Mar 26, 2011

Nagaland Music: Free Download websites


Finding Free Naga Music Downloads 

Readers often email me querying from where they can download ‘free Nagaland music’ MP3 files. I hope Mr. Rio is an admirer of Mother Teresa. I need cash to set up a ‘free Nagaland music download’ website dukan.

Lemme tell ya sumthin': There has yet to be any free music download websites that host Naga musicians' works. Woah! Hold on! Hold on, you impatient noob! Just keep reading and ama tellya where to get them. First thing first. We emerged from the jungles just half a century agao. We are still building a music industry. Meaning, we do not have big music labels promoting stuff. In the US, you have sponsors who run albums for you, do your dirty publicity work and sell your CDs for you everywhere, any platform. Come on, even India isn't that bad at it. Or Mizoram.

But us lot? We make our CDs and peddle it ourselves. Internet business is a concept very new to us, barely a couple of years if you are talking about its application. Our CD are still in the movie stores, book depots and maybe your uncle's momo-and-chow shindig near the market. Which means, if you want the musical works of Naga musicians in Nagaland and elsewhere, you have to do some real shopping (Ugh. The government ought to decree that only women should go shopping and men get to be their cool self at home lazing in front of ESPN).


Youtube, Baby

Anyhow, let's get to the point. The sad news not withstanding, you can still find some great, selected, and free music from Naga bands, on YouTube. You won't find entire albums but you will find some of the best of from the artists' repertoire. All you have to do is go to Youtube and search. If you know a song in particular you wish to have, great.

And it's easy to get them down into your system (PC or mobile phone).

Here's how to do it (and the easiest yet):

(In layman's lingo)

1. Go to the website Youtube.
2. Type in the name of the Naga  band / artiste in the search box. If you know the name of the song you are particular to, type in that, with the name of the artist. Example: 'Alobo Naga Painted dreams.'
3. The search results will bring up the song
4. Go to the uploaded song
5. Click on the URL of the page containing the song (See image)



6. Now go to the online converter www.vidtomp3.com This online converter is by far the best I have found online. there are many others but most of them have glitches such as slow streaming and takes a bigger bite out of upload.

7. Past the copied URL into vidtomp3's paste box 

Paste it in, hit 'Enter' and there you are, after your URL is converted, a link will appear with the instructions 'Your file has been converted click to download.' 

You won't have the video but an audio for your PC and phone. Follow the same trick with every song you wish to download.

Now here are some of the few sites that host free music of bands and artists from Nagaland.
But I'm not promising you much. You will find a song or two in the artiste's home pages. I still advise you to go to YouTube.

Nagamusiconline.com

Here you will find some free music from Naga musicians and bands. The list includes albums and individual MP3 streaming and yes, music videos. Now isn’t that major cool?
The problems?

(a)    No downloads. Just visit the website, sit obediently and listen
(b)   You need a super-fast, updated Flash Player or you are going to pay 2-hours worth of cybercafé money waiting for one Naga rock song to complete loading. By that time, the song is loaded the cybercafé man's probably closing shop – or its load-shedding time. Sorta
(c)    The songs listed on the site are not exactly your idea of a Naga music library. Not many choices and most of the tracks are well, mediocre. The better ones, especially rock albums, are sold in the stores, in case you are interested
(d)   But don’t lose heart, there are also some of the best in the Naga music scene - Divine Connection, Dementia, Senti Toy and even Theja Meru (listen to his track ‘Believe’)  

Nagamusic.com

The Naga music site has retired for now soon faster that the Nagaland government implementing the Nagaland Retirement (from Public Employment) Act 2009.

Naga Music on Facebook

There are a number of artist profiles on Facebook – Alobo and Abiogenesis etc. I am not sure if they have new songs but you can listen to them on their Facebook music profiles. Just memorize the names of the musicians and bands in this blog and search it on Facebook. Easy!

Nagaland Music on MySpace 

Read the ‘Facebook’ category. In fact, MySpace has the bigger number of bands and musicians from Nagaland. Check out Eximious. And find Melodrama. If you do locate the second one, let me know. The only problem with Myspace? Myspace disabled its free download feature about 3 years ago, thanks to increased litigation by the American music industry. You can still listen to Naga music online on Myspace but download? I doubt unless the musicians offer you free downloads of their songs by having set their settings for free downloads.  

Naga rock bands on Ibibo 

Read the categories on Facebook and MySpace

There is only one online music store dedicated to music albums from Nagaland and Naga musicians. The website is Indihut, run by Yan Kikon and his nerd baby brother Lyio Kikon. If you want full albums, go to Indihut and buy the stuff. Our musicians will end up on the streets wearing torn underwear if you keep looking only for free stuff. Go support them for Pete's sake.  

Generally, you'll find no 'Nagaland free music downloads' in bulk. However, if you are interested, you will find CDs of Naga metal bands only in the stores in Dimapur and Kohima. The better ones are not on the internet. You can Google search, but it will just waste your cybercafe fee man. In addition, you will need the auto rickshaw fare, dude.

Read More:

Breaking Blog: What Nagaland's First Music TV Show gotta do
What's New: Neiphiu Rio Vs Easterine Iralu Vs Tetseo Sisters
Album Review: Divine Connection's album 'El Roi'  
Album Review: Lima Yanger & Bliss Logic's The Big Thaw
Album Review: Redolent's 'Infinite Horizon' 
Album Review: Jack Pucho's 'Now & Always' 
Album Review: Alobo Naga's 'Road to a Thousand dream' 

Personality: Naga classical guitar pioneer Ren Merry 
Personalities: Story of Divine Connection's MTV Desi Rock triumph 
Personality: Soulmate's guitarist Rudy Wallang
Personality: Operatic performer Asin Shurhozelie 
Personality: Guitarist Imli Imchen
Personalities: Nagaland Rock band OFF (Original Fire Factor)
Personalities: Nagaland Rock band Eximious
Personalities: Naga metal group Diatribe
Events: Nagaland bands in RockKnock fest edition 

Mar 23, 2011

Diatribe, band from Nagaland: Concert Review


Tags: Diatribe (band Nagaland)
This is a News Feature of a 2008 concert by Nagaland band Diatribe, a Prog/Melodic Death metal outfit. The News Feature was published on November 5, 2008. OFF, a protest rock group, also from Nagaland, was on the bill that evening.

Diatribe: The Concert
Morung Express | November 5

In all indignity and a tragedy so pitiable, Dimapur missed one of the most rousing rock music performances in the recent times, and two terrifyingly quality rock bands any moshhead would have cut his hair for – Diatribe and OFF (aka Original Fire Factor). If the two Nagaland bands were watched – and listened to – the night of November 5 when they at DDSC, a mind or two would have returned home a true convert.

For a city that prides itself to be the core of the rock scene in the state, it’s a screaming shame that “music lovers” flock to excruciatingly mindless, stupid and imbecile soundtrack-singing “sensations” while the truly quality performers are ignored like Biblical leapers.

This time Diatribe and OFF were shamelessly left holding the fort. But the barely-about-200 fans that assembled at the ground, and Diatribe and OFF, had the time of their lives – minus rowdy Broken-Nagamese-English warbling drunks and unruly teenage kids. Just plain fun moshing and a union of a truly commendable metal camaraderie the show turned out to be. And perhaps the birth of a potential new quality Naga ‘star’ metal group.   

For those who came in late, Nagaland bands Diatribe (a progressive melodic death metal outfit) and OFF (protest rock) strutted home as first and second-placed winners respectively of the recently concluded Nagaland Music Safari. Still fresh dusty from their safari hangover, OFF and Diatribe took the stage and conveniently left the audience believing that the earlier three-hour delay was no more than a Sunday school rhyme. And boy, did they enjoy the show!

Diatribe

 (Right: Diatribe's frontman Khalong having fun, I believe)

Main act, Diatribe from Kohima took the reins after OFF. How can you not love Diatribe? This band reminds so much of Sweden’s progressive melodic death metal band Meshuggah – huge, huge guitar tones, sharp-to-the-tip-morbid but lyrical finesse, angry harmonies and liberal obsession with the intricate technical sensibilities so natural with core metal music – yet still so progressive. At least that was the covers choice of their set.

In addition, you should have been there to happily nod that they are truly the most amazing Naga metal band in the recent times. Prediction: if they would be still around the next two years, Diatribe will be to NE (or India), what Rock Machine (not that stupid ‘Indus Creed’ avatar) was to India. No finger crossing here.    

Diatribe’s singer (or in this case, snarler) Kalong was a 200-kilograms of charisma, cool and lotsa snarl. This guy truly deserves to be a metal frontman – painfully spontaneous, articulate and natural and a livewire when connecting with the crowd. Diatribe roused much dandruff with a number (Dimmu Bogir’s ‘Arghat?’ I have forgotten the title in my own midst of headbanging). The band truly left the small young crowd wasted but hungry for more. Happy in a shorn-punk haircut, the bandit Kalong seemed a familiar face – is he the guy from Dark Vengeance, the death metal band from down south?). Diatribe promised a set of white-hot metal slab from Children of Bodom to Lamp of God and surely did they deliver! Perhaps the tightest metal band from Nagaland ever. Phew.

The band was reinforced even more by the ‘expertise’ of weather-beaten, old wardogs like Yanger Longkumer – probably one of the cleanest guitar pickers this side of the Earth. This wardog began cutting his teeth way back the late 90’s with local band Oleanders and now is a known face in Kohima. There to back Yanger and Khalong’s liberal death onslaught was another bandit Abijah (ex-Native Colors and Vanadium? Now I’m confused), drummer Temsu and pianist Lipok. After a frighteningly delicious slab of core metal, Diatribe did an original “Hardships” an ear-blistering slab of angry rhythm so familiar with WWF’s slamshots and neck-holds. “Hardships” has no rhythmic intonations as expected from a core metal offering but it certainly has many melodic sensibilities in the line of Soilwork or even the progressive core band Elenium.

Diatribe’s future looks extremely bright – when you have blinding instrumental talent, eye-popping showmanship and blinking charisma to boot – your future certainly must be bright. The only metal band to have emerged from the last five years from Nagaland, that’s worth what they are destined for. Stardom. Trust me. If they are still there, that is.  

Comments:

The first name that came to my mind sooner as Diatribe launched into their set on Dimapur Nov 5, was, Meshuggah. Diatribe is perhaps the first Nagaland band I had confidently thought had those ‘international qualities’– their unprompted showmanship, technical finesse (I was amazed by the sound they achieved especially Yanger's, the guitarist) and an exceptional tonal control and finesse over their respective instruments. They are good. And of course the very charismatic, easy-on-the-bell vocalist Khalong. I was stupefied.

While their originals' mettle has yet to be witnessed, they definitely would have made an amazing progressive/death Metal band had they been still around. This one band truly deserved a good push up the metal scene. Really good, these people were. Really good.