Shillong singer keeps Dylan legacy blowin' in the wind

Shillong: The sunlit hall of the local St Mary's College for girls in this picture postcard capital of Meghalaya sways to the chants of Forever Young - a signature 1974 Bob Dylan track.

An ageing musician with stained teeth, long hair and childlike smile strums his guitar and eggs on nearly 500 schoolgirls to join the chorus. Everyone carries placards proclaiming "Happy Birthday Dylan". It's a practice session for a Dylan's birthday concert today.

Meet Lou Majaw, the 62-year-old Dylan of northeastern India, who has been singing Bob Dylan's songs and improvising on them for the past 43 years.

The self-taught musician, a household name in the northeast, now has a new mission. Through impromptu campus gigs, he is taking Dylan's music to thousands of children across schools in Meghalaya. Bob Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman, in Duluth, Minnesota, on May 24, 1941, is a legend whose profound lyrics and nasal delivery took American music back to its ballad-and-bluegrass roots, setting a new trend spanning nearly six decades.

The mission to carry Dylan to school, according to the musician, gels with the laid-back spirit of "music and laughter" of the hill state. Almost everyone in Meghalaya is a musician - they know how to pluck the basic chords on their guitars. "I am trying to reach out to more people. It took a long time for people in Shillong to know Dylan," says Lou, who usually performs with his band, "Ace of Spades".

Says a Class 10 student of St Mary's College: "Shillong has many good singers. But what makes Lou stand apart is that I have come to know about Bob Dylan's music after he played live in our school. He revolutionised the whole way of singing."

Old girls exchange notes. "I remember him playing Dylan's songs at the Shillong carnival in 1976. I was in Class 5 then and now he has carried Dylan to my daughter's school," laughs a resident.

The rocker has remained committed to Dylan since he chanced upon the American musician-poet in 1966. Born to a poor family, Majaw could not afford a guitar or a radio. He taught himself to play guitar in school.