Lou Majaw (born 14 April 1947) is an Indian singer, songwriter and guitarist from Shillong, Meghalaya, one of the pioneers of rock music in India. He is best known for the concert he has given in Shillong on Bob Dylan’s birthday, 24 May, every year since 1972. With his long white hair, sleeveless shirt, shorts and mismatched socks, he is one of the most recognisable figures of the hill town that calls itself India’s rock capital.
Quick Facts
| Full name | Lou Majaw |
| Born | 14 April 1947, Shillong, Meghalaya |
| Age | 79 |
| State | Meghalaya |
| Community | Khasi |
| Occupation | Singer, songwriter, guitarist |
| Years active | 1960s–present |
| Known for | The annual Bob Dylan birthday concert in Shillong (since 1972); the band Great Society |
Early Life
He was born in Shillong into a poor Khasi family. There was no radio in the house and no money for an instrument. He heard Western popular music, Elvis Presley and Bill Haley, on a neighbour’s radio and on the gramophones of friends, and taught himself to play on borrowed guitars.
Shillong, then the capital of Assam, had mission schools, churches with choirs and a tradition of Western music that made it unlike any other Indian town.
Calcutta
In the mid-1960s he left for Calcutta, where the restaurants and nightclubs of Park Street employed live bands. He worked at odd jobs and sang with several groups, among them the Dynamite Boys and Blood and Thunder, playing rock and roll and rhythm and blues for the city’s dancers.
It was in Calcutta, in 1966, that a friend played him “Blowin’ in the Wind”. He has said that the words of Bob Dylan’s songs changed his idea of what a song could be.
Great Society
Back in Shillong, he formed the band Great Society with other local musicians in the 1970s. It became one of the best-known rock groups in India, playing in the cities and at college festivals across the country, and performing its own songs at a time when most Indian bands played only covers.
The Dylan Concert
On 24 May 1972 he organised a small show in Shillong to mark Bob Dylan’s birthday. He has held it every year since, missing none, at first in halls and later in the open air, with school choirs, local bands and visiting musicians joining him to sing Dylan’s songs. People travel to Shillong for it from across India and from abroad, and it has been the subject of documentaries and of reports in the international press. He has never met Dylan.
Music
He has written and recorded songs of his own, in English, and continues to tour, playing at festivals in India and occasionally overseas. He has sung in Khasi as well. He does not regard himself as an imitator: he has said that Dylan gave him a direction, and that the voice is his own.
Style
He has worn shorts on stage, and nearly everywhere else, for decades, in Shillong’s cold as well as its rain. He lives simply, walks through the town greeting everyone, and has resisted suggestions that he move to a bigger city.
Recognition
He has been honoured by the Government of Meghalaya and by music bodies in the North-East, and is regularly invited to open festivals in the region. Younger musicians from Shillong, a town that has since produced nationally known bands and choirs, regard him as the one who showed that it could be done.
Personal Life
He has a son. He has spoken of bringing him up largely on his own while continuing to perform.
Legacy
Because of him, a small town in the Khasi hills celebrates the birthday of an American songwriter every year, half a century on. The Chief Minister of his state, Conrad Sangma, is himself a guitarist.
Featured image: Lou Majaw performing in Bengaluru, July 2011. Photo by Sohanmaheshwar, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
