Earth Songs: Lore That Reminds Us Nature Is Culture
For the last two decades, composer and sound researcher Ashhar Farooqui has been collecting songs that celebrate our intimacy with nature from diverse regions in the country. Roundglass Sustain’s series Earth Songs is a celebration of the songs he found and their deep connection to the ecologies they inhabit.
A Roundglass Sustain PresentationSeries Created by Ashhar Farooqui
Updated August 19, 2026
A Roundglass Sustain PresentationSeries Created by Ashhar Farooqui
Updated August 19, 2026
20 min watch
For the last two decades, composer and sound researcher Ashhar Farooqui has been collecting songs that celebrate our intimacy with nature from diverse regions in the country. Roundglass Sustain’s series Earth Songs is a celebration of the songs he found and their deep connection to the ecologies they inhabit.
At dusk, herders in Nagaland call out to their animals, nudging them home from foraging in the hills. The calls often take the form of "vocables" or sung syllables set to the rhythm of a tati, a single-stringed instrument crafted from a gourd, a bamboo stalk, and sometimes a mithun’s horn. Every community in Nagaland has its own unique vocables, each one reminding us of our deep-rooted connection with the natural world.
In the hills of Peren in Nagaland, locals play the Tamtu, a playful reed instrument made from a leaf wedged between two shards of bamboo. On its own, the Tamtu can sound funny, enough to even make the player laugh. But often, from the leaf and bamboo, rises a beautiful song of love and loss…
