Ticked away in the mountains of Meghalaya, Kongthong a village located in the East Khasi Hills district, which is 60 km from Meghalaya’s capital city Shillong, is one of the most unique village of India, where people have names but in the form of melodies and those musical names are called ‘Jingrwai lawbei’ in the local khasi language.
Nestled amidst the mountains and forest of Meghalaya, this village is so isolated from the entire world that its existence is still unknown to most of the people.
This village is home to over 600 people living which means there are more than 600 unique tunes to be heard around the village.
Kongthong is indeed a very breathtaking beautiful village where all you hear is the sound of water flowing and birds chirping and people calling each other in musical tones.
History and culture of India is so deep rooted that we can find new and unique traditions everyday. And one such unique tradition is ‘Jingrwai Lawbei’, which means mother’s love song, a custom where you sing names.
Kongthong is one such village where people have song names that are meant to be sung. The villagers here have two names – one is a regular name and another is a song name. They use whistling to call each other and everyone has their own unique whistle.
Everyone in the village have a short as well as long tunes names, short tunes are used at homes and long tunes are used at villages and outside to ward off evil spirits.
This never heard before tradition has been going on for generations. But there is no recorded history or known origin of this beautiful tradition of calling each other with singing tunes but it is believed that such customs have been in existence since the establishment of this village. A total of 12 villages have been following this custom now.
The mother devises a tune just after a baby is born. The tune have no literal meaning but they just come out as musical tunes. It is said that the tune comes naturally from the heart of mothers to show the love to their baby whom they carried for nine months in their womb.
It is said that the Khasis are a matriarchal society and it is believed that the tune is made in the honour of the clan ancestors, that means the tune honours the women who started the clan.
But somehow this tradition is losing out its essence due to influence from the outside world music, radio, television, internet etc.
With the emerging generations, locals tend to move outside the village for education and job purposes and marry women from other states and villages who does not follow this traditions because of what lesser and lesser peoples are now known to have musical names.
In 2021, Ministry of Tourism nominated Kongthong village aka ‘whistling village’, for entry to UNWTO’s (The World Tourism Organisation) “Best Tourism Villages” award.
