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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



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