KONGTHONG
VILLAGE - ART & CULTURE
News:
“Kongthong — the Whistling
Village”
What's
in the news?
●
Kongthong
— the whistling village of Meghalaya — bagged the Best Tourism Village (Bronze)
Award at the National Tourism Awards 2023 which was
presented by the Ministry of Tourism at an event at Bharat Mandapam, Pragati
Maidan, New Delhi.
Key
takeaways:
●
Kongthong, India's application for the
United Nations World Tourism Organization's World's Best Village Contest, is
simultaneously vying for UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage designation.
Kongthong
Village:
●
Kongthong, also known as the Singing community, is a community and
tourist destination in Meghalaya's East Khasi Hills district, in India's
Northeast mountainous area.
●
Kongthong is a renowned tourist destination recognized for its scenic vistas and
the distinct culture of its inhabitants, who speak in the whistled language
"Jingrwai Iawbei" and construct extraordinary living root bridges.
●
Tourists and language researchers from all
over the world, including the United States, Germany and Japan, gather here.
●
Each
villager has a unique name, which is a whistling lullaby and the villagers
communicate by whistling the lullaby.
Jingrwai
Lawbei Whistling Language:
●
People of Kongthong belong to the Khasi
tribe who speak the Khasi language - a spoken language. However, Kongthong also
has a remarkable tradition of assigning unique whistling tunes as the name of
each member of the village.
●
Kongthong is known for its unique
language, developed as a consequence of its geographical isolation, in which
Jingrwai Iawbei (lit. "melody sung in respect of the root ancestress"
in Khasi language) is assigned as the unique name to each newborn by the mother
which becomes the permanent identity of the person.
●
This name is not a word, instead, a unique
call name or caller tune in the form of a whistle, i.e. "the caller hums a
tune, which is a unique "name" that can only be understood by the
villagers."
●
This naming of babies is a matriarchal
tradition in which the mother repeatedly hums the specific musical tune in the
form of the whistle, which the growing babies gradually become accustomed to,
and this unique whistling tune or jingrwai Iawbei lullaby becomes the unique
name and permanent identity of the person.
●
Every child is assigned a unique lullaby
or tune as their name which is transmitted among children and adults as the
unique name of the person.
●
All villagers call each other using the
unique caller tune assigned to them as the name.
●
Each jingrwai Iawbei or unique name of a
person has 2 versions, shorter and longer.
Religion:
●
Inhabitants practice a traditional
religion called the Seng Khasi.
Economy:
●
The economy of the village is based on agriculture.
●
Villagers climb down the hill for long
trips to markets to sell their crops where they also buy a week's worth of
supplies for the whole village.