Methods Practice III

General Notes

Pipe organ used for instrumental accompaniment for congregational hymns. Piano used for choir number.

Female conducting the music. 30s, black dress with red belt and large necklace.

During sacrament hymn – 3 men at altar to left of rostrum, breaking bread. Sacrament prayer chant-like in recitation. Somewhat standardized oratory style – localized tradition?

Little boy walking quickly along hardwood floor behind last row of seats.

Choir – 7 men in back row, 7 women in front row. Conductor faces choir. All use sheet music. Male/female alternate verses, join on third voice for full harmony. All white performers, ages ~12 to 50, concentration of 20-to-30-somethings. No uniform worn, except that all were in the same kind of formal attire worn by majority of congregation.

Speaker after choir piece commented “What a beautiful hymn.” No comment on choir – just the hymn itself.

Most of congregation singing on congregational hymns. Less singing in the back – lack of hymnals?

Most singing melody. Some take harmony parts. Lack of musical training, laziness, preference for melody line?

Organization of organ pipes – three large clusters, center cluster tallest. In between, small pipes grow from center to meet either end. Symbolic of Trinity, or simply aesthetic choice?

Board on right for showing what hymn numbers will be sung. Empty. Why?

Hymnals green, numbered. Copyright 1985. 341 hymns.

Text and music of sung hymns follows. Four hymns in sacrament meeting, one by choir. One hymn sung in priesthood opening exercises, accompanied by piano (organ too powerful for smaller group? Or lack of an organist in the smaller priesthood body?)

Themes:

Scatter Sunshine – Christian living, attitude

While of These Emblems We Partake – Sacrifice of Jesus, ordinance of communion, the life to come

Lead, Kindly Light – supplication, repentance

More Holiness Give Me – supplication, Christian living and values

Redeemer of Israel – praise, supplication (only in v. 4), the Christian condition and cause

Opening Hymn – Scatter Sunshine

Sacrament Hymn – While of These Emblems We Partake

Choir Hymn – Lead, Kindly Light

Closing Hymn – More Holiness Give Me

Priesthood Hymn - Redeemer of Israel

Omitted verses 5 and 6.

Analysis: The choices of hymns were very balanced. The core doctrines of the gospel were preached, and the opening hymn was a practical application typical of Mormon conceptions of how religion should be lived. In such a large ward, the back section having to go without hymnals is sad and rather expected, but many I noticed simply pulled up the words on their smartphones. The hymns remind me of the South Indian bhajan song form - the focus is in no way on musical performance, but rather on communal praise and solidarity. The choir song moved a little more toward being about perfection of performance, but was still focused on devotion through participation rather than devotion through technical perfection. Elders quorums usually just pick a song that everybody has memorized, which I actually appreciate because the elders sing out more, especially if it's a hymn they sang often in the mission field. The tempos are usually a little quicker, and using a piano rather than an organ contributes to the wonderful percussiveness of amateur all-male choirs. It would be nice to have a little more vocal training among the general membership - a 500 voice choir should be deafening, but experience in this and other sacrament meetings shows that many 25 voice choirs could easily out-decibel the typical sacrament meeting congregation. It is so interesting to watch the different degrees of obvious emotion displayed by singers of hymns, and even more interesting to realize that many who are being most touched by the sermons preached in that little green bible are not showing their involvement at all. It definitely made me more conscious of how I sound and look when singing the hymns, and also made me more emotionally connected to the beautiful words, melodies, and harmonies.

Makin' Some Contacts

Inspired by Rachel and Kristen's presentations today at the inquiry conference, I have decided to see what I can do about getting in touch with musicians in Bylakuppe. There are three that I have been able to find, thanks to musictibet.com.

Namgyal Choeyang
Wants to start music school in Bylakuppe

Tashi Tsering Porangnga
Teaches at Tibetan SOS Children's Village in Bylakuppe

Kundeling Thupten
2011 Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, Tibetan Music Awards
Lhamo (opera) singer

I found these guys, actually, by not searching for them at all, but by trying to find better sources of information about Bylakuppe. Turns out that, just as Dharamsala is often called by its English name of McLeod Ganj, Bylakuppe as a cluster of settlements is called "Dickey Larsoe Tibetan Settlement." Also used is "Lugsung Samdupling Tibetan Settlement." These terms refer to slightly different parts of the conglomeration that is Bylakuppe, but for my purposes now they simply open up the internet search. Putting in "Dickey Larsoe" gave me the goods on these musicians, as well as some sweet info on the area that was hiding before. Finding them put me in the mind of social networking, so...


Through the musictibet.com website, I sent messages to the first two artists. Knowing how well those types of email servers work, I don't have the highest hopes for getting a response. I did find out something interesting through the process, though - Lobsang Wangyal, possibly the most controversial Tibetan who isn't a lama or a politician, runs the website and the Tibetan Music Awards. Wangyal is famous for his hotly debated "Miss Tibet Pageant," and, from firsthand accounts, seems to be quite the character. It would be informative to meet him, that's for sure. 


UPDATE: I may have found Namgyal on Facebook. Here's to friending people on a hope!

Methods Practice II

Tanielle is from the big red dot.

Surabaya metropolitan

Methodology:
Semi-structured, semi-formal interview.
Found Tanielle in Gamelan class, bought food from her (amazing Indonesian steam buns). She has led out in extracurricular Indonesian cultural events, including dance and presenting at World Fest. She is our "resident Indonesian" and makes the gamelan legit. Also, she is super friendly. I approached her at gamelan practice and worked out a time to ask her a few questions, and explained a bit of what the assignment for the class was.
Met in the HFAC, found a comfortable set of chairs, and talked for ~30 minutes.

From my notebook:

Possible topics of discussion:
Biography
where from
age
family
major
career goals
"How you met your husband"
Church involvement
circumstances surrounding coming to the states
identities

Involvement in Gamelan
Why?
What effect does it have on your feeling of being Indonesian?
We talk about the social implications of gamelan frequently - kotekan, omback, etc. Do you think these characterizations are accurate? Why or why not?
You are involved with a lot of uniquely Indonesian endeavors - cooking, Gamelan, dance. What drives your participation in these activities? How does participation make you feel?
Other things besides food, music, dance?
Is it important to you to identify with your cultural background, and why?

Music in General
Who are some of your favorite artists?
What exposure did you have to western pop music growing up? What seemed to be popular in Indonesia?
What musics besides Western musics did people listen to? Local, Chinese, Arabic, India, etc.

Beginning of interview notes:

Surabaya - island next to Bali on Java. 2nd largest city in Java
Dad's from US
Mom Chinese by blood, grew up in Indonesia
Oldest, 2 younger brothers
Grew up LDS
LDS 1 stake for all Indonesia, recently established
many Muslims
religious diversity depends on Island - some religions congregate in certain areas
First attended BYU Hawaii
Undergrad degree - Biochemistry. Met husband (Tahitian) while at BYU-H.
Biochem - pregnancy disorders (premature births, preeclampsia, etc.)
US citizen, but wouldn't consider self American
Would self identify as "Indonesian, mainly, but my Mom's Chinese"
Doesn't want to forget heritage or lose it
Looking to posterity - preservation of culture and family values for the next generation
Stays in contact w/ Indonesian students on BYU campus
Participated in World Fest 2011
BYU Provo less diverse than BYU-H
musical concepts different in Bali than in Surabaya, so not all the concepts discussed in Balinese Gamelan translate
Course in schools in Indonesia reflects cultural values:
   moral studies
   tolerance
   working together
   diversity
   every island is different, so unity is important
   What does it mean to be Indonesian, if there are so many differences between local island cultures?
   national language
   Indonesia wanted out from under colonized rule, so united and kicked out the colonizers (Dutch ruled ~300 years, other countries took over from time to time).
Music
 - Indonesian - modern, Arabic +
 - Dang-dut - blend of Arab, Indian
 - Angklung - traditional, mostly idiophonic instruments
 - Each province teaches particular songs @ school, relative to local and folk traditions
 - Backstreet Boys, etc., also a presence
 - Mom is Chinese, so listened to that as well
 - Regular music course for elementary schools includes traditional music
 - " dance
 - western influence increasing
           Justin Bieber just did a concert in Indonesia
    - TV, internet, media
    - some disparity between villages & cities as far as media access is concerned (I [Beau] wondered about the availability of internet, etc. in the smaller islands)
         Each island has capital, and capitals are, generally, fully modern
 - West won't hurt Indonesia if schools & families keep exposure to tradition high (in response to "Does the influx of Western culture feel like a threat to Indonesian traditions?)
 - Parents lived in Idaho
     felt like they had to raise their kids in Indonesia/abroad somewhere
     Tanielle would still be Indo-Chinese-American, even if grew up in Idaho, and she is
     grateful to have grown up in Indonesia
    In Indonesia, her parents spoke English at home so that the kids would be enabled. Tanielle only visited the states once before going to BYU-H, for Christmas as the house of some relatives. The English paid off, and even though it was strange to be meeting so many new people at once, they were family and so were welcoming.
Hopes for Tanielle's kids/family
     keep all languages
           Indonesian, Chinese (Mandarin - Tanielle is conversant) English, also French and perhaps Fijian due to her husbands background
     culture
           exposure to events
               Chinese New Year, festivals
           cooking
                Indonesian independence day



As I reflect on these notes, I realize that the issue of the preservation of culture is impossible to pick into parts and force to stay separate. Everything, at least for Tanielle, goes into preserving culture for herself and her future children. The festivals, foods, musics, dances, and other traditions play off of and into each other to create experiences to help create identity with each of the cultures involved. Tanielle's kids will be Indonesian-Chinese-Tahitian-Americans, and that is a bit of a daunting yet exciting prospect. I will have to look into how music in Tibet dovetails into other aspects of cultural expression. It was also interesting to note her reaction towards the West coming into Surabaya - of course they listened to Backstreet Boys, but as long as the rising generation is encouraged by institutions and families to appreciate its heritage, the Backstreet Boys will never completely replace Angklung. I felt a bit of the sadness the Western threat must bring when the thought arises, "But what if the kids just don't want to anymore?" What if the young generation sheds its Indonesian-ness for a created, unauthentic Western archetype? The vibe I got from Tanielle was that it isn't likely to get that bad, but the thought itself is bad enough.

Probably one of the most wonderful things was the ease with which Tanielle seems to navigate cultural landscapes. I'm sure it isn't easy, and that hiccups have happened along the way, but here is a woman who is actively participating in all aspects of modern life, including tradition and cultural pride as part of it. I thought I might get a sense of conflictedness, but I got just the opposite - here is a person who seems very comfortable with the incredible diversity of her own life.

This whole thing was a great experience. I am excited to practice, get better at, and do more of it. Thank goodness for such a willing participant!

Annotated Source

The Music of Tibetan Buddhism in Ladakh: The Musical Structure of Tibetan Buddhist Chant in the Ritual Bskaṅ-gso of the Dge-Lugs-pa Sect
Author(s): Atsuko Tsukamoto
Source: Yearbook for Traditional Music, Vol. 15, East Asian Musics (1983), pp. 126-140
Published by: International Council for Traditional Music Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/768646 .
Accessed: 20/01/2012 15:29

 This article from the early 80s describes and transcribes, in detail, the bskan-gso ritual of the Tibetan Buddhist monks in Ladakh. Ladakh was chosen because it was isolated in the post-war period, and is most likely to have retained much of tradition as a result. 

Chant is learned orally, but the Tibetans have developed a form of musical notation. Some of the monks are not even aware that written notation exists, suggesting the primacy of oral tradition. I have copied some of the most interesting and important parts of the article, including sections that may be indicative of the wider tradition.

Bskan-gso ritual performance is split into twelve parts:

1) Skyabs-hgro = to seek refuge and worship the Three Treasures: Buddha, Teaching (Skt. dharma), and Buddhist Brotherhood (Skt. samgha);
2) Sems-bskyed= to have a conception of seeking the Enlightenment (Skt. bodhi);
3) Dgah-ldan Iha-brgya = to worship Tson-kha-pa and Maitreya;
4) Nan-mchod byin-rlabs = to bless articles such as water or food and
offer them to deities;
5) Spyan-hdren = to call up and welcome deities; 

6) Snon-tshe la dkar-ma = to offer to Neser;
7) Bskul = to enjoin deities to protect the Teaching; 

8) Zlog-pa = to dispel evil spirits;
9) Hchi-bdag-ma= to offer to Yama;
10) Zlog-pa;
11) Mnah-gsol = to praise deities and

12) Gseg-gsol=to send off deities. 

These parts are indicative of the Vajrayana tradition. Parts 1 and 2 would be comfortable in any Buddhist tradition, but the rest would only have application in the Mahayana and Vajrayana traditions. The inclusion of the worship and supplication of many gods and demons is typical of the wonderful syncretism that Buddhism is capable of when it moves to various countries and meets the local religions.

  This table charts which instruments are used for what. I have some other sources that identify what each instrument is, and I'll do a post with a list and pictures, but the important thing here is that different sounds are intoned relative to the ritual purpose. In Western music, it is a given that various instruments have various connotations relative to their use - black and silver electric guitars shaped like lightning bolts with bleeding airbrushed skulls probably won't show up in the next Mormon Tabernacle Choir broadcast (but hey, you never know), and a drummer who plays tympani is seen very differently from a drummer who plays a double bass drum set. Think of the images conjured up when a tympanist is imagined vs. a drummer with two huge bass drums - one is probably wearing a suit, perhaps a tuxedo, and the other might be wearing ripped jeans and that's it (unless you're old school like me and think of Louie Bellson and his sweet jazz double-bass set up first). It seems that in Tibetan ritual music different instruments have different cosmic connotations, and may be used alternately to scare away demons, welcome gods, or boost one towards enlightenment. It will be interesting to find out why certain instruments have become associated with the various modes.

Below is text from one of the sections: 

Hum, bshefis sig bshefis sig chos kyi dbyifs nas bshens, chos dbyins rnam dag nan las ma gyos kyan,
gdug-pa hdul phyir khro bo skur ston-pa, lha chen ma-ha-ka-la spyan hdren no.

"Rise up, rise up from the ultimate True World. Rise up firmly from the part of the enlightened True World. You show us your angry appearance, so we call to the mighty deity, Mahakala." 

If my Sanskrit is any good, "Mahakala" means "the great black one," though I would have to see it in Devanagari script to tell for certain.

A bit tangential, perhaps, but one of my favorite aspects of Tibetan Buddhism is the great pantheon of vengeful and fierce gods. Here's one of my favorites, Vajrayogini:

Super intense.

She's usually depicted drinking blood out of a skull cap bowl, stepping on demons representing various vices or shortcomings (ignorance, etc.), holding a cleaver, and wearing nothing but skulls. The feminine aspects (i.e. breasts and labia) are emphasized, though I've chosen pictures that conceal this a bit for the benefit of more conservative viewers. As a tangent to a tangent, Vajrayogini as a powerful symbol of femininity is worshiped by many female practitioners and is especially relevant today as Buddhist nuns gain power and standing in a traditionally male-dominated society/religion.

And, finally, a list of general properties of chant (using, of course, Western terminology. These aspects may or may not have direct cognates in Tibetan music theory.):

1) In principle, all the chants consist of a single melodic line; 

2) The melodic range is less than one octave;
3) Several scale types are employed;
4) Melodies consist of several melodic patterns which are composed in
proportion to phrases of the text; and
5) Disjunct melodic motion is most common, and the melody at the
end of the phrases has a tendency to descend.

 

Pretty cool stuff, eh?

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 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.

25 Questions Activity

To get ready for more in-depth research, our teachers asked us to think of 25 questions we would like to explore. Several of these can probably be answered, at least superficially, through reading, but many will have to be addressed in the field.

1. What is the relationship between the laypeople and the monastics in Bylakuppe?
2. What functions does music assume in the lives of the laypeople?

3. Ditto for monastics?
4. What kind of importance is placed on sacred music by the laypeople?

5. Is there a stigma against folk music/secular music, and does such a thing as secular music even exist?
6. What are some reasons given by the monastics for entering monastic life?
7. What, if any, religious principles undergird the sound and arrangement of sacred music?
8. Do these principles have any bearing on folk or secular music?
9. Do any Tibetan instruments depend on Tibet-specific materials (woods, metals, etc.), and if so, are the materials imported from Tibet or have substitutions been made for South Indian materials?
10. Is sacred music thought to have an effect on those who hear and make it, apart from spiritual nourishment (physical healing, mood change, garnering blessings)?
11. Do most Tibetan youth tend to cherish their culture, or is there a tendency towards sloughing off yesteryear and forgetting about the past? Is there a trend, or is it too individual to say?
12. What is being done to educate youth in traditional Tibetan music and art? What pedagogical methods are used?
13. How is this teaching translating into preservation of culture? Is there a feeling that what it means to be Tibetan is changing?
14. To what extent have preservation efforts invented "Tibetan-ness," and is it even possible to ascertain the extent of invention?
15. How do the elderly feel about new musics?
16. What musics are popular among Tibetan youth?
17. What musics are being performed by Tibetan youth?
18. Are western instruments readily available in the settlements?
19. What are some of the mixtures of music taking place in Bylakuppe? I've heard Tibetan techno, Tibetan soft rock, and Tibetan blues, but is there anything else happening there? Hip-hop, metal, latin, show-tunes a-la bollywood?
20. How does the Tibetan landscape affect music/instrument construction? Is the South Indian physical context problematic?
21. Do laypeople participate in sacred music? If so, how?
22. How do most people obtain music for consumption? Do music stores exist close enough, or is the internet the primary source? What effect, if any, does the internet have on the musical culture in Bylakuppe?
23. Is there any written form of Tibetan music?

24. How is Tibetan music learned by those who want to learn it? Is it learned by ear, or is whatever written form that may exist a primary teaching tool?
25. Is there a traditional order for learning traditional music, or does the teacher determine a course individual to each student?