Uplifting Nepalese Society with Music
good afternoon
it’s such a wonderful opportunity it’s a
privilege for me to be here in front of
you
to talk about music so as i’ll be
talking about
the role of music in society especially
the society where
we are raised up
where we were born that’s uh the
nepalese society
and also about musical heritage
and some of my experiences as a musician
may have the slide please
so to begin with that’s the place where
i was born
that’s uh eastern nepal it’s a pastor
district
and the village is called mihil bhuti
so he is one of my elder musician
brother who played
the my music and symbol
as a child he played for
the entire village for auspicious
occasions or during
wedding ceremonies etc you know
but later i came to know that he donated
one of his
kidneys in order to save life of
one of our villagers and then
uh so i decided to
meet him after several decades two
decades indeed
meet him so i went back to pather and we
recorded some music
which was later produced even
post-produced by
some several grammy-winning record
producers so
this is uh the kind of exchange that
we have been doing in the field of music
so as a child
there was no music in the village
music as in performance uh
i mean the contemporary music there was
no media
the radio in nepal was established in
1950s or only 1951
so therefore i was not able to learn
any music theory but i was fortunate
enough to
learn from the friends and elders
the musicians local musicians and i was
able to witness
the local music tradition of my village
so that is how
maybe that music
was somehow
in a way indirectly cognitively
helping me out to become a musician
because my initial goal was
not to be a musician
you know so
and gradually my parents
they decided to send me to
some good school so i was
after my grade five i went to virat
nagar
and then i saw my first guitar when i
was in class
eight i mean i was able to touch that
guitar and i was self-taught
guitar player since then and later to
become a medical doctor when i came to
kathmandu
i studied science here at saga
one of the boarding schools
music was already a big passion in my
life
i had already recorded some music when i
was in school
so i thought why not continue
music as a career so i was not able to
express that interest to my
family or to my elders to my parents
but i found this beautiful place
at carfunny university the department of
music which offered
fully fleshed courses in ethnomusicology
in south asia so there i started to
study bachelors in ethnomusicology
meanwhile i was also
you know recording music performing with
bands like loser
it was kind of participatory observation
because i was playing music i was
producing pop music
i was winning highest national awards i
was
achieving a big success in the field of
popular music in nepal even
with rock bands when i played uh we
really enjoyed the concerts
but i was learning uh by then you know
so i was
in that way manor i was introduced uh to
the popular music scene on the other
hand
i had deep love towards the local music
tradition of our country
and i was very lucky that
i started to study ethnomusicology at
kaufman the university
so the academic approach the performance
and everything was there in my life so
i decided to de-learn a little bit
because uh uh
you know i decided to
figure out my own responsibility as a
human being
as a nepali citizen towards my own
country or
towards the society or towards the
people
and warm people like uh
you know the musicians from my village
so i decided to um
learn their music so for that i had to
travel
uh from places to places and i chose to
do my
uh psd in ethnomusicology therefore i
was
able to travel seven different districts
and many other places in nepal
and i was able to learn some of the
instruments like
saranghi arbajo or some newar
drums and certain other local musical
instruments and i was also able to uh
learn how to
uh make the musical instruments
so therefore your you know it’s just
i would like to remember all these
people you know who are extremely
talented than
us and uh uh it’s a
it’s it’s already a very pleasant
uh it’s very pleasant to think
you know even think uh that nepal has
125 ethnic groups with vast
and diverse uh musical traditions
uh cultures so and then
some ideas popped up in my mind that is
how i learned sarang actually
it was learning by doing i was playing
sorry but i was also writing
a song so sometimes it’s really
hard to learn such small instruments
locally made instruments
and thanks to all the musicians from all
over nepal
so later i started to record
and produce music by incorporating such
instruments
uh like sarangi arabajo or some other
kind of instruments and also having some
poetry song songs included
in the music and it was kind of
very inspiring and also i was able to
learn every day you know
uh investigate different instruments
learn new sounds so that is how i’m
spending my life and i hope
uh i’ll continue this way but
there was a big question uh always on my
mind
that was since 2011
after i started to travel across the
country
you know combinedly we taught the
department of music african university
my supervisor and
you know we always discussed about
how can the musical heritage of nepal
be documented analyzed
uh not only archived or not only
preserved but also applied uh
process so these were the ideas that
popped up
on our minds always every day
and we decided to
we came with an idea of amalgamating
tangible heritage with intangible
musical heritage
for the future generation you know in
order to
not only create an infrastructure or a
platform but also
to continue the musical traditions of
nepal
so next slide please
so those were my pop rock days
i was performing uh some of the concerts
with some guitar player there’s hari
maharaja
next please so that was the idea
uh the amalgamation of tangible heritage
with intangible musical heritage
next please so in order to do that
we decided to
not only think you know come along with
some action plans
and we decided to restore and rebuild
a heritage site
in order to incorporate blend
the intangible musical heritage of
and an academic institution like
karfundi university
definitely plays a vital role that is
what we thought because
university what we believe is we
university is
that platform it’s a laboratory for
knowledge it’s
uh you know the knowledge can be
transmitted
endlessly uh through
any universities so that’s the uh
basic principle we kept in mind and uh
so while uh
and then the university leaders
or uh we musicians
i started to work at kaufman university
by then full time
we decided to restore tripura sundari
that’s a
place built by queen lalit
tripura in 1800 1880
in memory of her husband
next last slide please so that was the
situation of
temple post earthquake that’s april
2015 earthquake effect of the earthquake
next one please that was the situation
of
subtles and the complex before the
earthquake
so it was
it was not built as it was in 1800 1880
so we started doing some certain
research work we
worked with some architects we worked
with some uh
you know experts in the field of
heritage restoration
and then we decided to restore it
uh in in the meanwhile we were
documenting we
had been documenting the musical
heritage of nepal musical traditions
so these are the ideas and later my next
slide please so now we are in this
state we have 115
workers and colleagues
who are working with musicians like us
but the greatest thing is they are
greatest artists you know
the wood carvers and and it’s a
malachalin
malla period architecture so it’s very
fascinating for us
the next please
so the pinnacle of the temple you can
see that
it was completely destroyed by the
earthquake now we have
so one of our colleagues he worked for
five months he and his team
and it was restored it’s again kept
there
next please
that’s the outfit of pinnacle now uh the
gajur
next and uh
not to forget you know for such projects
because music in nepal for us
as a musician since childhood days like
i said earlier we did not have
music education set up for music
education or research or
even set up for psd studies in nepal so
these were very challenging but now
there are
big leaders even thanks to the
university vice chancellor
who has been great supporter uh
for this uh work and they also
have supported uh this idea amalgamation
of
musical heritage with tangible heritage
uh
next please so that was
uh the vice chancellor dr ram
he went and he met an instrument maker
he’s a
he uh he’s the last remaining instrument
maker of this instrument called
pantervanam it’s in east nepal japan
district
but now we are trying to restore their
tradition also the santal tradition
next please so that was the picture i
took
five years ago almost uh
and that’s phantorvanam and that’s
katvanam
you know the transmission of music how
music transmits from one generation to
another
so nepal is a big example for oral
tradition
nepal doesn’t have any specific
kind of musical guidelines for music
learners or or the nepalese instruments
uh they are not yet
standardized properly so
we are trying to
formalize the musical tradition of
all these local musicians
by keeping alive their musical heritage
the rich musical heritage
next please so
musicians from different communities
they work with us these days
under the umbrella of kathmandu
university department of music
that is one of the biggest staves in the
field of uh local music
and ethnomusicology in nepal i think so
the future
uh is
it seems it’s very very hopeful we can
remain very hopeful it’s very bright the
future of music and
music education in nepal next please
so these are the rich traditions i just
wanted to show you some pictures
next so that’s the infrastructure that
we have
envisioned uh that’s the first draft
because in nepal musicians uh
normally uh it is believed that they
have to play
music only or they have to
but but music as an academic subject or
music the the research areas in music
it’s vast you know
it can be interdisciplinary it can
musicians can collaborate with any other
fields in
a way so we have been collaborating with
engineers architects
and so on in this project
uh so that’s the
queen tripura sundari who built
tripureshwar
so there are two basic things that i
wanted to share today
one is the multi-ethnic nepal
the music of nepal can play significant
role
not only you know to entertain
people or for the contemporary
medias or musicians but uh
in order to promote
inclusion the federal
nepal you know and we please we are
seeking
so much of identity so if we are able to
apply our own heritage our own skills
and uh create new dimensions in any
field
i think nepal will progress a lot uh
thank you so much and at the end i will
be playing another song for you it’s
called
samaz thanks a lot
[Applause]
so this is uh this instrument is called
arabaza
uh it’s also known as arbajo and arbaj
this is the male counterpart of female
sarengi as per the kandarva musicians
this instrument uh was rarely played
in 50s and 40s 1950s 40s
but later on the gander was they stopped
playing this instrument
and the reason behind that they said
during interviews
is because of the size and because of a
limited
you know uh it’s it’s not that versatile
that surrenders
that’s what they said
but it was such a great opportunity for
me to
uh learn how to make this instrument
i collaborated with hari gandarva in
kasky took us
29 days and then i wrote a song for a
movie
the song is called samaz i would like to
play that song for you
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thank you thank you so much
you