Meghalaya to strum Friday for world record

By Syed Zarir Hussain, IANS

Shillong : Bob Dylan’s classic number “Knocking on Heaven’s Door” will reverberate in the hills of this picture-postcard capital of Meghalaya Friday with more than 2,000 guitarists performing a record-breaking strumming session to top the current Guinness Book of World Records guitar ensemble.


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“We hope to break the existing Guinness Record held by the United States. The response among guitarists is great and we expect a lot of support coming in from neighbouring Assam as well,” said M. Lansing, vice-president of the Meghalaya Tourism Development Forum that is organising the event.

The guitar ensemble titled ‘Rhythms of Meghalaya’ is scheduled to be the opening item at the 10-day long Autumn Festival that begins at a sports stadium here Friday.

The existing record is held by an ensemble of 1,721 guitarists at Kansas City in the US.

“We have decided not only to break the existing record but hold on to it for a longer time because a similar record-attempting event is coming up in London a few days later,” Lansing said.

“Almost every second or third person in Meghalaya knows how to play the guitar and owns one and so it should not be a problem to assemble 2,000-odd guitarists for the event,” state education minister and chairman of the Forum, R.G. Lyngdoh, told IANS.

Strummers from Assam have already swung into action, getting ready to drive up 100 km from Guwahati to join the ensemble and add to the numbers.

“Musicians from all over the northeast ought to join the ensemble to break and hold on to the record. We are trying our best to gather as many guitarists as possible,” J.P. Das, a veteran guitarist, said in Guwahati.

Lyngdoh said they have zeroed in on the popular Bob Dylan number “as it has three chords, and because the lyrics match our state which is also known as the abode of the clouds”.

The organisers have invited an adjudicator from Guinness.

During the annual Autumn Festival in Shillong last year, a band of 7,951 drummers had set a new world record for the largest drum ensemble by performing for more than five minutes in perfect rhythm.

The previous Guinness world record for the largest drum ensemble was set in February 2005 by Po Leung Kuk, a charity organisation in Hong Kong helping orphaned children, which assembled 7,727 drummers.

“We are trying to promote the region through music…last year it was the drum circle and this time the guitar ensemble and maybe the next year something different,” Lyngdoh said.

India’s northeast is known to the outside world as a land of rugged beauty and constant turmoil with ethnic conflicts and a myriad of insurgencies claiming an estimated 50,000 lives since the country attained independence in 1947.

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