely first of its kind experimental project, but is also a very important one.

I started Project ‘Rhythm of Northeast’ in August 2008 with the aim of creating a database in audio-visual format of all the existing folk instruments of the various ethnic communities of the whole Northeastern region of India comprising eight states. It’s a step towards preserving our rich cultural heritage and also creating awareness amongst the young generation. What I’m doing at present is to travel all across the Northeastern region with a mobile recording studio and cameras, identify the various folk instruments of different tribes, record the music and sounds on location and also take photographs. Material from the entire journey will then be uploaded onto www.rhythmofnortheast.com which to the best of my knowledge will be the first website to be dedicated totally to the folk music of the region. The website will contain audio samples of folk instruments, folk music, photographs of instruments and photographs in general, videos, and articles. We believe this archive will act as a source of knowledge not only for students, but for musicians, artists, scholars, and researchers as well.

The website will be launched officially in the first part of April with the content collected so far. I’m being assisted by two other sound engineers in the entire project and we are likely to complete our journey by September this year. We also plan to organize workshops and meetings in colleges and other educational institutions of the region from April on the need of cultural preservation and also to involve the youth in the process. The project has been funded by Panos South Asia.

Given the political unrest and separatist violence across the region Project ‘Rhythm of Northeast’ is a desire to bind the 8 sisters together through music and help us in moving forward to a better tomorrow. It would be really great if you can help us publicizing the project and be a part of it.

Dhritiman Deori
+91-9435485644, +91-9899825290
www.dhritionline.com
www.rhythmofnortheast.com