(From previous issue)
Singing Places: Nature as Memory
His songs about human life, places and nature reveal another important dimension of his work.
For Nagas, places are rarely just geographical locations. They carry stories, memories, identities and emotions. A mountain, a village, a river or a landscape can become part of who we are.
By singing about places and nature, he turned landscapes into memories. His songs helped familiar places live not only in the physical world but also in the imagination of those who grew with them. This becomes particularly meaningful as our towns grow and our physical surroundings change.
As concrete replaces fields and towns expand, such songs preserve an emotional connection with a changing world.
Remembering Naga Heroes
Methaneilie’s tributes to prominent Naga figures reveal another dimension of his music, the preservation of history through popular culture.
Political figures are remembered not only through official histories, speeches and documents, but also through stories, songs and popular culture. When a musician sings about a historical figure, that person becomes part of the stories carried by ordinary people. He was therefore not simply singing about individuals. He was helping preserve the way people remembered them.
His music gives us another way of looking at Naga history, not only through events and institutions, but also through the emotions and memories attached to them.
Politics
His engagement with Naga politics also shows how songs can bring complicated subjects into simple conversation. Politics is often discussed through elections, political parties and institutions. But ordinary people experience politics in much more personal ways. They experience it through uncertainty, expectations, conflict, hope and conversations.
His songs about Naga politics therefore became another way of bringing public issues into everyday life and expressing them in a language that ordinary people could understand.
Tragedy
What makes his music particularly enduring is that it was not confined to grand subjects.
He also sang about relationships, and lived experiences of ordinary people. He offered poetic tributes to those who had passed away.
Tragedy, too, is both personal and shared. When people die in accidents or disasters, grief extends beyond an individual family to the wider community.
His songs paying tribute to those who died in tragedies transformed private sorrow into collective remembrance.
Through songs, individual grief became something an entire community could carry together.
A Personal Memory
My own memory of Methaneilie is connected to childhood.
I remember hearing people talk about him coming to Thizama and practising with the DGP Band. At that age, I did not fully understand the significance of the musician or his music. I simply knew that his name carried a certain excitement and recognition.
Growing up, his songs became part of the soundscape of everyday life. That personal memory is perhaps shared by many.
We heard his music not necessarily in formal concerts, but in ordinary spaces and social occasions. The music entered our lives almost unnoticed. That is how popular culture often works. It does not always arrive as something historically important. It becomes important later, when we realise that it has accompanied us through our own lives.
The Simplicity of an Earlier Era
There is also something deeply nostalgic about the musical world represented by his music. The music of the 1980s and 1990s came from a period before smartphones, streaming platforms and the overwhelming digitalisation.
Music was often shared physically and socially. People listened together. Songs circulated through cassettes, recordings, gatherings and word of mouth. There was an intimacy in the way music travelled through Naga communities.
This does not mean that the past was necessarily better. Every period has its difficulties and contradictions. But the way music was shared created a particular kind of togetherness.
Why His Music Has Endured
The remarkable fact is that, after decades, his music has not disappeared from the memories of those who grew up with it.
Part of the reason is his distinctive voice and tone.
Part of it is the lyrics.
Part of it is the character.
But perhaps the deepest reason is that his songs captured real life.
He sang about the world people knew.
He sang about their places, their politics, their heroes, their tragedies, their landscapes and their peculiarities.
In doing so, he turned ordinary Naga life into song.
That is a significant cultural achievement.
Methaneilie as a Chronicler of His Time
It may therefore be useful to think of Methaneilie not only as a singer and composer, but also as a chronicler of his time.
He sang about a Naga society moving from a predominantly village-centred way of life towards an increasingly urban and modern society.
He captured the character of emerging towns, the contradictions of Naga life, the emotions surrounding relationships, the memory of political figures, the beauty of places and nature, the rhythms of village, and the pain of tragedy and loss.
His songs provide us with another kind of archive.
They do not tell history in the formal language of books, documents or institutions.
They tell history through emotion, humour and lived experiences.
And perhaps that is why they remain so powerful.
Listening to a Generation
Solo’s work reminds us that society’s history reminds us that a society’s history is also carried in its songs—not only in the books and records through which we formally remember the past. A generation listened to his songs in kitchens, at gatherings, in villages and towns. They listened, remembered, sang along with his melodies and carried his music in their lives.
Although much of his songs was in Tenyidie, the music travelled beyond his own community. Through Nagamese, English and, more importantly, through experiences that people across communities could recognise, he reached a wider Naga audience. This may be one of the most important things about his music.
He helped a generation hear itself.
When we listen to those songs today, decades later, we are not merely listening to old music. We are hearing fragments of a Naga society in transition, its towns taking shape, its politics unfolding, its humour finding expression, its landscapes being remembered, and its tragedies, celebrations and dreams becoming part of a shared memory.
In that sense, Methaneilie’s music is more than nostalgia. It is memory. It is cultural history. And above all, it is the voice of a generation.
But perhaps his work also leaves us with a larger question. As we pursue development, modernisation and new opportunities, what happens to the cultural memory of the society we are becoming? Institutions, technology, employment and infrastructure are essential, but a society is more than its physical and economic progress. It is also its music, stories, language, memories and the experiences passed from one generation to another.
Popular culture often preserves aspects of society that may never find their way into official records. His work is a significant example. It captured the humour, relationships, politics, places, memories and lived experiences of that changing society. Preserving such cultural expressions is therefore not merely an exercise in nostalgia; it is a way of keeping alive the deeper roots of our identity.
A modern Nagaland should not only ask how far we have moved forward, but also whether, in moving forward, we have preserved the cultural roots that tell us who we are and where we came from.
(Concluded)
Thepfusalie Theunuo holds a PhD in Sociology from
Tezpur University, Assam
Thursday, September 3, 2026