Meghalaya Government in its attempt to make the state the ‘Music
capital’ of the country has decided to come up in a big way to promote
musicians in the state. Chief Minister Conrad Sangma on Thursday
announced a multi pronged approach of the state Government towards
making a music industry in the state.
Addressing the gathering at the Meghalaya Grassroots Music Project
(MGMP), Season 2 held in Shillong, Sangma mooted the idea to support
musicians with finance to buy musical instruments.
“I like to suggest that lets keep a small amount of funds where we
start to finance and support the musicians with the musical
instruments also. So nothing like it if we can give these musicians
better music support like better guitar, better microphone, better
sound system and keyboards,” the CM said.
“There can be a selection committee and through proper selection
process deserving musicians can be given the financial assistance,” he
added.
Apart from that he said efforts should be put in to provide proper
music training to the musicians here at Meghalaya Grassroots Music
Project as most of the musicians here are naturally talented, however,
a proper scientific approach to music reading, learning, and writing
music should be encouraged.
“We should try to put in some effort in which we can provide a proper
music training to our musicians, lot of our musicians are naturally
talented but nothing like it if they can understand the scales and
actually provide them the education of reading notes. I feel it’s good
if our musicians then guided in a proper manner,” The Chief Minister
said.
“ So we can come up with a program in which we can skill our MGMP
artists to read and write music so that no do they perform but they
perform it in a way that is done in an international level and may be
can become music teachers apart from being musicians or even become a
composes and start working at National and International level,”
Sangma added.
The Chief Minister further said, as most of the musicians want to
record their music there, therefore, there should be some programme
through which we could be able to put up Music studios.
“ More and more studios there should be studios at every corner, so
that the artist can walk in to any studio that kind of ecosystem that
is required for the music to thrive cannot just happen with just
singular approach it has to be multi prone approach,” Sangma.
Stating that the state Government is trying to upscale the music
industry in the state, he said, “If we start having some programmes
where again we keep some amount of money where we give simple
equipments some guitars at the grass root level so that children at
the young age of 6-7-8-9 who would love to play guitar but never had
the opportunity to play the guitar. Why don’t we in a large scale
start distributing simple guitar equipment to our schools and colleges
and clubs.”
Stating that the Government wants to encourage music in the state, he
said youth may fall in the wrong phase if not encouraged in music.
In a heartwarming moment the Chief Minister also promised an Ibanez
guitar to a differently abled musician who had performed during the
occasion and on the sidelines had voiced his desire to the Chief
Minister to own such a guitar.
Assuring that MGMP will be a continuous program, the Chief Minister
urged the musicians to leverage upon their fan base and spread the
right messages of social causes like anti-drugs, cleanliness,
environment etc.
Special Guest, John Abraham, said that what the government is doing to
give platform to sports persons and musicians and the youth in general
is impressive. Addressing the artists, he said, “Keep living your
dreams and understand that you are very fortunate for we never had
this kind of support system and guidance.”
The Chief Minister and the other dignitaries felicitated Tengnang
Sangma, Gracyl Ropmay, Starly Shullai, Felix Langsteih, Cinda Sangma,
Amabel Susgni and Desmond Rimaki Sunn. A Book “The Songs of Our
People,” by Anurag Banerjee was also released during the occasion.
MGMP Season 2 since its launch on Oct, 4th 2023, has organized 730
events across the State with more than 1000 performers participating.
The average income for musicians/performers has increased to 10,000 to
12,000 per event in Season 2.