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MUSIC AND DANCE |
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There are as many different styles of Nepali music and dance as
there are ethnic groups. These traditional arts are rarely performed
outside Nepal, which means that you'll be in a position to appreciate
some wonderfully rare sounds and sights as you travel around the
country. Meanwhile, a new wave of non-traditional Nepali music is
beginning to break into the world-music charts, and as a traveller in
Nepal you'll be able to sample the full range and pick up the latest
releases.
Gopal Yonjan, Carol Tingey and David Reed
Gopal Yonjan, the main author of these essays, was one of Nepal's most
beloved musicians. Like Narayan Gopal, with whom he is often compared,
Yonjan wrote and performed songs that touched Nepalis deeply, though
they were unknown to non-Nepali-speakers. He was also a source of great
pride and inspiration for members of his Tamang ethnic group, who suffer
considerable racial discrimination in Nepal. He died in 1997.
Classical and religious
Little attempt has been made to chart the history of Nepali music.
However, one of the earliest influences surely must have been Indian
classical music , which goes back to a time when there was no
distinction between India and Nepal, and to a region that extended well
beyond the present borders of India. Classical music of the north Indian
style flourished at the courts of the Malla kings and reached its zenith
in Nepal under the Rana prime ministers, who patronized Indian musicians
in their court to the exclusion of Nepali folk performers. Though it was
always primarily an aristocratic genre, there is still a lively
classical music network in Kathmandu, with tourist culture shows
supplementing public performances and private recitals (for example,
bimonthly at the royal palace).
Newar Buddhist priests still sing esoteric tantric hymns which, when
accompanied by mystical dances and hand postures, have immense occult
power. The secrets of these are closely guarded by initiated priests,
but a rare public performance is held on Buddha Jayanti, when five
vajracharya costumed as the Pancha Buddha dance at Swayambhu.
The contemporary layman's form of sacred music is bhajan - devotional
hymn-singing, usually performed in front of temples and in rest houses.
Bhajan groups gather on auspicious evenings to chant praises to Ram,
Krishna or other Hindu deities; during festivals they may carry on
through the night, and round-the-clock vigils are sometimes sponsored by
wealthy patrons. Like a musical puja, the haunting verses are repeated
over and over to the mesmeric beat of the tabla and the drone of the
harmonium.
Sherpas and other Bhotiyas have their own ritualistic music rooted in
Tibetan Buddhist traditions. Rhythm is more important than melody in
this crashing, banging music, which is the exclusive preserve of monks.
There's a hierarchy of instruments in the lamaist orchestra, from the
ghanti (bell), sankha (conch shell) and jhyaamta (small cymbals),
through the bugcham (large cymbals), kangling (small trumpet, made from
a human thigh bone) and dhyangro (bass drum), to the gyaling (jewel-encrusted
shawm, or oboe) and radung (a ten-foot-long telescopic trumpet, which
looks like a Swiss alpenhorn and produces a sound like a subsonic fart).
The human voice forms a separate instrument in the mix, as monks recite
prayers in deep, dirge-like, "self-harmonizing" chanting - a unique
practice lately introduced to the West by touring Tibetan ensembles.
Folk
For Nepalis who live where electricity and videos haven't yet reached,
folk music and dancing is still just about the only form of
entertainment available. On holidays and festival days, the men of a
village or neighbourhood will typically gather in a circle for an
evening session of singing and socializing; as a rule only the men
perform on these occasions, while the women look on.
The musical backing always consists of a maadal (horizontally held two-sided
drum), and often also includes other drums, harmonium and murali (bamboo
flute). After some preliminary tapping on the maadal, a member of the
group will strike up a familiar verse, and all join in on the chorus;
the first singer runs through as many verses as he can remember, at
which point someone else takes over, often making up comical verses to
suit the occasion. Members of the group dance to the music one at a
time, each entertaining onlookers with his interpretation of the song in
swirling body movements, facial expressions and hand gestures.
Young men and women sing and dance together (though again, not at the
same time) at rodi ghar , the Nepali equivalent of a sock hop.
Originally a Gurung institution, rodi has been embraced by many other
hill groups as an informal, musical means of courtship. Young men and
women of the hill tribes also sing improvised, flirtatious duets; the
woman may even take the lead in these, forcing the man to come up with
rejoinders to her jesting verses. In addition, women also sing in the
fields to ease the burden of manual work - especially during ropai (rice
transplanting), which has its own traditional songs.
Folk musical traditions vary among Nepal's many ethnic groups, but the
true sound of Nepal may be said to be the soft and melodic music of the
hills. Of several hill styles, jhyaure , the maadal -based music of the
western hills, has emerged as the most popular. Selo , the musical style
of the Tamangs that's performed to the accompaniment of the damphu (a
one-sided, flat, round drum), has also been adopted by other ethnic
communities. The music of the Jyapu farming caste has a lively rhythm,
provided by the dhime (big two-sided drum) and a host of other drums,
percussion instruments and woodwinds, though the singing has an
extremely nasal quality that's hard for outsiders to appreciate.
Although folk music is, by definition, a pursuit of amateurs, two
traditional castes of professional musicians exist in Nepal. Gaaine -
wandering minstrels - have always served as an important unifying force
in the hills, relaying not only news but also songs and musical styles
from village to village. Accompanying themselves on sarangi (four-stringed
fiddles), gaaine once thrived under patronage from local chieftains,
whose deeds were the main topics of their songs. They're on the decline
nowadays, but a few still ply their trade in the villages north of
Pokhara, in the far west, and in Kirtipur in the Kathmandu Valley (needless
to say, the so-called gaaine in Thamel and Lakeside aren't worthy of the
title). Their repertoire includes sacred songs in praise of Hindu
deities, bittersweet ballads of toil and triumph, great moments in
Nepali history and political commentary and even government propaganda.
Much more numerous are the damai , members of the tailor caste, who for
generations have served as the exclusive guardians of the paanchai
baajaa, and may also be employed at shrines to play during daily
offerings and blood sacrifices. The tailor-musician combination isn't as
strange as it might sound: Nepalis traditionally used to have just one
set of clothes made each year, for the autumn Dasain festival, so
tailors needed an occupation to tide them over during the winter and
spring. Handily, that's the wedding season, when musicians are much in
demand.
Weddings and festivals
No wedding would be complete without the paanchai baajaa (five
instruments), a traditional Nepali ensemble of sahanai (shawm), damaha (large
kettledrum), narsinga (C-shaped horn), jhyaali (cymbals) and dholaki (two-sided
drum). ("They got married without paanchai baajaa " is a euphemism for
living together.) Despite the name, bands ideally number nine members -
eleven is the legal maximum, set to keep wedding costs down. In the
Kathmandu Valley, paanchai baajaa musicians have largely traded in their
traditional instruments for Western brass horns and clarinets, and their
ceremonial dress for fanciful, military-style uniforms, but the music
remains distinctly Nepali.
Raucous and jubilant, paanchai baajaa music is considered an auspicious
accompaniment to processions, Hindu rituals and life-cycle rites. During
a wedding , the band accompanies the groom to the home of the bride,
plays during the wedding ceremony, and again during the return
procession. Apart from playing popular folk songs and film favourites,
the musicians have a traditional repertoire of numbers for specific
occasions - for example, the "bride-requesting tune", in which the shawm
player mimics the bride's wailing as she departs from her family home,
and the music of the rice-transplanting season, which imitates the body
rhythm of the workers.
Festivals bring their own interwoven forms of music and dance,
especially in the Kathmandu Valley. The Newars of the valley are
renowned for their spectacular masked dances , in which the dancers
enter a trance-like state to become the embodiments of the gods they
portray, gesturing and gyrating behind elaborately painted papier-mâché
masks. Best known of these are Bhaktapur's Nawa Durga dancers and their
supporting musicians: their vigorous dance-drama, held on the tenth day
of Dasain, recounts the victory of the goddess Durga over a buffalo
demon. In Kathmandu, several different troupes take the stage during
Indra Jaatra, performing the famous dance of the demon Lakhe, the sword-spinning
Sawo Bhaku dance, and tableaux of the Das Avatar (ten incarnations) of
Vishnu. The dancing is in a more humorous vein during Gaai Jaatra, when
boys and young men play female roles in drag, since women aren't
normally supposed to dance in public.
Virtuoso drummers , the Jyapus (Newar farmers) of the valley provide the
rolling beat for processions on festival days: generally they beat
enormous cylindrical drums ( dhime baajaa) in groups with two sizes of
cymbal. At some shrines, in addition to a singing group, there is a
complement of nine drums ( nawa daaphaa), which are played in sequence
during festivals with various accompanying instruments. Another type of
popular processional band, bansuri baajaa, combines flutes and barrel
drums.
Tibetans and Bhotiyas have their own form of dance-drama, cham .
Tengboche hosts the most famous of such performances, Mani Rimdu, on the
day after the full moon of October-November (another performance is held
at Thami in May), when monks wearing masks and costumes represent
various good and bad guys in the story of Buddhism's victory over the
ancient Bön religion in Tibet. Monasteries at Boudha and Swayambhu also
present cham dances around Losar (Tibetan New Year).
Modern music
Pre-1951, Nepal had no radio and no recording industry, and those few
artists who travelled to Calcutta to record their songs on 78rpm were
known only to a handful of aristocrats with record-players. The dawn of
modern Nepali music came in 1952, the year after the fall of the Ranas,
when Radio Nepal was established; only a year later, Dharma Raj Thapa
made recording history, selling 3000 copies of a novelty song about the
conquest of Everest by Hillary and Tenzing Norgay.
A homegrown recording industry took root under King Mahendra (1955-72),
himself something of a patron of the arts, and with it came Nepal's
first wave of recording stars . Still the best loved of these, though he
died in 1991, is Narayan Gopal, whose songs are praised for their
poignant sukha-dukha (happiness-sadness); the late Aruna Lama is also
remembered for her renditions of sad and sentimental songs. Kumar Basnet
remains popular for his folk songs, while Meera Rana is still in her
prime, belting out classical, folk and even pop tunes. Several of
Nepal's foremost composers also came out of this era, including Amber
Gurung, Nati Kazi and the late Gopal Yonjan.
More recently, the growth of the Nepali film industry has opened up new
horizons for composers and singers; television, introduced in the mid-1980s,
has provided a further boost. These have in turn contributed to the
establishment of new recording studios and cassette-reproduction
concerns. That said, cinema and TV have also done their share of harm.
By copying third-rate Indian productions, Nepali films have mainly
enlarged the market for lowest-common-denominator music, turning
audiences and musicians away from traditional styles and opening the
floodgates to slick Indian-produced masaala ("spicy": a little of this &
a little of that).
Other recent developments have cut both ways, too. Tourist culture shows
have inevitably led to the commercialization of Nepali culture and
music, yet they've also helped preserve folk arts by providing a source
of income for musicians and dancers. Ghazal , another Indian import, has
done nothing for Nepali music, but it too pays the rent for Nepali
musicians. Even Radio Nepal gives with one hand and takes away with the
other, by providing an important outlet for musicians but at the same
time blurring regional differences.
A few Nepali groups have recently achieved crossover success with East-meets-West
fusion music , employing traditional instruments in non-traditional
arrangements and recording to high production standards. The flute-sitar-tabla
trio Sur Sudha has defined this sound: members Prem Rana (flute), Bijaya
Vaidya (sitar) and Surendra Shrestha (tabla) are the closest thing Nepal
has to international stars, and have done much to advance Nepali music
by establishing a musical institute and producing albums by other
artists.
Pop music is of course a growing proposition with young urban Nepalis.
Locally produced material is pretty unlistenable, but with Indian music
videos now available in Nepal via satellite, we can expect quantity, if
not quality, to increase.
Discography
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