As many as 59 singers took part in the Liangmai Folk Song Competition 2021 organised by the Liangmai Foundation in a bid to raise awareness on the disappearance of folk songs and preserve them.
The Liangmai Foundation is a tribal based research group founded mainly by the Liangmais in Manipur and Nagaland, it stated.
In this second edition held on October, the 59 singers presented Liangmai legendary songs. Each song lasted a duration ranging from 5-15 minutes and the participants were both male and female from Nagaland and Manipur, the foundation said.
The songs will be transcribed, translated, annotated, and submitted at any digital archive for a long lasting preservation, it mentioned.
It further stated that an online meeting for the prize declaration of the competition cum special talk on oral tradition was conducted on October 30. A special talk entitled ‘Save your oral tradition and stay away from cultural amnesia’ was delivered by professor Anvita Abbi, a renown linguist and a champion in documentation and description of endangered languages and minority languages.
Professor Abbi strongly encouraged the audience to be the creator, consumer and preserver of culture and story. She pointed out that oral literature is a repository of indigenous knowledge which empowers the community to understand its past, engage meaningfully with the present and insightfully shape the future.
The Organising Committee also expressed gratitude to Forest Minister Awangbow Newmai and MLA Namri Nchang who is also the advisor, Water Resources, Government of Nagaland for their support and generous financial assistance for the prize fund, it added.
