SHILLONG, India -- Lou Majaw wore his signature skin-tight, cutoff short-shorts. His long gray hair hung like dirty threads around his face. Eyes closed in prayer, a guitar cupped in arms, he strummed the chords to “Blowin' in the Wind." Fans danced in Shillong, a town in northeast India known for many rock events.
Kit Shangpliang of Summer Salt plays at a church service. “Happy birthday, Bob Dylan, wherever you are," he began, standing on a stage in a near-empty church hall on an overcast Saturday afternoon. “God bless you, and thanks for everything that you've done."
Every May 24 for the last 35 years Mr. Majaw, 61, and one of India's original rock 'n' roll bards, has held a homespun celebration of Mr. Dylan's birth. This year's version was held in All Saints Hall, next to the church of the same name. Mr. Majaw pranced around the auditorium singing, “Everybody must get stoned." Two schoolgirls, who described their repertory as mostly Mariah Carey, sang “Knockin' on Heaven's Door," in two-part harmony, having learned it two days before. A poet, Sonny Khyriem, stood up and read a paean: “The voice bathed with protests/Mingled with human rights/Becomes an inspiration/To the toiling millions."
This annual incantation is more than one man's act of madcap devotion. It is also a peephole into the love affair with Western music that goes on every day in this pine-wooded outpost in India's northeast. Shillong, a British-era hill town that is now home to dozens of boarding schools and colleges, is its hub, especially when it comes to rock.
On Mr. Dylan's birthday weekend a visitor could drive down a narrow, rain-soaked road and hear young men with guitars serenading, or stumble upon thousands gathered under a Christian revival tent, singing modern gospel in their native Khasi. On a football field, at twilight, you might be pulled into a mosh pit of teenagers dancing to a Naga tribal blues guitarist, or on a Sunday morning find schoolchildren in a chorus of 19th-century hymns in a prim Presbyterian church.
