When the World Knocked Twice: Vengaboys, Post Malone, and the Changing Emotional Weather of Assam

In the early 2000s, Guwahati was a city learning how to breathe again. The decade before had been marked by unrest, curfews, and a generalised sense of watchfulness that permeated even the most mundane routines. Suddenly, with the millennium came small freedoms that felt almost luxurious: new cafés with Formica tables and noisy ceiling fans, renovated auditoriums smelling of fresh paint, the first FM stations slicing through the monotony of state-run broadcasts. Teenagers carried cassette Walkmans clipped to their jeans, toggling between Bryan Adams and Zubeen Garg. MTV flickered inside living rooms where, just a few years earlier, the television had been switched on for the evening news with a kind of collective tension.

It was into this cautious yet hopeful landscape that an electrifying announcement landed: the Vengaboys were coming to Guwahati.

For a region that had seen more bandh calls than musical events, the idea felt almost surreal. The Vengaboys, with their fluorescent outfits and high-voltage Europop, were not simply a band. They were a window into a world that Assamese youth had tasted only through grainy VHS tapes and the occasional MTV segment. Overnight, the city’s collective imagination surged. College students hopped between slow, dimly lit cyber cafés to download wallpapers and ringtones. Café conversations revolved around what the show might look like. College fest organisers speculated whether this would spark a new era of cultural experimentation. Even parents, wary but curious, registered the significance of this moment for a generation raised on both Assamese ballads and global beats.

But just as anticipation reached its peak, Assam’s old cultural heartbeat began to speak. Prominent student groups voiced concern, arguing that such a show posed a threat to the state’s values. Their rhetoric was familiar an extension of decades of identity politics, linguistic anxieties, and cultural safeguarding. Western pop, they warned, would erode moral discipline, introduce “undesirable” behaviour, and cause a slow dilution of Assamese culture.

The argument resonated with segments of the older generation who still believed that culture lived under siege. Many had lived through movements that shaped their political consciousness, and the idea of guarding “Asomiya jati” was deeply embedded in their worldview. What seemed like an entertainment event to some appeared to others as an attack on cultural sovereignty.

The debate that followed was swift and intense. Those opposing the concert were not railing against music alone; they were responding to long-standing fears about demographic shifts, linguistic survival, and the fragility of regional identity in a globalising world. The Vengaboys were, unknowingly, walking into a political-aesthetic minefield.

Organisers were suddenly at a crossroads. On one side stood thousands of young people aching for a night of global pop spectacle. On the other, a formidable coalition of student organisations that had historically wielded cultural and political influence. Pressure mounted, assurances were demanded, and the atmosphere thickened with uncertainty. Eventually, the organisers caved. The concert was cancelled.

At one level, this was merely the disappearance of a single event. But in the public imagination, it became a symbol of aspiration denied, of a society divided between its longing for modernity and its fear of cultural dissolution. Young people lamented the decision as regressive. Many wondered why joy seemed perpetually rationed in a region that had already sacrificed so much fun to the weight of history. Parents, on the other hand, justified the cancellation as a necessary act of cultural safety.

Behind every argument lay a deeper question: How does a community balance a fragile sense of identity with the desire to participate in global culture? The memory of the cancelled show lingered. It became a quiet but persistent bruise, invoked in hostel conversations, recalled in college debates, and etched into a generation’s collective memory. Yet, even as that disappointment settled, Guwahati itself was changing.

Within a few years, cafés sprouted in nearly every neighbourhood. College grounds buzzed with rock competitions. Fashion shows appeared inside hotel banquet halls. Small music studios emerged in rented apartments. The young generation denied their Vengaboys moment found their own pathways to global culture: mp3 downloads, pirated CDs, Limewire, YouTube, and later, a digital universe that allowed them to travel the world without leaving their rooms. Culture, after all, does not wait for permission. It finds its way through cracks.

Two decades later, the news of Post Malone performing in the Northeast arrived in a very different Assam.

Guwahati was no longer blinking cautiously at modernity. It was thriving inside it, an urban sprawl of rooftop lounges, private universities, multiplexes, and high-rise clusters along the Brahmaputra. Young people moved effortlessly between Bihu and Korean pop, between Goalpariya melodies and American rap. The cultural map had shifted so dramatically that Post Malone’s name entered public conversation with surprising casualness.

There were no student bodies warning of Western contamination.

No calls to preserve cultural purity.

No last-minute cancellations.

This transformation didn’t happen in a single sweep. It was the result of slow, steady shifts driven by migration, mobility, digitalisation, and a new cultural confidence. Assamese society had learned over time that identity is not a brittle shell but a living organism. It can absorb, reinterpret, and reinvent without disappearing.

Western pop no longer seemed like a threat. If anything, it was simply another flavour in a multicultural soundscape that Assamese youth navigated with comfort.

Yet, even as excitement brewed, there was a different emotional current flowing beneath the surface, one that no global pop star could override.

Assam was grieving.

The passing of Zubeen Garg, the region’s most beloved and enigmatic musical icon, had cast a long shadow across its cultural landscape. Zubeen was not merely a singer; he was a living vocabulary for emotion in the region. His voice was present in exam-season playlists, roadside dhabas, political rallies, heartbreak vigils, and drunken confessions by the river. He was an everyday companion, a cinematic memory, a protest anthem, and an intimate whisper. His sudden absence was more than a void, it was an emotional disorientation. And so, when Post Malone’s name was mentioned, the conversation collided not with anxiety about Western influence, but with the deeper, quieter question of timing.

Many young people, who otherwise loved global pop culture, said it felt too soon for a grand concert. Not because Post Malone threatened Assamese culture, but because the region was still hurting. There was a sense that the public space owed its silence to Zubeen, a symbolic sitting in shock.

The hesitation was not moral; it was emotional.

Not political; deeply personal.

Not protective of identity; protective of memory.

And therein lies Assam’s remarkable cultural evolution.

In 2001, people feared that global pop would destabilise cultural integrity.

In 2025, people feared moving past their grief too quickly.

The tension had shifted from the cultural to the emotional, signalling a new maturity in societal consciousness.

This moment also reflects the depth of Zubeen Garg’s imprint. No international artist, however celebrated, can easily step into a landscape shaped by collective mourning. The region’s hesitation is softer than the Vengaboys resistance, but in many ways, more profound. It is rooted not in fear but in affection.

Between the concert that never happened in 2001 and the one that may soon happen in 2025 lies the story of a society undergoing a subtle but decisive transformation. The axis of public sentiment has shifted from cultural protectionism to emotional introspection. Where Guwahati once policed its cultural borders, today it negotiates its emotional rhythms.

Where it once guarded against foreign influence, today it worries about forgetting the son it lost. Where once student groups argued for identity, today ordinary people argue for memory and the right to grieve.

The Vengaboys–Post Malone arc, then, is not merely the tale of two pop acts separated by time. It is the story of Assam growing into itself, awkwardly at first, boldly later, and tenderly now. It is the story of a region learning that globalisation need not be a zero-sum game, and that grief is not the opposite of celebration but often its quiet companion.

Assam in 2001 said no because it was afraid.

Assam in 2025 hesitates because it is hurting.

And both responses are true.

As the stage lights prepare to glow, perhaps in Shillong, perhaps in Guwahati they will illuminate not just a performer but a society that has travelled far from the days of cultural suspicion. A society that can welcome the world while holding close the memory of the voice that shaped its heartbeat. A society that has learned, with difficulty and grace, that identity can be defended without fear and that grief can coexist with joy.

Two concerts.

Two eras.

One region.

The world knocked twice.

Assam answered differently each time, and in that difference lies the story of who we have become.

About the Author

(Alankar Kaushik teaches media studies at EFL University, Shillong campus and can be reached at akaushik@efluniversity.ac.in)

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