Spreading Dylanisms

An auditorium packed with young uniform-clad school girls; some clapping, some singing, some screaming, some shrieking, some swaying, some waving. Their eyes glazed with excitement, they seem smitten by the musician, with his long graying dishevelled hair and guitar, singing ‘Forever Young’. Placards that read ‘Happy Birthday Bob Dylan’ spring up from their small hands, as they sing along joyously.

The musician is the rock singer Lou Majaw, known for celebrating cult figure Bob Dylan’s birthday every year in Shillong, for the last 20 years. When Lou Majaw performs, there is no room for inhibition. Inhibition steps aside, paving the way for natural enthrallment.

It was at a friend’s party that Ranjan Palit first bumped into two members of the band Ace of Spades, which Lou Majaw was also a part of. Palit who was to sing a few Dylan tracks recalls being hesitant when he realised that there were professional musicians at the party. It was there that the band members of Ace of Spades told him about the celebration that took place in Shillong every year on May 24.

“Who else in the world would be celebrating Dylan’s birthday every year? It was quirky for me,” says Palit, on being asked the reasons for picking this as the subject for his film Forever Young. When Palit had approached Lou with a proposal to make a film, his response had been, well, fairly enthusiastic. “Sure, it’s a free country,” he had said.
Although Palit began shooting the film by attending only the annual birthday concerts, he soon realised that he should be exploring beyond Dylan’s birthday concerts. “I found Lou to be someone who was extremely committed to his music. That was his life. He was a very unique guy. So I decided to follow his life a bit more, his personal life and find out what he’s like,” says the filmmaker.

Forever Young also gives sneak peeks into Lou’s life at home, with his wife who is also a singer and his baby son Christopher Dylan Majaw. You wonder how the experience of documenting the life of a rock musician would be, especially of someone who is as passionate, free-spirited and wild as Lou. After watching the bits in the film where his wife gently confesses that Lou was not a particularly good husband (although a good father), it’s hard not to be curious about how receptive he had been to being followed around with a camera.

“Initially, Lou gave us all these one-liners. But by our third visit, he knew we were serious. Then, he accepted us. I guess it worked for him too,” Palit adds. It took Palit six years and 12 trips to Shillong to complete the film, which he refers to as a ‘character-driven documentary film’.

In the film, Lou Majaw talks about his first romance with the guitar, which began in boarding school — how he used to hold the guitar in bed as he fell asleep... hug the guitar, kiss the guitar, make love to the guitar, just like a woman. But afterwards, he’d turn his back on it and snore away. “But the guitar is always there. It don’t complain,” he points out.

So what does Palit personally think of Lou’s music? “Usually, when singing Dylan’s songs, everybody tries to imitate his style of singing, including me. I think Lou does an unusual rendering of Dylan. The film shows him singing ‘All along the watchtower’, that’s quite a version! Also, he’s an incredible performer,” he replies. Later in the film, Lou is shown returning to the same girls’ school that was shown at the beginning of the film, only it is five years later.

An ecstatic crowd jumps up and down to Lou and the rest of his band performing ‘Everybody must get stoned’. A bit of an odd choice for a girls’ Christian school, you’d think. “A man in his micro-mini shorts singing ‘Everybody must get stoned’ in a girls’ school. The whole thing was quite wacky and a bit surreal really. This can happen only in Shillong,” says an evidently amused Palit, slipping into bouts of laughter.

What about Palit, does Dylan figure in his life at all? “Let me put it this way. Dylan is probably the single-most strongest influence in my life. His influence on me is stronger than Tagore. I say Tagore since I grew up in Calcutta.” And you imagine what Dylan would have had to say, had he known his songs were being widely sung in a small Indian town, as if it were part of their cultural upbringing.

What a story like Lou’s does to us is make us aware of the number of musical talents spread across the world that often get obscured. Although Lou has managed to create a space for himself, there remain plenty of musicians who don’t get their due. The North East itself is an excellent example of a place with vast untapped musical potential.
Palit is currently working on his next documentary, on identity through rock music in the North East, a follow-up of sorts. “The North East is of course the most happening place in terms of music. Not just rock music, but metal too. I don’t much care for metal, but I can’t obviously ignore it,” he says.

Fortunately for us, people like Palit, for whatever reasons, attempt at ensuring that stories like these don’t get lost in black holes by helping them find their way to the surface.

Watch ‘Forever Young’ on NDTV 24x7’S ‘Documentary 24x7’ on May 24 at 1 pm.