It is no obscurity that the hills are immensely indulgent in all things art. It is also no obfuscation that if someone says that people from the parts of hilly regions of West Bengal, specially Darjeeling, Kalimpong, Mirik, etc., are immensely talented in these fine arts, specially music. Mirik is such a small town with abundant talent and immense beauty, and a Notified Area of Darjeeling district in the state of West Bengal. It is the headquarters of the Mirik subdivision.
Further, Mirik is a popular tourist destination in India, Samendu Lake is the Centre of attraction for all who visit this beautiful hill town. It also has several sightseeing and tourist hotspots other than the lake. It is a hill station at an altitude of 1767 m above the sea level. The distance from the nearest railway station is about 57 kms and the nearest airport Bagdogra is about 55 kms.
This makes Mirik easily accessible from any corner of the world and it’s well-connected from Siliguri with the winding hilly road and breathtaking picturesque tea gardens on both sides. Though Mirik is well known in the world tourist map but the community is determined to bring Mirik to the forefront as a clean model town with a strong cultural and musical roots by celebrating the first ZERO WASTE & PLASTIC FREE event in the history of Darjeeling.
“MIRYOK Music Festival will be an annual musical festival celebrated in Mirik. This will be the first of its kind, and will be an initiative that promotes sustainability, and sustainable celebrations.” Suraj Tamang, one of the event heads tells Sikkim Chronicle.
The music festival is a “ZERO WASTE & PLASTIC FREE” initiative and a fest of its own kind. The festival is scheduled to be held on 17 & 18 December, 2022.
“This festival is organized by Team Miryok driven by passionate young minds who are selfless enough to care for a better quality of air to breathe, care for their own environment and for a better place to live. This team consists of young minds with lot of energy and enthusiasm aiming to contribute to create sustainable events. We often feel that our actions have a cascading effect, but actually it follows the circular effect path. Sustainable living is the only message we want to spread through this festival to save our home and our bigger home – our planet!”- Team Miryok
“Components of our event are everything which supports a sustainable lifestyle and a sustainable community. Said that, no doubt ‘MIRYOK Music Festival’ is ethically sourced, with zero waste and plastic free planning and concept so that we don’t create more waste to go in our landfills.” The team adds.
This fest also aims to integrate and collaborate cultural food, music and art with the rest of the world. This music festival is also an opportunity for the tourist and visitors and the locals to participate, interact, exchange and enjoy our part of music and art.
AIMS & OBJECTIVES:
- To educate, promote and build capacity for community to celebrate ZERO WASTE & PLASTIC FREE events.
- Also to create a ZERO WASTE & PLASTIC FREE music festival model in our part of the world.
- Trying to create awareness on the negative impact of single use plastic to our planet through the festival model.
- To create a platform for various artist to exhibit their art.
- To promote sustainable tourism in the hills.
- Engage ourselves for a long term partnership with different stakeholders.
- To create an annual meeting point for local Entrepreneur and startups to collaborate with the corporates.
The festival aims to bring in a lot of youngsters from the hills’ society, incentivising them to start being responsible towards the planet. It’s a festival of its own kind, where it attracts a lot of national and international visitors to witness the magic of sustainable culture. It is also an initiative to make people enjoy the musical festival with the performance of some , national and international artist. In totality an idea to exchange music, culture, food, sustainable lifestyle and many more as it’s a community centric event.
Speaking of audience engagement, the team says, “We have tried to showcase this music festival in such way; that it has the potentiality to attract a lot of people from all walks of life – visitors, tourists, locals, corporates, artists, musicians, music lover, entrepreneurs etc. not only from India but from all over the world. Mirik is a famous tourist destination and it is also known for its natural beauty which adds to the icing on the cake to this mega event. More than 10k to 15k footfalls are expected per day which will immensely make this event a prestigious one.”
Not just focusing on the environmental aspect of the festival, where many fail to give out a holistic experience, while just focusing on one aspect of the fest, team Miryok have outlined a line up of the finest artists from the hills and beyond.
The team says, “This festival has aimed to give the finest headline artist from the music industry to our audience which consist of Bipul Chettri from Kalimpong, he has also being nominated as one of the voting member for prestigious Grammy Awards and another young vibrant international artist Yabesh Thapa from Kathmandu, Nepal, will also be joining us and adding to the line up Siddhart Gurung ( singer / songwriter ) budding talent from Mirik, RinchenTamang from Darjeeling, popularly known as RIKO ( The voice of Nepal Season 4),Biswash Upreti and the band ( 2nd runners up Nepal Idol) and a many more to name.”
The hills have been synonymous with tourism industry in the past few decades, and the Miryok festival holds no hostages in bringing and strengthening that aspect of the picturesque location Mirik is ensconced in.
Talking about tourism, they say, “The festival is a great opportunityto reach out for those engaged in tourism and a sustainable model for the entire region. MIRYOK Music Festival will become a common ground to feature their unique and ethnic rural lifestyle. This will aim in fostering the rural economy into a sustainable economy. We have also tried to collaborate with the cooperate world to walk hand in hand to enhance the power of modern technologies to support the tourism industry.”
Suraj Tamang, speaking exclusively with Sikkim Chronicle echoed what the team said, and he added that this festival being sustainable isn’t just to grab the headlines or to be woke, because it was informed that they’re not only going to make this plastic free, but will be closely monitoring the waste production in the festival, where an audit will be done of what the intensity of waste was produced. Then the waste will be duly treated adhering to all the matrices of sustainability.
