Guwahati, September 18, 2026 (Yes Punjab News)
A music enthusiast from Assam’s Nagaon district has taken up a personal initiative to preserve rare recordings of legendary Assamese singer Zubeen Garg, creating a digital archive of more than 200 songs that he says are no longer readily available on YouTube or other major music platforms.
Chinmoy Saikia, a resident of Kuwaritol, has spent years collecting old audio and video cassettes featuring Zubeen Garg’s music. He has since been digitising the recordings to protect them from deterioration and ensure they remain accessible to listeners in the future.
Saikia’s collection represents an earlier era of music consumption, when cassettes were among the primary ways people listened to and collected songs. With physical tapes becoming increasingly fragile and difficult to maintain, recordings preserved only in such formats face the risk of damage or permanent loss.
According to Saikia, his digital archive contains more than 200 Zubeen Garg songs that are not available on major online platforms. The collection includes recordings gathered over an extended period and reflects the role individual music lovers can play in preserving works that may never have received a formal digital release.
Zubeen Garg, one of Assam’s most influential singers and musicians, built a wide-ranging career in Assamese as well as several other Indian languages. His music continues to have a strong cultural presence across Assam and the wider Northeast.
Although many of Garg’s songs are now available through digital services, older recordings can be difficult to locate, particularly those released in limited physical editions or left outside mainstream streaming catalogues.
Saikia’s initiative aims to ensure that such recordings survive beyond the lifespan of the cassettes on which they were originally preserved. His effort also reflects the continuing connection between Zubeen Garg and generations of listeners who are contributing, through personal initiatives, to the preservation of his musical legacy.
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