Music in the valley.

The Ziro Festival of Music is an outdoor festival of independent bands, held in Ziro valley since 2012. It lasts a few days. It isn't an Apatani ritual. Myoko, Dree, and Murung were here long before the bands, and they still are. The millet in the photograph was standing during the 2019 festival. The field was already a field.

We are a family house in Mudang Tage. The festival ground is elsewhere in the valley. A bed with us is a place to sleep. The ticket, if you want the music, comes from the festival.

In 2011 the Delhi band Menwhopause was playing through the Northeast. Their show in Itanagar was postponed when a curfew shut the town. Bobby Hano, who was promoting them and whose home is Ziro, took them to the valley instead. Anup Kutty, the band’s guitarist, has described sitting on the hill by the old Circuit House, looking over the wartime airstrip, and talking about what it would be like to put musicians from elsewhere on that ground. The Arunachal Pradesh tourism office was willing. The first festival was announced for the next year.

It ran from 14 to 16 September 2012. Three days, one stage, more than twenty bands. Menwhopause played. So did Lou Majaw, Peter Cat Recording Co, Sky Rabbit, and Bombay Bassment, with bands from Shillong, Kohima, Imphal, and from Delhi and Mumbai. Hano’s side of the organisation was Phoenix Rising India. The point they stated then was a shared stage for the Northeast and the rest of the country, in a valley most of that audience had not reached.

It has continued. Some later editions have run for four days, and musicians from outside India have come too. The first one sat in the middle of September. Later ones have often sat later in the month, after the rice has come up and before the valley turns cold. The festival announces the dates each year. Write to us and we'll tell you what we know for the year you're planning.

People come for the bands. They walk the paths between plots, they are offered apong, the rice beer, and they sleep in homestays, camps, and whatever floor a village can spare. The audience is young, and a good part of it has travelled. For three or four days the lane sees more strangers than the rest of the month.

The ground is still the Apatani fields. UNESCO’s tentative list includes them for the rice-and-fish terraces and the villages that keep them. The festival borrows the view for a few days, and then the paths are quiet again. If you're here for the music, please stay on the paths. The rice is still someone's crop, and a ceremonial ground from Myoko is a village place, even in a week when the valley feels very open. People are glad to point you the right way.

Arunachal decides who may enter the state. Indian visitors are asked for an Inner Line Permit. Foreign visitors are asked for a Protected Area Permit. The rules and the office that issues them change more often than a printed paragraph should pretend to track. Check the current requirement before you book a flight. The house can tell you what guests have needed lately. It cannot issue the permit.

Because the festival comes back every year, it's easy to think of it as part of the Apatani calendar. It sits beside that calendar, and the two are different. Myoko is a month of hospitality between villages, taken in turn. Dree, on 5 July, is a prayer for the rice. Murung is one household's great celebration, in January. None of those has a lineup or a wristband, and they don't need one.

The people who started the festival were inviting bands to a place they loved. Apatani hosts have made the days possible, with food, rooms, and a great deal of patience. That welcome is real, and we're glad to be part of it when you stay with us.

During the festival the valley fills, and homestays fill first. We have four rooms, each with a double and a single. If a room is promised, it is promised to you by name. We don't have camping in the lane. The balcony is a place to sit with a cup of tea.

Write early, and tell us the dates. Book the room with us, and buy the festival ticket from the festival if you want the music. We'll be happy to have you either way.

If you only wanted the valley, come in a different month. The fields in the photograph are the reason the bands wanted to play here. They are also here when the stage is gone.