Music of Northeast Hills

Summary

Northeast Hills is MuGlobe’s broad listening frame for Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura, Meghalaya and Sikkim. It brings together several connected music scenes, not a single cultural tradition. Local-language song, English and Hindi songwriting, rock, hip-hop, Christian music and community-specific ritual repertoires coexist in different proportions. Artists such as Arunachal’s Taba Chake and Sikkim/Mumbai songwriter Anoushka Maskey illustrate careers that connect these places to wider Indian and international circuits.

The internal contrasts are substantial. Chokri Li in Nagaland, Mizo congregational singing and Vaishnava sankirtana in Manipur have different languages, histories and social purposes. Their coexistence with contemporary recording makes the area musically rich, but none can stand for all seven states.

Contemporary and trending

Independent artists move between local audiences, Indian cities and overseas touring. Chake’s 2025 album *Khud Ko Miloon* followed *Bombay Dreams*, while his work for the film *I Want to Talk* connected his songwriting to Hindi cinema. An October 2026 interview discussed repertoire spanning Hindi and English, with Nyishi also part of his musical background, and a second European tour.

Shillong has a visible hip-hop and R&B strand. Meba Ofilia’s 2025 programme at Mumbai’s Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre presented songs including “Don’t Stop” and “Done Talking,” showing one route through which Meghalaya musicians reach audiences elsewhere. In Sikkim-linked indie music, Maskey’s self-organized touring and arrangements drawing on jazz-pop, bossa nova, indie rock and dream pop demonstrate a similarly outward-facing practice.

K-pop listening is also documented. A 2026 study of northeastern fan communities examined how listeners adapted to the loss of TikTok by using platforms including Instagram and YouTube. Its small sample reveals active fandom and changing discovery practices, rather than a measure of the whole region’s preferences.

History

Christian musical history is especially significant in Mizoram, but it developed through local transformation. Joanna Heath’s study describes a repertoire of translated Western hymns and original compositions, with altered tunes and singing practices emerging during revivals between 1906 and 1930. Lengkhawm zai became a Christian and Indigenous tradition with its own dance, gesture and instrumental conventions. This history complicates any simple division between imported hymnody and unchanged local song.

Manipur’s sankirtana has a different devotional basis. Within Vaishnava communities of the plains, singers, drummers and dancers narrate Krishna’s life and participate in religious occasions and life-cycle ceremonies. Mentor-to-disciple transmission and collective involvement sustain a practice whose musical form is inseparable from worship and social relationships.

More recent band histories are equally local. A 2015 survey described Aizawl’s Scavenger Project, formed as a collective in 2007, moving through rock competitions and releasing *Empty Highway* in 2010. In Tripura, Borkung Hrangkhawl used rap to address social issues. These are distinct creative histories within a shared network of stages and media attention.

Genres

Li, as performed by the Tetseo Sisters, is Chokri-language song of the Chakhesang Naga community. The group describes an accompaniment that can include the single-string tati or heka libuh. Their own account of arranging “Shecho mo me” identifies separate vocal parts, making the interaction of voices an important listening feature rather than treating the songs simply as unison chants.

Mizo lengkhawm zai is collective singing with conventions developed in Christian worship; it can occur in church services and dedicated community gatherings. Manipur sankirtana typically brings two drummers together with a larger group of singer-dancers, surrounded by devotees. The spatial and bodily dimensions distinguish these practices from a studio song played to a passive audience.

Tripura’s Kokborok folklore curriculum identifies oral songs alongside festivals, dances and instruments including sumui, sarinda, chongpreng and kham. This provides a useful reminder that Tripura’s musical world includes specifically named local resources as well as rap and wider popular media.

Artists

The Tetseo Sisters offer a documented route into Chokri Li and its presentation beyond Nagaland. Their brother Mhaseve contributes to production and touring, and the group explicitly frames its music around stories, hopes and experiences of its community.

Taba Chake’s “Aao Chalein,” “Shaayad,” “Walk With Me” and “Khud Ko Miloon” trace a singer-songwriter career across languages and audiences. Meba Ofilia provides a Shillong reference for the meeting of rap and sung R&B. Maskey’s *Things I Saw in a Dream* began through home recording during the pandemic, connecting intimate writing to the practical work of producing, presenting and distributing music independently.

The Scavenger Project and Borkung Hrangkhawl add Mizoram and Tripura perspectives to that list. These examples are deliberately varied: a vocal tradition bearer, a guitarist-songwriter, a rapper and a rock band demonstrate different kinds of musicianship. They are entry points into local scenes, rather than a ranking of the region’s best-known performers.

Boundary definition and research

The approved region joins seven state territories and is explicitly provisional. Assam has its own MuGlobe region, so “Northeast Hills” here does not mean the standard administrative Northeast India grouping. The polygon also includes plains, valleys and cities; its short name is a geographic convenience rather than a literal description of every settlement.

The breadth of this frame is its principal limitation. Manipur’s plains and hills, the many communities within Arunachal and Nagaland, and Sikkim’s Himalayan connections require finer distinctions than one area can display. Festival circuits, artists’ movement and shared access to international popular music support a connected overview, but do not establish one common taste. The article therefore identifies specific communities where evidence permits and avoids extending Christian, Vaishnava or Indigenous ritual practices to populations for whom they are not representative.