Note what you’d expect: A photobook zooms in on Meghalaya’s indie musicians
See how photographer Anurag Banerjee’s search for home and identity led him to explore the struggles, songs and universal experiences of these artists.
What is home when you’re an immigrant? What does it mean to belong to more than one place? Like so many of us who have left our birthplace in search of opportunity or the freedom to be ourselves, photographer Anurag Banerjee has always had a complicated relationship with belonging.

Growing up as a non-tribal in 1990s Shillong, in the wake of ethnic violence aimed at “outsiders”, the notion of belonging seemed fraught with tension. When he moved to Mumbai to pursue a career in photography, after graduating in media studies from Pune, he side-stepped the issue by reinventing himself as a “Bombay photographer”. But when the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act and the National Register of Citizens broke out in 2019, all the questions came crashing back.

Here were two initiatives that were demanding impossible clarity in the matter of who belonged where, and who had the right to call themselves an Indian.
“It was an attack on identity,” says Banerjee, 33, who threw himself into the work of documenting the protests, until they were brought to a halt by the pandemic.
Amid it all, “it became important for me to look at my identity and confront the fact that I am from Shillong, not Mumbai. And to ask: What does that entail?”
It entailed, for one thing, learning more about the place that was home, and the people in it.
Banerjee’s quest to “reclaim” home provided the inspiration for his second photobook, The Songs of our People. Consisting of intimate, empathetic portraits of 19 musicians from across Meghalaya, it documents the identities, histories and stories of loss, grief and community that are reflected in the music of these artists.

He turned to music as the framework for this exploration at least partly because the people of Meghalaya have such a deep relationship with songcraft, going back to the state’s rich and still-strong tribal oral traditions. But there was also a touch of serendipity involved.
When Banerjee returned to Shillong during the lockdown, for his first extended stay there since he left in 2010, one of the first people he met was Junisha Khongwir, a photographer and assistant professor of mass media. She decided to give him, a professed music-lover, a crash course in the Shillong music scene.
“By that point I was familiar with the indie music scene in parts of urban India, but I didn’t know what was happening in Shillong beyond Lou Majaw and Soulmate,” Banerjee says. “It really blew me away that there are so many people making music here, against the odds.” With little infrastructure and support, and meagre earnings for the most part, he saw a single artist juggling it all: composing, singing, producing, organising gigs. “And I thought: This is the story. This is what I need to do.”

Homing in
On that first trip back, Banerjee interviewed and photographed three musicians, hoping to pitch a photo-feature to travel or culture publications. No one was interested.
He began returning to Shillong frequently, at this time, to work on his first photobook. I’m Not Here (2022) was a personal exploration of the idea of home through 71 images of the city, and seven essays. On these trips, he made more friends within Shillong’s music community; the community slowly lowered its guard and invited him in.
In 2023, armed with a grant from The Meghalayan Age, a state-government agency that seeks to promote the state’s art forms and culture, Banerjee set out to turn his initial idea for a story into a self-published book. Many of the artists featured are rappers and R&B musicians. “It just made sense because this was still a time of protest, and rap is protest music,” he says.

The book also features a heavy-metal guitarist, a blues band, a popstar and a group of Khasi folk musicians from the tiny village of Lynshing. Some sing in English, others in local languages such as Khasi, Garo and Pnar.
There’s 25-year-old Garo musician Katta Nisa, whose music is deeply rooted in Garo mythology and folklore, even as he longs to rise above his identity as a tribal (“I ache to forget about myself sometimes,” he says in the book). You can read about Nicholas Richmond Dann, a doctor burnt out from being on the frontlines of the pandemic, who found a spiritual awakening in the murky bass and off-beat rhythms of reggae.
One of the most striking stories is that of music producer Praiselyson Lyngskor, 30. Struggling with a deep state of depression after he witnessed the death of a friend in a road accident, he found solace in music and the sense of community it afforded him. Now, he seeks to extend the two to others. His small studio in Lummawbah, on the outskirts of Shillong, which he funds with his earnings from a government job as a lower division assistant and typist, serves as a platform for talented artists. He’s more mentor than producer, making sure the young artists turn up for rehearsals and recordings, and sometimes helping them battle angst, anxiety or addiction.

The reader may go in thinking they know what to expect from The Songs of our People, but this isn’t a chronicle of a niche subculture through the tired lens of marginalisation.
What connects many of these stories, beyond the overarching themes of identity and belonging, is an underlying thread of grief and loss. “It’s loss of various kinds: a loved one, a time gone by, innocence, opportunity,” Banerjee says. “That really resonated with me. Because we’ve all had a run-in with grief at some point.”
(The Songs of our People is priced at ₹799 and available via Instagram)
