At Basar, Arunachal Pradesh, 2017

Basar feels peaceful in a way that makes you slow down.But even in that stillness, I noticed signs of wanting — not urgent, not aggressive — just present.A phone in a quiet hand. A new aspiration spoken softly. A tradition repeated slightly differently than before. It didn’t feel like intrusion. It felt like adjustment.

The traditions here are not disappearing. They are alive. But I sensed they are slowly being asked to perform — to explain themselves, to remain relevant, to fit into newer frames of value.

What struck me most was the absence of a clear culprit. Everyone participates in this shift, yet no one seems fully responsible for it. Desire moves collectively, and accountability dissolves as it spreads.

This doesn’t feel like cultural collapse. It feels like a pause between versions — a transition that is still deciding what it wants to become.

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Somewhere along the way, this instinct to record began to take a more defined shape.

In 2016, I was part of the curatorial process for the foundation edition of Echoes of Earth in Bangalore. It was a constructed environment — carefully designed, intentionally layered. Sound, space, and audience were all being shaped in relation to each other. Music didn’t just exist there; it was placed, framed, and experienced through design.

I remember thinking about how sound could be guided — how listening itself could be curated.

A year later, in 2017, I found myself in a very different setting at Basar Confluence in Arunachal Pradesh.

There was no attempt to frame culture there in the same way. Music wasn’t positioned for an audience — it was part of a larger flow of life. People moved in and out of it. There was no clear beginning or end. No strict separation between performer and listener. It felt less like an event and more like an occurrence.

The contrast stayed with me.

https://youtu.be/1qfWct9_ZPY

One space was building an experience.The other was allowing one to unfold.

When I later brought these observations into my paper at the International Council for Traditional Music conference at the University of Limerick, I wasn’t trying to conclude anything. I was trying to understand what I had witnessed.

Over the course of those days, listening took on a different weight.

Conversations moved slowly, often returning to the same question from different directions — how do you hold something that is still alive without fixing it in place? How do you document sound without removing it from the context that gives it meaning?

It made me realise that recording is never neutral.The moment you choose to capture something, you are already shaping how it will be remembered.

I received a young scholars award for the paper, but what stayed with me was something quieter — a shift in attention.

Until then, recording had been instinctive. Personal. Almost accidental.After that, it began to feel deliberate.

Not just what I record, but how and why.