Dreams, Wings, and Other Things

This stone building, nestled in a not-so-quiet corner of the Tibetan Children's Village between the mess hall and the sports field, is home to two wondrous little rooms filled to the brim with those magical implements we call instruments. Pardon me if I wax sentimental, but music rooms are to me what stadiums are to athletes, flea markets to hoarders, back alleys to crack addicts, and churches to the faithful. They are homes, sometimes literally, for stretches of time filling months and years. They are places of joy and pain, highs and lows, friends and frienemies (I never had any, but I saw the phenomenon in the music room regularly). The sound space is singular - what other rooms spend most of their time above a sound pressure level of 90 dB, in an at least semi-musical din?

The four main Tibetan instruments, with parts labeled. Notice the Tibetan, Western, and Indian scale degree equivalency chart in quadrant I (for those of you who forgot which quadrant is I, Descartes' fly on the ceiling is about to give you some terrible disease). The doors on either side lead to the two music/dance rooms.

The soundscape of the room is made more interesting by the pedagogical style I have observed when full classes are taught. The first half of class is spent learning some specific song, technique, or instrument, all by rote and call-and-response. The second half is a kind of free time, where students are meant to practice what they learn while the teacher moves from student to student assisting. Exploration is encouraged, and the result is the very loud, dissonant, and beautiful sound of twenty-five kids messing around on different instruments simultaneously in a small stone room. I noted to Dawa-la, the head music teacher, that I deeply appreciate this teaching method. Music is often taught in a painful way, with no spontaneity or exploration allowed. The focus is usually on not making mistakes, rather than on making music and making connections to the instruments. Some of the most fun and educational experiences I have ever had came from wondering what all the sounds are that a snare drum (etc.) can make, and going on to properly break all the rules I knew and trying my darndest to break rules I hadn't yet heard of. There's a special joy in bending the sound palette of an instrument past sane boundaries, if only for the mental image it conjures up of shock and disgust on an old fuddy-duddy music teacher's face.

Some of the concepts I threw at my drum class the other day. The cascara took a little while to lock in, but they were impressive in the speed they picked it up. Today, I noticed that someone filled the empty space in the top right corner with "Save Tibet!"

In this spirit, and with the injunction from Techung to share more of the best that Western music has to offer with the Bylakuppeans, I have embarked on a very fulfilling mission of reciprocity to my hosts. As I think I have mentioned, I teach drum lessons. There is one class of about 15 students, and two one-on-one classes with students who had the gonads (I have to use the generic term, because Nyidun is a girl) to approach the Inji-Mi and ask for lessons. We have been listening to funk, jazz, prog rock, pop, dance, Afro-Cuban stuff - you name it. It's fun to watch the look on kids' faces when they vibe with something that isn't Justin Bieber (J. Biebs, I love you man, but J. Coltrane is more my kind of cat).

One of the boys who digs on hanging around the music room in his free time. Some of these kids school me on dramyen. It's awesome.

In the spirit of the mission Dawa-la has entrusted me with, I also make sure the kids see me practicing their native music and singing in their mother tongue. For one thing, he told me, the teachers are always trying to convince the students of the richness of Tibetan culture, especially music and dance, and sometimes use as an illustration the Westerners (Injis) who come to their communities to learn Tibetan music. The injis, they say, wouldn't spend so much money and time to travel halfway around the world unless there was something very important and beautiful to uncover. The thing is, the students in Bylakuppe never actually see these injis, because Dharamsala in the north is the normal pilgrimage site for interested musicians. Dawa-la has tried to impart to me the impact of having a real, live inji in their midst. Forget about any musical aptitude I may or may not have. I have come from the land of Taylor Swift to learn dramyen. Dawa-la's hope, and I've seen some small evidences of his hope being fulfilled, is that the excitement of a Westerner learning dramyen might help some of the students take another look at their own musical tradition (without necessarily losing their interest in Metallica, Green Day, and The Eagles). The dream, for me and for the teachers at the school, is for the students to be able to have a resting point, a foundation, in their own culture, and an appreciation and applied aptitude for it, while also exploring, understanding, and experimenting with the musics of other cultures. It's a little like Sanka's speech in Cool Runnings - if I dress Jamaican, talk Jamaican, walk Jamaican, and is Jamaican, then I damn well better bobsled like a Jamaican. I don't see a thing wrong with a refugee picking up a guitar and learning "Hotel California," any more than I have a problem with an American college student traveling to India to learn dramyen, but I dig on the whole thing more if a native flair, fire, and spirit is retained. As another illustration, I was expressing some worry today over the accent I am using to sing the Tibetan lyrics in the song I will be performing at His Holiness' birthday (less than 35 hours from now!), and Dawa-la told me (and I'm paraphrasing),

"You are a Westerner. You won't sound Tibetan. It doesn't matter. You being there, up on that stage, and participating in our celebration in your own way - that's what people want to see. They'll love it. Just focus on the song."

That kind of embracing of two cultures simultaneously while recognizing one as your own is what I am coming to love and believe in more and more.

Words in Tibetan script, music in do-re-mi notation (1=do, 2=re, etc. A line under a phrase doubles its speed)

Back to the building, and the title of this post. I have this thing with physical space and environments and the ways they influence, enable, and inhibit artistic expression. For example, I have never been told more times in my life to play and sing louder. These dudes and chicks have serious pipes. I was practicing in the empty music room today when I heard a group in the other room start singing. It sounded like there were eight or so people singing. There were three. My theory, and maybe one day I'll prove it, is that coming from a physical space like the one in the Himalayas influences the cultures that inhabit it to fill the space with their music, and also uninhibits/never creates the volume sanctions that city-dwellers develop so as not to step on their neighbor's sound space. The alpenhorn in Switzerland are a similar case of huge instruments filling the forever-space, and the didgeridoo of the Australian Aborigines is another. (in a reverse example, electronic keyboards with headphone jacks took off in relatively cramped suburban America).

Focusing down to the microcosm of my current subject, music rooms are perfect spaces. They are made sacred by noise, sometimes disjointed and sometimes polished, and also make sacred and untouchable the noise-making desires of their inhabitants (untouchable, that is, by the normal workings of the outside world. If the students in the math building next door are taking a test, to hell with them, but if there is a performance on the stage above the music room then the music room's sacred space is extended and its internal system of governance applies). Music rooms are canvases for the painting of soundscapes. Returning to sentimentality, they are places for the realizing of dreams, and for the dreaming of new ones. They are vehicles for expression as vital and vibrant as the instruments they house.

[Similarly, for any interested parties, musical instruments are perfect objects embodying an infinite realm of possibilities, and make great gifts for all your poor friends who just spent all their money on trips to India]

Without a space where noise and experimentation are unrestricted, or at least are governed by a very different set of rules than the outside world, there can be very little in the way of musical learning. In this particular case, cultural preservation of a diasporic people depends on the existence of such a space. Further, the cultural interaction that takes place when one kid is playing an electric guitar and the kid one chair over is playing dramyen is unlikely without a space that houses both instruments and allows for the necessary noise. I believe this kind of interaction is vital to the way modern cultures progress - not vital in the sense of "needed for this good thing to happen," but in the sense of "foundational and integral to a natural process," and not progress in the sense of "improve," but simply in the sense of "moving forward." In other words, the tide of cultural change in the world is propelled by the existence of two or more distinct cultural implements (physical or otherwise) in shared spaces where they are allowed a degree of use. This may seem rather obvious and even mundane, and perhaps it is, but there is something stirring about watching the fluidity with which these students switch between and mix cultures, and there is something true about letting go of ideas of "Western" and "Tibetan" and watching the students simply live. This particular space has created a venue for this fluidity and unique way of creating identity. Other venues, for further exploration another time, include the pirate shops that sell mp3 cds of Bollywood and American music, the internet cafes with headphones at every stall (by the by, the internet cafe Lori and I frequent plays "All I Want for Christmas is You" over their speaker system every time I'm there), cell phones the monks use to play music while walking, and parties with music blasting. These places house and juxtapose music available to and popular in the community, and give some clues as to what music is housed in the hearts and brains of the people. While not quite as perfect a space as a music room, as they are all based on consumption rather than creation, they are indicative of and drivers of musical cultural exchange.

This ends my post. The pictures here are for general interest and for you, Dr. Grimshaw. There are more where these came from. Credit goes to Lori for agreeing to be my photographer for a few hours.

You know a student is serious when he shows up to a lesson wearing a v-neck t-shirt with a drum set and the word "ROCK" emblazoned in classic heavy metal font. This kid is good, and plays a mean guitar too.

A common sight - three dranyen chilling on the ground next to the kit. The one in the middle is using a kata, or Tibetan Buddhist blessing scarf, as an improvised strap.

Me with one of my teachers, Tsering Palden. This guy blows me away. I'll put up a recording when I get a chance. Yes ladies, he is single. And good with kids.

Annotated Source

2...


Dennis, Christopher. Afro-Colombian Hip-hop: Globalization, Transcultural Music, and Ethnic Identities. Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2012. Print.

Here's some Afro-Colombian Hip-hop for context. Let the music play.

This just dropped, a great book about a vibrant hip-hop community. Here are a few relevant quotes (remember that stuff about this being for me, not you? Yeah, this is that. The videos, though, are for both of us.)

Generally speaking, hip-hop is defined as the culture, while rap is the music considered to be one of the four pillars of hip-hop culture: breakdancing, DJing (turntables), MCin (rap), and graffiti. From a cultural and musical practice originating among African American, Caribbean, and Hispanic youth in the Bronx, it has become a global signifying practice providing new parameters of meaning to locally and/or nationally diverse social groups. Beyond U.S. borders, hip-hop has become a vehicle for youth affiliations in parts of Europe, Africa, Asia, and Latin America. 2

All too frequently the media, politicians, and scholars use globalization to describe intercultural and international contact and economic exchange, which, in that case, would simply imply a new term used to define older processes that have a very long history. 10

In the end, most agree that globalization has definitely led to a fundamental acceleration of the pace of the social, cultural, and economic change around the world, greatly aided by technological advances in communication systems that permit the instantaneous movement of information and finance capital in a way that local events are influenced by events that take place at great distances and vice versa... It is vital to consider whether and in what ways has globalization been negative or positive for Afro-Colombian urban youth. What challenges and benefits has globalization presented and how are they manifested through Afro-Colombian hip-hop? 13

Together, globalization and postmodern theories have contributed to a dramatic shift of the terrain of culture toward the popular, toward everyday practices and local narratives - often from the margins of society - which, in turn, challenge the privilege historically bestowed on "high culture." (Hall, "What Is This 'Black' in Black Popular Culture?"124) 15

Hip-hop's worldwide appeal can greatly be attributed to the global fetishization of black peoples as a way for non-blacks to experience "real" or "exotic" culture. And naturally, the understanding of U.S hip-hop as an expression of African American culture has played a critical role in its spread and assimilation among black youth of the diaspora... Nevertheless, hip-hop has also migrated so extensively among the world's youth due to its associations with lower-class urban environments and its strategic marketing as music by and for marginalized groups who live in ghettoized, often violent, worlds, providing an imaginary with which inner-city youth can identify regardless of their ethnic-racial background, nationality, or language. 43-44


Dig.

The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1936)

…For the first time in world history, mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual. To an ever greater degree the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility. From a photographic negative, for example, one can make any number of prints; to ask for the "authentic" print makes no sense. But the instant the criterion of authenticity ceases to be applicable to artistic production, the total function of art is reversed. Instead of being based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice--politics.

To a degree, I agree with Benjamin's thoughts on art and reproducibility in the "machine age," and even more so now that we are in the full swing of the digital age. Photographs are incredibly reproducible, and digital prints even more so. We read this article for my world music class, and the concept relates in a nearly 1-1 kind of way - recordings of music are easy to come by. The little hand recorder I bought for $100 produces beautiful 96/24 stereo recordings. Fidelity in photography and sound recording goes up and up as prices plummet - I remember looking at a digital camera add from the 90s showcasing a brand new state-of-the-art Hasselblad digital back that cost the same as a car, and now an iPhone comes with a better camera. For the vast majority of consumed artistic media, "authenticity" is a rather silly concept.

I think, though, that Benjamin overshot his vision. The pictures I included above are from artists who were at the artistic forefront at the time Benjamin was writing, Ansel Adams and Edward Weston. I have quite a bit of experience (for a 23 year-old) in fine art photography, and I have used the same processes Ansel and Edward used to make photographs, right down to the selenium toning. I know for absolute fact that there are aspects of photography at this level that are not reproducible, at least not any more than an original oil painting is exactly reproducible. The exact exposure times may be recorded, the precise concentrations of chemical might be marked, and the time in the bath might be timed down to the second, but there are still parts that come down to artistic decisions, backgrounded by experience, made on the fly. Things change from day to day, and every piece of fiber paper you use has its own slightly unique characteristics, even if they all came from the same pack. There are also techniques that are simply too difficult for amateur photographers to pull off without years of experience, and the stepwise process of photography involves decisions as to which techniques to use in each of the three major stages (producing the negative, processing the film, and printing the image). The final result in fine art photography is a print as unique as any painting. Even high quality digital scans fail to capture the vibrancy and beauty of the originals - look at high quality digital reproductions, and then go take a close look at an original. There is an almost spiritual presence. I spent years looking at Ansel Adams photographs online and in coffee-table books, and then I went and saw the real things. It's like listening to vinyl on a high-fi system versus listening to the same track on an iPod with Skullcandy headphones, though maybe less extreme. There is a reason original oil paintings and silver gelatin or platinum photographs sell for so much at Sotheby's, and there is a reason people still go to concerts. I argue that there is still value in the "authentic," and that is a substantial reason I and others go places to do fieldwork as opposed to just listening to recordings, watching YouTube videos, and looking at pictures. I will be reproducing material for people to look at and listen to, and I am extremely grateful for the recording devices of the digital age, but I know I will have most of the most moving and meaningful musical experiences in person, with the sounds coming straight from their source to my ears without any middle-men or processing. There is power in the ritual of performance, whether that performance is musical, visual, or otherwise. That power will be reproducible only in part, as if through a glass darkly, through descriptions and recordings. 

Hanging out in Bylakuppe

I decided that, for today's journal, I would spend a little time in virtual Bylakuppe. YouTube has quite a few videos taken in the settlement. Here are a few of the interesting ones:

This guy is the host of a show that does a gastronomic tour of India, and he ends up in Bylakuppe to try out some Tibetan/Tibetan-fusion food. I'm kinda starving right now. Mmmm... Thukpa sounds good.

Of special interest to Lori and B. Landrum, here is a video from the SOS Children's Village, a school in the settlement. I dig the songs they sing - that might be an interesting area for research. Again, they taunt me with food.

This Indian beggar chants Tibetan mantras for his supper, which is cool. The amount of Hindi I was able to understand is also cool (if it was indeed Hindi - I don't know how much Telugu or the other southern Indian languages and Hindi share, and Bylakuppe is in the south...) - shukriya, Shrimati Carroll! 

Now, THIS is very interesting. The video is terrible, and you can't see much, but is worth listening to to see what musical selection a DJ in Bylakuppe at a Losar party would have. There's some Ke$ha, then Bob Marley, then some house trance. Cool beans.

The world is certainly a much smaller place then it used to be, and at Techung's suggestion I have taken part in what he says is probably one of the most used methods by Tibetans to connect and communicate - YouTube. I had no idea that Bylakuppe had any kind of presence on the internet, but here it is. I'll let you know what else I find!

Annotated Source

Mozart in Mirrorshades: Ethnomusicology, Technology, and the Politics of Representation Author(s): René T. A. Lysloff
Reviewed work(s):
Source: Ethnomusicology, Vol. 41, No. 2, Special Issue: Issues in Ethnomusicology (Spring - Summer, 1997), pp. 206-219
Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of Society for Ethnomusicology
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/852603 .
Accessed: 05/03/2012 02:19

I was wondering about the effects of the technology I will be using to record the music in Bylakuppe, and I  came across this sweet article from 97. It uses a sci-fi story, "Mozart in Mirrorshades," to illustrate a few ideas about media tech and ethnomusicology. This sums up the conclusions, "Thus, ethnomusicologists might learn several lessons from the story: (1) that the "native"is not necessarily a naive and passive recipient of media technology; (2) that media technology may be especially empowering for those people with little or no political and economic power; (3) that people may use media technology in radically new and surprising ways, and infuse it with meanings specific to such use; and (4) the social meanings associ- ated with particular technologies often change as these technologies traverse cultural boundaries." (p.217)

Queen Kong Does it Again

Environment and Planning D; Society and Space 1996, volume 14, pages 273-292

Popular music in Singapore: exploring local cultures,
global resources, and regional identities
Lily Kong
Department of Geography, National University of Singapore, 10 Kent Ridge Crescent,
Singapore 119260
Received 21 March 1995; in revised form 12 September 1995

'Geographers concerned with the ways in which local communities are drawn into global arenas and with the means by which global forces become resources for indigenous modification, may thus find music

a worthwhile research area. In this way, "music is integral to the geographical
imagination" (Smith, 1994, page 238), and deserves more space on geographers'
research agenda.'

The more I read Lily Kong, the more I realize why everybody who is anybody in musical human geographies cites her. Her writing style is lucid and accessible, and the arguments she makes are too. Many of the basic ideas I seek to explore in Bylakuppe are present in her works and the works of the other human geographers she has empowered through her seminal writings. Add her and Kiela Diehl together and you have someone who would do incredible things with my project, things I'm sure I haven't yet dreamt of.

The big ideas in this article are the local vs. global views of acculturation, and whether local versus global is the real issue. Perhaps it's not so much a battle, and in any case seeing it as a battle is only marginally useful in research because battles tend to push one towards taking a side. Perhaps it is better to look at a local and global model of acculturation, addressing the issue from all sides. Again, she uses the theoretical framework of "text, intertext, and context," which I love. Lyrics and aural content are examined, as is common in musicological studies, and context/environment (family, national, political, social, etc.) is also examined per normal course. The inclusion of intertext is a wonderful and unique way of tying it all together - what clothes are the musicians and listeners wearing, what goes on the album art, what food and drink are associated (if any), and on and on. Taking in the whole musical scene becomes the essential work of the day. Kong analyzes the person and work, as well as the reception and critical review, of a famous Singaporean pop star, Dick Lee. His music is a lot of fun to listen to - a few tracks are on youtube, if you are interested. The result is a fascinating and satisfying look into music, expression, and identity.

In Bylakuppe, I don't want to spend all my time analyzing texts, or learning instruments, or taking notes of what kids are wearing or listening to - I want to spend time with people, first and foremost, and do all of the above mentioned activities as they are relevant. Since I don't really know what I will find, it would be foolish to go in looking for too specific an idea to test - the set-in-stone idea may not even be relevant, and in any case might blind me to things more interesting and vital. The way I look at things, people are the music they make, and vice versa. I don't mean that a singer believes every word they ever sing, or that the emotion they have to reproduce every night in performance has to be fresh and entirely heartfelt, but that a person choosing (or being forced, as was the case for the great Art Blakey) to make music of any type reveals something vital about their character and environment. Maybe a Chinese national singing an anthem doesn't quite buy into the words about the greatness of their leader, or perhaps that guy singing next to you in church doesn't believe at all - the fact of musical production in such circumstances is itself a fascinating manifestation of personal and cultural phenomena. Music is a struggle, and music is easy, all at the same time. Looking at the music itself (the "text"), the context, and the intertext in a holistic method is a powerful way to get at the heart of the human experience, and a powerful way to get at the heart of a particular human's experience.

Annotated Source

At a party with a few members of my field studies group, our in-field facilitator put on the above rendition of "Om Mani Padme Hum," the most famous and perhaps most important mantra in Tibetan Buddhism. I love it, but I was (and am) rather amused by it. Most of the Tibetan monastic music I have listened to in my studies has been nothing that a typical Westerner would call peaceful. Cymbals clang, giant horns blurt, and thigh-bone trumpets wail. Here's something to consider

Dig.

The annotated source for today deals with this very issue: the commodification of music for tourist consumption, and the way commodification helps cultures subsist while also creating new cultures.

"Commodification and the selling of ethnic music to tourists" by Xiaobo Su,
Received 19 July 2009
Received in revised form 5 March 2011 Available online 12 April 2011
Department of Geography, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403-1251, United States 

Geoforum 42 (2011) 496–505

Su explores the tourist commodification case in Lijiang, China. To sum up his conclusions, 

1. Examining commodification as a process is useful in understanding the links between economy and culture.

2. Commodification shapes local cultures in general, and ethnic music in particular.

It's another story in the saga of how new traditions are created in preservation efforts, and how learning how to survive in an increasingly globalized world molds cultures in fascinating ways. The first track above is beautiful, and several of my friends have taken to using it for morning and bedtime music with a frequency that surprises me. It is unlikely that the second track would take that kind of role, though I find it beautiful in a different way. Perhaps the sentiments of the Karmapa are shared by many - it is important to keep one's roots, but it is the 21st century and denying that is useless.

More on Tibet in Video Games

This has become a really fun little side project. In seeking to get a better idea for how Westerners see Tibet in order to have a point of comparison for how Tibetans see Tibet, I never thought I would get to research video games. It is likely that none of this will show up in my final report (you never know, though...), but if Patrick French looked at video games in Tibet, Tibet, then I can look at them too darnit! Go with what you know, right?

I found a few more games that deal with or use Tibet in some fashion. Here are some screenshots:

Grom: Terror in Tibet. Notice the mandala in the lower left part of the screen.

Crazy Chicken: Heart of Tibet. Yetis and ice - sounds about right.

A Missing Father and a Quest to Find Shangri La!

Jane's father has gone missing in his quest to find the legendary city of Shangri La in Tibet. Guided by clues from her father's secret journal, Jane is determined to find Shangri La and answers!
Help Jane by carving a trail through the treacherous mountains of Tibet in order to find what she needs to build a hot air balloon and get the answers she seeks!

Tintin in Tibet - based on a comic book of the same name. The comic book received an award from the Dalai Lama for introducing many westerners to Tibet for the first time.

Lost Horizon - saving Tibet from the Nazis. Video games like to group Tibet with the Nazis trying to find occult weapons of unimaginable power.

Amazing Monk - fight/trick soldiers on your way to enlightenment

And another list from giantbomb.com, brought up by the search term "Shambhala":

SHAMBHALA

A mythical lost city situated in the Himalayas. Also known as "Shangri-La" to many.

Shambhala is a mythical kingdom described in Tibetan Buddhism. Although usually understood as a physical place, the term is freighted with various mystical or spiritual connotations and is perhaps better understood as a metaphor for spiritual enlightenment and the idea of a "Pure Land" found in some Buddhist traditions.
This notion of a secret Central Asian kingdom combining Utopian and earthly paradise elements was popularized in James Hilton's 1933 novel Lost Horizon, which coined the term Shangri-La. In Hilton's book, Shangri-La is a fertile, temperate valley, nearly inaccessible to the outside world, ruled by a benevolent lamasery of nearly immortal monks.

		Name	Platforms	Developer
		Lost Horizon released on Sept. 24, 2010	PC	Animation Arts Creative GmbH
		Uncharted 2: Among Thieves released on Oct. 13, 2009	PS3	Naughty Dog, Inc.
		Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine released on Oct. 31, 1999	GBC, N64, PC	HotGen Ltd., LucasArts Entertainment Company LLC, Factor 5, LLC
		The Journeyman Project 3: Legacy of Time released on Jan. 31, 1998	MAC, PC	Presto Studios, Inc.
		Atlantis: The Lost Tales released on Sept. 30, 1997	SAT, PS1, PC	Cryo Interactive Entertainment

 Without exception, the conception and portrayal of Tibet in video games reflects its status as a forbidden land, a place for personal growth and discovery, for the unlocking of ancient mysteries. Interestingly, it's almost always also a place to be escaped from. Sure, it's the location of Shambhala, but no one actually wants to live there. There are yetis and Chinese soldiers and big freaky snowstorms and... It seems that Everest is a good metaphor - it reaches into the heavens, and to conquer it means to conquer yourself, but except for a few crazy sherpas it doesn't have any permanent residents. Get in, have your adventure, and get out. This contrasts quite heavily with what the general feeling of the Tibetan diaspora seems to be - sure, we'll go into exile, grow spiritually as a people and accept karma for what it is, but we want to get back to the Himalayan homeland as fast as possible. The games deal with escape, whereas Tibetans deal with return. Interesting stuff.


This last bit, however, is just downright fascinating, and it ties in with music, identity, AND video games. It's an interview with the Karmapa, one of the current leaders of Tibetan Buddhism. It comes from the Times of India:




Moving to other issues, I believe you like to listen to hip-hop on your ipod. Who are your favourite artistes?
I can't think of any specific artistes right now, I basically listen to what ever comes my way, whatever sounds appealing. It's important for me to stick to my traditional forms of art because I am a Tibetan Buddhist teacher wearing these robes. It's important for me to maintain my cultural affiliations.
But from time to time I do enjoy listening to hip-hop because it has a very modern sound to it and even though I'm a Tibetan teacher representing these ancient teachings, I'm also a global citizen in the 21st century. Hip-hop perhaps is one way of me being a 21st-century person.
Is that why you play war games on your play station because many might say it's inappropriate for a Buddhist monk dedicated to peace to play war games?
Well, I view video games as something of an emotional therapy, a mundane level of emotional therapy for me. We all have emotions whether we're Buddhist practitioners or not, all of us have emotions, happy emotions, sad emotions, displeased emotions and we need to figure out a way to deal with them when they arise.
So, for me sometimes it can be a relief, a kind of decompression to just play some video games. If I'm having some negative thoughts or negative feelings, video games are one way in which I can release that energy in the context of the illusion of the game. I feel better afterwards.
The aggression that comes out in the video game satiates whatever desire I might have to express that feeling. For me, that's very skilful because when I do that I don't have to go and hit anyone over the head.
But shouldn't meditation take care of that?
No, video games are just a skilful method.


I love how candid Tibetan Buddhist leaders are.

This is likely the last post on Tibet and video games, but if anybody out there finds anything worth talking about relative to cyber-Tibet, shoot me a line.

The Matrix (of Influence) Part II

Looking in an easterly direction:

CHINA! And the rest of Asia!

 

Jay Chou - Way cool Taiwanese pop/rock/R&B superstar

The incredible popularity of a few pop superstars in Asia, combined with what seems to be a pan-Asian love for karaoke (notice the pinyin lyrics in the video), takes erhu pop straight into the Tibetan mainstream. Both of the Tibetan weddings in Mantras & Misdemeanors, Wednesday's annotated source, include at least a little Asian pop. I'm not sure how widespread the love for Asian pop is in India. It is interesting, and will be a subject of further inquiry, that deep fear/discomfort/hatred/[insert negative emotion here] that one would expect from Tibetans towards the Chinese doesn't seem to reduce their ability to enjoy music from the east. The Chinese government's efforts to dilute Tibetan culture may be working, or it may be that most Tibetans are above hating a people simply because they don't agree with their government. The latter is the vibe I've been getting most.

And, finally, back up north to the homeland:

TIBET!

There is a constant influx of Tibetan refugees, fresh over the Himalayas. One estimate says that about 3000 Tibetans escaped per year in the 90s, most into Nepal then on to India. This ensures a continual influx of Tibetan culture straight from the homeland to the camps.

Most interesting to me so far, from the Tibetan folk music side of things, has been shepherd song. Many societies with a history of pastoral emphasis have beautiful songs, inspired by long days in the middle of nowhere with little company except the flock. Again using the weddings from Mantras & Misdemeanors as examples, the young men were quick to take the stage to sing the nomad songs of their homelands, with vigor and nostalgia.

"They stand in front of the crowd, strong and happy, and sing beautiful nomad songs, their voices undulating over high calls emanating from deep in their throats to low languid notes. One after the other Tibetans get up and take the bottle to sing; sometimes alone closing their eyes, sometimes spontaneously joined in by others swaying happily in their seats. Just when I think there is no one left, someone else will get up and launch into beautiful, unabashed nomadic wailing." p. 110, Vanessa Walker

A similar scene occurs about 150 pages later, at Vanessa's own wedding. I am excited to see if this is typical of social gatherings, as the only recordings of nomad songs I have are lacking in immediacy and, without visual feedback, are without the degree of emotion described in the book.


So, there you have it. According to Kiela Diehl, these are the main influences on the Tibetan diaspora. With ease of internet access continually increasing, I would not be surprised to find other interests and fads influencing the youth in Bylakuppe. Crazy things happen - my Hindi teacher told us several times about the influx of Latin and Salsa music into India, and how all her friends want to learn Spanish and learn to get down like they do south of the border. We live in an amazing world, and boundaries disappear with every click of the mouse.

Annotated Source

Mantras & Misdemeanors: An Accidental Love Story by Vanessa Walker, forward by His Holiness the Dalai Lama

So, I picked up this book when I first got interested in Tibetan refugee communities. I opened it the other day, just expecting a good read - you know those days when academia is just repulsive and you can't take it anymore? Yeah, it was one of those days (truthfully, it's been one of those months). I was surprised to find that it is not only a good read, but is also a treasure trove of firsthand accounts of the crazy lives these exiles live. Vanessa Walker, an Australian convert to Buddhism daylighting as a journalist, had traveled to India several times for spiritual reasons. This trip was purposefully designed to gather material for a book. She lived in Dharamsala, and, of all things, fell in love with a former monk and they got pregnant (I haven't gotten to read about the birth yet - just wait!). Mantras & Misdemeanors is one of those wonderful books that combines serious journalism with compelling, often hilarious storytelling. Hearing her Tibetan boyfriend/husband (it's ambiguous which) tell her in all seriousness how lucky and auspicious it was that she had a double chin just like the Dalai Lama about killed me. It easily and transparently transitions into transcriptions of interviews with some of the most important figures in the diaspora, some of those with whom an interview must have been a miracle to arrange. She sits down with the prime minister, the leader of the resistance movement (not all Tibetans are for the Middle Way approach of non-violence), the spirit-medium of the Tibetan Government-in-Exile, and has frequent dialogue with her boyfriend/husband and other former monks. Their varying stories, opinions, and insights go a long way to show the complexity of the situation. The Dalai Lama's stamp of approval in the forward adds a powerful degree of legitimacy, and also shows how honest and open His Holiness is - several of the people Walker interviews are openly critical of the Dalai Lama and his politics.

One interesting and telling event, from an ethnomusicological perspective, is a wedding party Walker attends. The MC invites any who wish to come to the stage and sing songs, and several young men from Amdo (a region in Tibet) storm the stage and vigorously sing traditional shepherd songs. After the traditional repertoire is exhausted, a karaoke version of "Hotel California" is performed, and the rest of the night is spent bumpin' to techno. All of this is led by Tibetans, quite without regard for any Westerners who might be in attendance. It's simply what that group liked. It seems that, for that particular crowd anyway, tradition is beloved at the same time that modernity is embraced. Cool.

The Matrix (of Influence)

Thanks, rem, whoever you are, for inspiring this blog post. At the beginning of this blogging adventure, I kind of jumped in and started picking apart some specifics of the Tibetan cultural issue without giving a more general framework. It's-a time for the framework.

Taking Diehl's cue, we'll do this spatially, assigning different cultural influences to each of the cardinal directions. We'll start with south and west. To the south (taking Dharamsala, the seat of the Tibetan Government-in-Exile, as center), we have:

Bollywood! And all the other -ollywoods!

Shahrukh Khan, my freakin' hero. Ladies, there are much better pictures of his muscles online, but I'm keeping this strictly BYU-rated (really though, I just don't want to make all the guys jealous of Shahrukh's raging pectorals).

The beautiful and graceful Aishwarya Rai. If you want to try and find pictures of her pectorals, be my guest, but Bollywood queens are, as of 2012, quite a bit more modest than their Hollywood counterparts. This is, sadly, changing, but for now we can enjoy good ol' family friendly entertainment from most of India's silver screens.

My wife and I have gotten into Bollywood films over the last few months, and I'm starting to feel that if a movie isn't three hours long with at least one redirection of plot and an incredibly dramatic hug at the end, then I've wasted my time and money. The millennia old Indian penchant for dramatic storytelling - the Ramayana has been popular in India for literally thousands of years - has translated easily into film, and is taking the world by storm. Netflix just recently added a sizable Bollywood catalog to their on-demand playlist, including classics as well as brand new offerings.

There are -ollywoods from all over India, each of them having their distinctive style. I don't know much about these other cultural centers, but I will make a point of researching them so I will know their influence if and when I see it in Bylakuppe.

Now to the West:

Hollywood and MTV!
(Though I'm not sure how relevant MTV is anymore - does anybody out there know?)

Katherine Heigl - Lori and I just saw this, and we think she rocks.

Jay-Z and Alicia Keys - two of my favorite and, I think, two of the most honest-to-goodness talented people in the biz today

  The movie and music industries of the West, of the US particularly, are without question the biggest influences on pop culture worldwide. K'Naan grew up in Somalia listening to Tupac and Biggie, gamelan kids in Bali wear Metallica T-shirts, and Disney is ubiquitous worldwide. The internet has made the whole library of western media available anywhere with a connection, and cheap pirated copies of CDs and DVDs are available in most countries. The flash, glitz, and freedom of western expression is particularly attractive, especially to traditionally "repressed" people. Musicians and actors in the US do whatever the hell they want - so it seems and so it is. Rock and roll, particularly, represents for many cultures what it represented when it first came to the scene in the US - raw expression, freedom, sexuality, and rebellion. Tibetan rock, from my little knowledge of it, represents a bit of a counterculture - not against HH or the Tibetan mainstream, but against Chinese oppression and domination. It's rebel music, as much as Bob Marley's was.

Note the leather jacket and shades! James Dean, Elvis Presley anyone?!

So, there you go. More to come in the next exciting episode.

What does it mean to be a rural Tibetan youth in modern India?

The picture many of us have of what it means to be part of a rural community is fast changing in India. As the picture above shows, it is no longer necessarily incongruous to be a farmer living an essentially ancient lifestyle while also using a smart phone on India's incredibly widespread 3G network.

How has this affected the community in Bylakuppe? As the existence of the Protected Area Permit attests (any person wanting to stay in Bylakuppe for more than a day trip is required to get what amounts to another visa specific to the place), the Tibetan community there is purposely protecting themselves from the negative effects of globalization. However, the Dalai Lama is nothing if not forward thinking, as much as he cherishes the rich traditions and religion of Tibet. His encouragement for all Tibetans to become fluent in English, the training of Tibetans in new technologies for text preservation, and the emphasis on updating government to a more democratic model all support this modernization.

The funny thing about kids, I think, is that, for the most part, they/we (I'm not stuck up enough to think I'm more than "one of those dumb kids!") don't care too much about preservation efforts. Depending on access of the youth to internet, I would not be surprised to find Tibetan kids with MP3 players rockin' and hip-hoppin' to everything kids in the states listen to, and thinking of Tibetan music as "stuff for old people and monks."

The thing is, though, that I am also not stuck up enough to assume that all kids all over the world have the same self-centered worldview that plagues and empowers my generation in the US. Perhaps, as is the case in Bali, there is no problem in maintaining musical heritage while still venturing into new, primarily Western territory. Or perhaps there is a stigma against Western forms of musical expression.

Though I doubt there are very many "rich kids," such as those described in this week's annotated source, I wonder to what degree the Bangalori attitude of the Third World being the "other" and the Western world being the "inside" has affected the Tibetan kids. Where do the Tibetan kids in Bylakuppe identify themselves? Do many live in a translocal paradigm that is perpetually and adamantly "the in-between," or is there a close identification with Tibetan tradition? How do kids define "Tibetan-ness?" Perhaps the question "what does it mean to you to be Tibetan" could be slipped into conversation here and there with people of all the strata found in Bylakuppe.

I love these pictures!

The Effects of Place on Music, and Vice Versa

Lori and I were looking at places to visit while in India, and boy are there a lot to look at. The state of Karnataka, which houses our little refugee community, is a tropical and cultural paradise. The place is incredibly green, and incredibly full of temples, shrines, and people (though, thankfully, Bylakuppe is spared from the denseness of population of, say, another refugee settlement like Dharamshala.). Nothing could be more different from the place the refugees have come from - the cold, expansive desert of the "roof of the world."

Hampi, in Karnataka

Tibet!

The interrelationship of environment and music has just recently become a topic of serious inquiry in scholarly circles, particularly among those who call themselves "human" or "cultural" geographers. Topics as wide as the use of music to forward industry in failing communities to the musical habits of geriatric groups in small towns have produced in-depth studies, and the cultural geography community, as well as those who benefit from their research, are taking a closer listen to the human family. Looking at these pictures of different landscapes got me thinking - how has the transition from the Tibetan highlands to the Indian lowlands affected the production of music in Bylakuppe? Tibetan monastic music, as well as folk music (particularly shepherd song), is definitely a product of the acoustic phenomena present in the Himalaya, just as much as Gregorian chant is a product of the long reverberation times of large cathedrals (but, after the genesis of the chant, the interplay between music and cathedral building is hard to follow - did the cathedrals get bigger so reverb times could grow, or did the composers write in response to increased church size?). The huge horns, loud cymbals, and large drums of Tibet are instruments designed to travel across the vast plains and echo off the never-ending white-capped walls of the eternal mountains. On the folk side, the plaintive song of the shepherd immediately directs the imagination in the direction of the lone protector of the flock leading his livelihood through mountain passes. What happens to these songs when translated into the densely attenuated echo-space produced by thick forests and tropical rain?

Looking at music this way, perhaps singing the traditional songs of the homeland is a way to travel there for a few moments, to relive and recapture the freedom of wide-open spaces and the safety of living nestled between mountain-sentinels. And perhaps the new musics being produced by youth represent not only the shrinking world village and crosstalk of cultures enabled by internet and a new physical location, but also reflect the polarity of the green environment they have grown up in compared with their parents' white ancestral home. In a conversation with a classmate who has lived in a Tibetan community, I found that the longer a Tibetan family has been in India, the more they shift their culinary preferences toward ingredients readily found in India, and drink less butter-tea and eat less tsampa. Are the Himalayan horns and cacophonous drums being traded for nagaswaram and mridangam? Or for drum sets and electric guitars? And what of Tibetan music is persistent, responding little or not at all to the changed physical and cultural climate? 

These questions, I insist in accord with a main premise of ethnomusicology, are important for not only artistic purposes but for the wider and grander purpose of coming to a greater understanding of identity, for it is in the artistic expression of a people that the finer ineffable points of what it means to be human, and what it means to be a human in a particular time and place, begin to surface.

There is, of course, the problem of defining what exactly "Tibetan-ness" is, but that remains for another time.