Boney M and Akon make the hills come alive at Shillong’s Cherry Blossom Festival

My first trip to Shillong’s two-day-long Cherry Blossom Music Festival takes 15 hours. Nevertheless 1970s disco funk group Boney M is performing, and so is R&B and hiphop sensation Akon, so it is well worth the long and admittedly tedious journey.

As I reach Guwahati and hop on to the cab assigned to me, Sachin Singh, a Shillong-born Punjabi driver, zips through the serpentine highway that leads to our destination, only to get caught in a two-hour long traffic jam just 15-20 kilometres from the festival’s venue, RBDSA Sports Complex. We finally reach at 8.30pm, and find we are out of network coverage, which makes it difficult to let anyone know that we are at Bhoirymbong village in Shillong’s Ri Bhoi district.

Bad news: I do not get Akon’s “exclusive” interview, where I would have delved into his upcoming album and his recently released song ‘It’s a Beautiful Day’, which deviates from his usual sexualised lyrical compositions, explored his collaboration with Michael Jackson and even asked him why he thinks he didn’t win a Grammy even though his albums and songs have received five nominations at the Recording Academy’s award show. I would have gone beyond ‘Chammak Challo’, but I only could make it just in time to shake a leg to the only Indian song he has collaborated on. That is the good news.

Boney M takes over the stage
| Photo Credit:
special arrangement

When Akon gets on the stage, he owns the space, the crowd and the energy. He begins with ‘It’s a Beautiful Day’ and then picks up his songs from the early Noughties, starting with ‘Blame on Me’ and ‘The Sweetest Girl’ to ‘Smack That’ and ‘Dangerous’.

The mic goes off in the middle of one of his songs, but Akon walks around the stage, keeping his cool, and waits for the glitch to be resolved. A minute-long disruption is not met with silence. The audience cheers and Akon owns the stage again, saying, “Don’t worry, it happens. It happens, man! It’s okay. Well, I feel good because every day is a beautiful day, no matter what.” He then breaks into his 2004 hit ‘Ghetto’ and wings it for the rest of the show.

Then came the doyens of disco music, Boney M, on stage.

And, here is the better news: I do get an interview with Boney M, even though it is awkwardly taped between a photography session with their on-stage collaborators, The Shillong Choir, in the green room at nearly 1am.

When asked about their experience at the festival and in India, member Maizie Williams answers as she poses. “It’s fantastic,” she says. We make the most of two minutes we have with them and asked them the inevitable question, which is often met with confusion but hardly leads to confession. But Maizie was surprisingly prompt to name her favourite Boney M song: “By the Rivers of Babylon,” she says.

She is also candid about sharing the name of the new-age musician that has made it to her favourite playlist. After pondering and saying, ‘There are so many I love,” she zeroes in on “Ed Sheeran”.

Boney M’s Maizie Williams
| Photo Credit:
special arrangement

Though this terse little interview does not leave us with enough insight into how Boney M perceives the evolution of the global music industry, we do steal about half an hour from their 40-minute-long performance to see the crowd jive to their hits, like ‘Rasputin’, ‘Brown Girl in the Ring’.

If our first day ends with ‘Brown Girl’ and another heavy jam back to the hotel, Taj Vivanta, Shillong, the second starts with ‘Brown Munde’ — a Punjabi gig by Bollywood singer Kanika Kapoor. She sings originals and covers, from ‘London Thumakda’ to ‘Mundeya toh Bach Kay Rahi’.

Her gig is followed by the British electro-pop group Clean Bandit, with violins, cellos and two spunky break dancers. They croon some of their hit songs, including ‘Rocakabye baby’.

The festival, themed Year of the Legends, saw a footfall of nearly 50,000 attendees this time and with Japan as its partner country, it hailed J-pop sensations Zombie-Chang, Amaiwana, DYGL, Nonoc, Newspeak and Lillies and Remains in the Japan arena which had food, fashion, calligraphy and origami stalls spelling Japanese culture for Indians.

“What I love the most about the festival is the crowd — the energy is amazing,” says Natalie, a student from Meghalaya. Amrita Sinha from Assam, recalls her favourite part, “I was here just for Clean Bandit. I love their song ‘Rockabye Baby’ because that song really inspires you as a woman.”

We meet Meghalaya’s Chief Minister Conrad Sangma to get the lowdown on the festival, which is organised by Meghalaya Tourism and managed by Rockski EMG. “We contribute nearly ₹2 crore to the festival,” he says. A musician himself, he has started the Meghalaya Grassroots Music Project to promote local musicians.

As for Shillong’s traffic situation? “They say, there are two things in Shillong that you can’t predict: the weather and traffic,” he smiles.

The writer was in Shillong at the invitation of Shillong Cherry Blossom Festival 2024