Skip to main content

India y Nepal y Tibet



Where a human voice is heard in today’s program it’s often starkly different from what most Westerners might find pleasing and melodic.  But I must remind my listeners that the West probably did not invent the concept of vocalizing as accompaniment to plucked/blown/percussed musical instruments. Why do we sing in the style that we do? I imagine there are knowledgeable tomes wrestling with that idea.

I’ve read that vocals were meant to imitate the sounds made by instruments...or vice versa? The chicken or the egg? I’m not here to answer that question, in spite of the college course I had taken of “Music Cultures of the World” decades ago. What I offer is the opportunity to pay attention to and digest musical expressions performed by people steeped in the traditional ways of their culture. 

There is a geographic component to lumping together India, Nepal and Tibet as the Himalayas served to isolate and circumscribe the peoples of those northern regions. But here’s where I fudged a bit in curating this program. Yes, northern India is Himalayan country, and Nepal and Tibet certainly fit that definition, but not all of my Indian choices are from that area. Admittedly, as usual, I selected titles based on their aesthetic merit. Restrictions be damned. Don’t tell me that Baul music (#9) of Bengal threw you off? Or that the semi-classical rapture gifted us by Dr. N. Ramani is less worthy due to its Southern origin? I’m not always a purest, but when I listen to cut #2, a regrettably unnamed singer doing his version of what Northern Europeans called yodeling; or the vital, exuberant presentation of Nepalese folk music by the ensemble Kutumba, I feel all the richer to have shared these airwaves (and the planet) with talented musicians from what is truly far, far away. - JH

Al compás del mundo programa #190, 7-24-25 - India, Nepal and Tibet - RunList

 01 Akshara Music Ensemble - Shadjam (India)

02 anonymous - homage to Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok (Tibet)

03 Prem Rana Autari, Bijaya Vaidya & Surendra Shrestha - Nayaki Kanghada (Nepal)

04 Dr. N. Ramani - Sobhillu Saptasvara (India)

05 Dodzin Wangmo and Thamchoe Wangmo – Advice from the Heart (Tibet)

06 Tarun Bhattacharya - Dhun In Misra Anandi (India)

07 Bah Kerios Wahlang – Meghalaya (India)

08 Kutumba - Kanchi (Nepal)

09 Purna Das Baul - Sholagobe Patore Bhashe (India)

10 anonymous - Ukalima pain hajur motor (Nepal)

11 Govindman Serchan - Tibetan Folk Tune (Tibet)

12 anonymous - 'tdam gling gi nyi ma (Tibet)

Purna Das Baul



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

British Invasion - 1960s

I wanted to declare “Kick out the jams, mo’fos!” as a signpost towards the message in this week’s Al compás del mundo radio show, but that actually came about a little later. As humanity descended ever deeper into the Cro-Magnon state, Iggy Pop and the punks claimed that honor. What we have here instead, is a post-WWII let’s shake up the political order a bit, and no, not everyone has signed up to be an unconscious consumer attitude. There’s something afoot with these lads. Not exactly revolutionary fervor, but most certainly promoting a change in the general way of things. Recalling Che Guevara’s famous quote “Do Wah Diddy Diddy”, the Animals, Yardbirds, Rolling Stones et. al. pouted and preened – some more than others – in a way that hadn’t quite been done before. Youthful vigor ensued. These groups pushed the evolutionary chain of popular music a step further and we’re all better off for it.  Set list Al compás del mundo programa #183, 6-5-25 - The British Invasion, 1960s 01 Yar...

Funk and Soul

  Al compás del mundo - programa #169, 2-27-25, Funk and Soul   01 The Commodores - Brick House 02 Tower of Power - Drop It In The Slot 03 Parliament - Ride On 04 Sly & The Family Stone – Frisky 05 The Webb People – I’m Sending Vibrations 06 Ruby Delicious - Rock Steady 07 Mandrill - Git It All 08 The San Francisco TKOS – Herm 09 Ohio Players - Fire 10 Parliament - Mothership Connection (Star Child) 11 Kool & The Gang - Jungle Boogie 12 Chico and Buddy - A Thing Call the Jones 13 Little Ann – Possession 14 Lafayette Afro-Rock Band - Time Will Tell 15 Parliament - Ain't Nuthin' But a Jam Y'all   What did James Brown mean when he said “we’re gonna have a funky good time”? This “funky” of which he spoke, was it strictly musical (and danceable), or maybe sexual, sociable, or even political? Or maybe a little bit of each? Funk, funky, funkify, funkadelic, funkalicious…all pointing at the pleasure principle…a new dialect for the “blue...

Nuyorican boogaloo cha-cha-cha

 I’m labelling this week’s playlist as “Nuyorican” music, the lion’s share of the players from Puerto Rico or of Puerto Rican ancestry.  Two notable exceptions are Joe Bataan, a Filipino-African American, and Mongo Santamaria born in Cuba. What they all have in common, however, was centered around the music scene of New York City where African American and Latino musicians forged a common ground in creating “boogaloo” dance music, mixing elements of R&B, Soul, and Latin dance rhythms. The boogaloo genre was fairly short-lived, enjoying popularity during the 1960’s before giving way to salsa, in what was largely an East Coast and Caribbean impulse. “Watermelon Man” and ”El Watusi” were early and major boogaloo hits, but truly, most of the titles included in the program were popular recordings in their day, whether cha-cha-chas like Tito Puente’s “Oye Como Va”, or GFyEN’s guajira. I’ve gathered them here for an hour’s worth of revelation for those too young to have heard thi...