Zubeen Garg and the Soul of the Northeast: Music, Memory, and the Power of Belonging
Zubeen Garg will be remembered today in Assam. Buried, though, is something more intangible: a manner of being present, of belonging, of bridging the distance between artist and public, of turning memory into sound. All seemed to freeze when news traveled that Zubeen Garg had died across Assam and the broader Northeast. The sorrow is both personal and remote for someone like myself, who is not from the area but has lived here for more than ten years. I lived next to his studio for two years, three years ago, and I would sometimes see him strolling by in his signature clothes, friendly and unguarded.
It seemed so normal back then, but now that I’m scrolling through social media and I see all these hundreds of people with pictures of him, I feel how wonderful that intimacy was. Zubeen was not merely a musician; he was part of the local culture and his presence made people feel heard and included. Thus, his death means more than the disappearance of a voice; it also means the unspoken disintegration of a bond between identity, memory, and belonging in Assam and the Northeast.
Assam, Reminiscence, and the Ordinary Voice
The past of Assam has always been marked by colonization, partition, multiple displacements, uprisings, and the yearly floods that wreck lives and communities.
Memory is never ever nostalgia in such a setting. It is a desire for continuity and a survival concern. One of those containers of memories was Zubeen. His melodies moved from rallies to breakups, protests to weddings. They were social life archives as well as soundtracks. He may still be Luitkontho, the voice of the Brahmaputra, even if he sang Bollywood tunes. His music was evidence that one could be cosmopolitan but not deracinated, and take Assamese music to the world without diluting its edges. For this reason, his death has unleashed a tsunami of memory. Suddenly long-forgotten melodies are political statements. Posting photographs is an act of claiming, not narcissism. Each tale of meeting him is a reminder that Assam is not voiceless and invisible in a state that has historically existed as peripheral.
A Mourning for the Northeast
Still, it would be unfair to confine him within the limits of Assam.
Zubeen had his home in the Northeast. He sang in Hindi, Bengali, Mizo, Nepali, Bodo, and Khasi. He acted in Kohima as easily as in Jorhat, and in Shillong as easily as in Guwahati. He featured in Mizo play lists, Tripuri young culture, and Manipuri cinema. His untimely death has touched the whole region due to this. He was a rare unifying presence in a country divided by political ethnicity and borders. State and tribe boundaries were demolished by his speech. He was a vision of a common but diverse Northeast identity. For a region so routinely absent in national imagination – visible only in insurgency, election, or tragedy – Zubeen was a declaration. He demonstrated that one could count everywhere from here, without writing on top of where they were from.
Sanjoy Hazarika and the Outsiders Who Wouldn't Keep Quiet
The reading of the tributes reminds me of Strangers of the Mist by Sanjoy Hazarika.
It was thirty years ago that he wrote that Northeasterners lived in a state of isolation and neglect, and that they were foreigners in their own homeland. He went on to confront this invisibility and the tenuous search for belonging in his subsequent works, Strangers No More and Rites of Passage. Zubeen’s life, otherwise, was the complete opposite. Zubeen sang Northeast’s existence into existence, whereas Hazarika spelled it out using words in its isolation. The singer got to feel closeness, while the books reflect loneliness. In the plethora of selfies that are now trending again, in the vigils and celebrations, in the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act, where he gave both his body and his voice. His death, however, establishes Hazarika’s warning that identity is tenuous here and memory can be wiped out if we do not keep it. Mourning comes with an urge to resist forgetting, to be silenced, and to become strangers again.
The Nearness Politics
It might appear to be insignificant that nearly everybody carries a picture of him.
It isn’t. It’s a blurring of the distance between the icon and the citizen. Zubeen stood for another form of leadership, one that is messy, honest, opposite, and down-to-earth, as opposed to leaders who come in motorcades and leave behind barricades.This familiarity is essential. That is the reason why a lot of people now insist that VIP politics should not be invoked to censor his funeral. They want to hold on to him as their own. A politics of access, a negation of the distance that typically characterizes power, is also called for by those who grieve him.
Mourning Lessons
The Northeast can learn something from this tragedy that extends beyond simply grieving the loss of one life.
Zubeen’s songs remind us continuously that, in a nation divided by tales of exclusion, violence, and displacement, a common song and story can provide a sense of belonging. His proximity to others and the easy availability that characterized his presence are a subliminal lesson in power: that power does not have to be exerted in a removed way but can be exercised in openness, attention, and presence. Each story remembered, song replayed, and social media photo uploaded is an act of rebellion against the forgetting of this region’s past, struggles, and identities. Along with mourning a lost voice, the Northeast is also reiterating what it is to be noticed, remembered, and heard in the larger world.
An Empty Farewell
Today, the pyre will be set aflame in Assam.
But this is not merely Assam’s loss. It is the loss of a bridge between the past and the present, between the region and the nation, and between intimacy and infamy for the Northeast. Even so, the grief induces a recognition of the fact that we have to encourage the voices of young people and go beyond instead of continuing his legacy. It compels us to see the Northeast by its tunes, dialects, closeness, and relentless lives instead of insurgency or inundation. Despite the fact that I am not from the Northeast, I’ve known so much about him from friends and their experiences, so my grieving is personal in a way.
I’ve been staying close to his studio. I never belonged to his inner circle, but I remain touched, included, and pulled into a shared sorrow beyond geography. Maybe it was his finest gift: even if you were outside of his circle, you still felt that you belonged and that this place, with all its complexity, mattered. Although the Northeast is peaceful tonight, memories will keep flowing, much like the river which lent him his name. Zubeen Garg is not disappearing. He will keep on surfacing in music, pictures, demonstrations, and pride as the determined, unique voice of a region that will not be forgotten.
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