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Hamnyei, Kunwang, Angip and Bangshing, the 4 member musical group go by the name “EaStory Project”. They have been taking the music industry by storm with their recently released album “Main Aaya Hoon”! Coming out of their comfort zone the group forayed into Hindi music for the love of language and music.
Rhythm Of Love caught up with the soulful artists to convey their story of music without boundaries.
EASTERN MIRROR: How long have you been performing together?
EaStory Project: We have been together since 2009, where Hamnyei, Kunwang, Angip and I (Bangshing) together assembled with the Project East Story which we afterward christened it as Eastory Projects. We self produced the album ‘Monglu Ungvung’ in 2009 which is primarily a folk-fusion album with the help of our friends.EASTERN MIRROR: How would you describe your music for the audience who have not heard your music before?
EaStory Project: Music is a universal language, it doesn’t have any barriers and we try our best to play good music with good songs for our people. We can feel the pulse of Hindi songs in Nagaland as we grew up listening to Hindi songs.
EASTERN MIRROR: Tell us about EaStory Project.
EaStory Project: EaStory Project is a musical ensemble / Endeavour started by Bangshing Konyak fondly known as Abang by close friends and family. With no formal training in music, Bangshing’s foray into music has never been planned or was never in the big picture. Eventually the three of us (Hammnyei, Kunwang and Angip) joined Bangshing for the Hindi edition of his project.
Having no finance or sponsors, the task of recording each song was a mammoth task and took 2 years to complete. Some well-wishers and friends decided to help out and made a modest contribution to help with promoting our music. This resulted in the recording of our first music video “Kucch Miley”, a small budget video shot in few hours in a hired studio. The video was uploaded on Youtube and what followed was an unexpected flow of positive response, with thousands viewing the video within days. The response to the video also made a few but important breakthroughs for us, including getting one of our song from the still unreleased Album selected as the theme song for NCLP Nagaland (National Child Labour Project) awareness video. The video has been shot and will be officially released soon by the department.
The success of this humble project gave birth to the idea of EaStory Project – an endeavor through which the music and the talents of the region could be showcased. And therefore the name ‘EaStory Project’, a mash up of two words ‘East Story’ – encapsulates the very essence of what founder Bangshing wishes to do, tell the stories of this Eastern Frontier through the showcase of their artists, songs and music.
EASTERN MIRROR: Talk us through your recent released album “Main Aaya Hoon”. What made you guys venture into Hindi music.
EaStory Project: Two years ago Bangshing started experimenting with Hindi songs. By the end he had several songs recorded in his phone. He started singing them for friends who started requesting him to put them as a whole album so that they could listen to it. In his spare time he would invite a few talented boys and girls of the community and would spend hours rehearsing the songs and most importantly with the Hindi diction, a difficult exercise in itself as the language did not come naturally. As mentioned earlier, our album “Main Aaya Hoon” was a mammoth task which took two years to complete.
Very Few Naga musicians are fond of Hindi music and taking into consideration the struggle of Nagas with Hindi music especially when it comes to music industry of the country, we felt it was a need of the hour to produce Hindi songs. Taking this challenge and to express Naga musicians are no less when it comes to music we decided to take this adventure.
Talking about this, we would like to express our gratitude to Rupak Chetri who had been patient correcting our Hindi dictions and making “Main Aaya Hoon” possible; and also Anupam Tutu (Sound Records) Tribes Music Studio who assisted us a lot in recording the music and also our music lovers without which this album would not have been possible.
EASTERN MIRROR: How does the song writing work for you. Talk us through your song writing process.
EaStory Project: Writing songs is no joke, especially when it comes to Hindi we have to do our homework thoroughly to get the correct grammar and meaning. Writing the lyrics for Hindi songs was not easy. But whatever Basgshing has done involves the present scenario which has been assembled gently so that it does not complicate our audience.
EASTERN MIRROR: What can we expect from you in the coming days?
EaStory Project: We will continue to produce good music and good songs and we expect more love from our music lovers’ hahaha.
