The Women’s Voices Project

Funded by Gerry Farrell Awards

Title: Research trip to Ungma Village, Mokokchung, Nagaland, India

Recipient: Jaremdi Wati Longchar, ethnomusicologist

Date: January, 2020

Over the past few decades, there has been a growing number of ethnomusicological studies on gender and the role it plays in the musical tradition of cultures around the world. The repertoire of women and their musical practices are now at the centre of a large number of studies. However, such studies have not emerged in the field of Naga folk music even though there is ample material and sufficient scope to carry out such research. As a Naga from the Ao Naga tribe, I, therefore, wanted to focus my master’s dissertation on the female folk music tradition of the Ao Naga tribe in an attempt to bridge that gap in Naga folk music studies.   In July 2018 (two months before I began my master’s in ethnomusicology in London), I visited eight  Ao villages (Ungma, Khensa, Longsa, Longkhüm, Khar, Chuchuyimlang, Mopungchuket, and Mongsenyimti)  in Mokokchung district, Nagaland, Northeast India in order to conduct preliminary fieldwork in preparation for my research. I conducted interviews with folk musicians in these villages with a majority of my interviewees being women. After gathering and evaluating the data, I noted that although historically, Ao women had been relegated to secondary roles in most spheres of society and their views were (and are) often suppressed, within the musical tradition, women played an equally important role as men and the folk songs served as a powerful medium of expression for them. I also noted that Ungma village had the strongest folk music tradition and that the women of the village (two women in particular) played an active role in the preservation and transmission of the folk music tradition. I, therefore, decided to focus my research on Ungma village and the two female folk singers of the village.