Every musician knows the feeling of being told to keep quiet. But while for most of us it’s something that happens occasionally – when practicing gets too loud or goes on too late, last summer I met a man who was told to keep his music quiet for more than 13 years.

His name was Penjo-la, and the place was Porong, a principality enclosing a scattered collection of Himalayan villages in southwestern Tibet. Our four-person team had come to record his music, setting up a mobile recording studio in the main room of his house. Laptops, microphone stands and several dozen metres of blue cable sat incongruously among the ancient furniture.

Penjo-la began to sing. His voice told of the village where he grew up, the goat-herds he has ridden with and of mythical battles between snow lions and dragons. Perched on yak-wool rugs in front of a yak-dung stove, we quietly sipped yak-butter tea and listened as he sang, overwhelmed by an immense feeling of privilege to be hearing these haunting songs.

Tibetan Music

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Endless space


The Porong landscape ranges over altitudes of up to 5,000 metres and is an awesome combination of the flat, endless space of the Tibetan plateau and the magnificent interruption of the highest mountains on the planet. Throughout our fieldwork, the intimidating bulk of Mount Shishapangma shadowed us. At 8,014 metres, it’s the highest mountain located entirely within Tibet.

Each of the villages we worked in is nestled into a hillside, and from these vantage points it’s possible to chart the progress of herds of sheep, yak or wild ass moving across the plains below, the occasional horseback shepherd in tow. It’s an area of spartan beauty, and apart from the mountains and tiny settlements, there really is little else here.

Despite its remote location, away from the Lhasa valley, Porong has felt the effects of Tibet’s recent history as strongly as any other part of the Tibetan provinces. From the mid-1960s and throughout the ’70s, Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution had a devastating effect on many aspects of traditional Tibetan culture. Perhaps the most obvious example being the destruction of all but 12 of more than 6,000 Buddhist monasteries in the country.

Enforcement of this organised decimation was left to the numerous Red Guards stationed in villages and towns across Tibet, many of whom were young Tibetans. The Porong region was no exception, and between 1967 and around 1980, Red Guards lived permanently in Porong’s Xiang – the central village and administrative centre.

During this period, Porong’s inhabitants were subject to a range of restrictions on their cultural practices. Some concerned the expression of folklore, and for more than a decade, the villages fell silent as their people were prevented from performing traditional Tibetan arts.

Bans on music and dance caused significant disruption to the cultural life of small Tibetan communities such as those in Porong. This is easily understood if you consider the social context of music-making in Tibetan culture. Songs are themselves communal activities in Tibet, and specific musical themes exist for just about any social occasion you care to think of. From building roofs and tamping clay floors to milking yaks and riding horses, from courtship and drinking to the celebration of historical events, everyday life is inextricably bound together by the music that pervades it.

For example, although many of the drinking songs that we recorded are sung solo, they are normally performed as part of an evening’s group entertainment. One individual begins by singing to the group and proposing various toasts. Everyone raises their glasses and the limelight then passes to someone else, who performs a song in response. This cycle continues ad infinitum until either it’s late enough to go to bed or a sufficient quantity of the locally brewed chang (barley beer) has been consumed, although during our time in Porong it was rarely clear when these points had been reached.

On the lucky occasions when our team was invited to participate in singing sessions, we were obliged to pull out our guitar and try to
sing something memorable. Our hosts were always unnervingly polite about our efforts, but we left certain in the knowledge that neither Stand by Me nor You’ve Got a Friend will be forgotten in Porong for a while.

The importance of song in these drinking evenings shows one of many aspects of Tibetan sociality that is reliant on music. Take away a community’s music and you take away not only its way of relaxing and expressing itself, but also an important part of its cultural identity. Without their own traditions during the Cultural Revolution, Tibetans had less to remind themselves of where they came from – which is presumably why banning music was an important element of Maoist policy at the time.

The Cultural Revolution resulted in the loss of whole portions of the folk repertoire of many Tibetan communities. Because they are orally transmitted traditions, songs and dances weren’t recorded or documented in any physical form, so when they couldn’t be practised or taught, they simply disappeared.

But in Porong, the repertoire was preserved. For more than a decade, the melodies, lyrics and dance steps to hundreds of songs were archived in the minds of a handful of village singers. It wasn’t until the early 1980s, when Chinese restrictions were eased and music returned to the villages, that these singers began to pass on what they knew to their families and friends. Over time, the repertoire returned, and the majority of songs performed today in Porong stem from material that was ‘kept quiet’ throughout the Cultural Revolution.

The last of these incredible human archives was Penjo-la, now approaching his 79th birthday. Our journey across Tibet had led us to record him and the villagers that he taught, knowing that they were the only remaining embodiment of a heritage that extends back over dozens of generations.

During our time in Porong, we collected recordings of every known song in the region, numbering more than 200 unique melodies.
We heard riding songs, drinking songs, love songs and milking songs. Some were performed unaccompanied by one singer, others were part of a group dance. When they felt the need, musicians would introduce an accompaniment on the dramyen, an ancient six-stringed lute found throughout the Himalaya, or on the tsi-tsi, a bowed drone instrument that has a yak-skin membrane that must be heated before playing.

We were also lucky enough to record the Ga-she – a once-yearly ceremony that takes place in the middle of the Porong plains and is attended by members of the surrounding villages. It’s a time to meet, discuss recent events, see friends and take part in ceremonies that celebrate Porong-ba history. Accompanying the ceremonial aspect of the meeting are three days of horse-racing, dancing and revelry. Great pride is attached to skilful horsemanship among the local men, and we witnessed a series of impressively executed horseback stunts.

New threat

It seems that Porong’s musical heritage is alive and well, but while it may have endured the ravages of the Cultural Revolution, today there is a new threat to its identity. Chinese culture didn’t leave with the Red Guards more than 20 years ago; in fact, its influence in
the area is stronger than ever.

China’s involvement in Tibet has certainly brought major economic development to the region in one form or another. Porong has a school, a small hospital, a constant source of electricity from a bank of solar panels and a regular supply of farmed green vegetables brought by road – all things that would have been unimaginable two or three decades ago. There is a question as to whether or not these changes have benefited the Tibetan population throughout the country, but either way, it’s certain that economic development has been substantial enough to alter the cultural identity of many communities.

Villagers in Porong now listen to recorded music on CD and tape – almost exclusively Chinese pop music or electronic versions of Tibetan tunes. Chinese television is on constantly in the small drinking den where people play dominoes and smoke Chinese cigarettes, blaring out a mixture of Chinese soap operas, war films and music videos. Today, Porong’s folk music is in danger of losing its traditional identity not from being stamped-out, but from being obscured or debased by other cultural influences.

Elsewhere in Tibet the interaction of Tibetan and Chinese cultures is more pronounced. In many cases, large-scale changes to musical practices have already taken place. Secular music in Lhasa is dominated by Nangma bars and cabarets that feature Chinese interpretations of traditional life and music in Tibet. More often than not, these are little more than grotesque propaganda pieces, caricaturing rural Tibetans as uncivilised, perverse country folk.

Cultural forces

Besides China’s influence, Lhasa’s modernisation has meant the influx of a number of other distinct cultural forces. For example, a trip to Lhasa is now on the itinerary of backpackers from around the world, who bring with them their own cultural influences. On one occasion, we went to record at the Norbulingka, the former summer palace of the Dalai Lama. We’d been told that there would be a festival of Tibetan music, but when we arrived, we were surprised to find an event sponsored by Budweiser and an audience divided in two: the 15-strong crowd who could afford to buy a drink, and the Tibetan contingent, who watched over the fence.

Not to be put off, we set up our recording gear, and after the show, we interviewed some of the performers. Among the selection of Tibet’s new superstars, we met a Korean hip-hop outfit who told us their main inspiration came from US rapper Biggie Smalls. In the face of these cultural changes, we found musicians striving to keep their traditions alive. In Porong and Lhasa, we met singer-songwriters who were writing original music. Many of them sought to draw on their Tibetan legacy while still acknowledging their new influences. Their interests lay in hearing the music of their predecessors, in addition to what was available on the radio and television.

But in general, it’s clear that where the effects of tourism and Chinese development have been more influential, there has already been a sea-change in perceptions of why and how music should be performed. None of our team were cultural purists, and although we instinctively preferred the sounds of the acoustic songs performed in Porong over their electronic counterparts in the new shopping malls of Lhasa, we could also see the potential for a positive side to the mixing of Tibetan and Chinese traditions. The problem is the way in which this mixing is currently taking place. Put simply, Chinese culture has far more opportunity to influence Tibetan culture than vice versa.

The recordings made in Porong went some small way towards redressing this imbalance, in part by providing the Porong community with recordings of its own fragile repertoire. It’s now apparent that the traditional methods of transmitting folk traditions have been challenged in even the most remote parts of the Tibetan plateau by the influx of televisions, radios, CD players and other conduits of Chinese culture. Rather than shunning these modern formats, the preservation of traditional music requires that they are embraced. Recordings of what was previously an entirely acoustic tradition should help to ensure that the old voices of Tibet aren’t entirely swamped by newer forms.

When Penjo-la continued to hum his favourite melodies under his breath for 13 years, he faithfully preserved an entire repertoire of folk music during a period when its performance was impossible. His memories represent a snapshot of a diverse and constantly evolving folk heritage that was in danger of disappearing. In the same way, the recordings made in Porong last year represent a contribution towards the long-term preservation of this high-altitude musical treasure.


Text box: The Bodong-pa: a monastic tradition in decline.

In addition to Porong’s folk music, the expedition also recorded the liturgical music of a dying school of Tibetan Buddhism, the Bodong-pa. This unique monastic tradition now comprises just six monasteries in central Tibet and has been highlighted by Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso as a priority for cultural preservation.

We visited all of the primary Bodong-pa monasteries and recorded more than 55 hours of liturgical music. Rituals varied in length from short 30-minute blessings to nine-hour ceremonies that start early in the morning and are punctuated only by yak-butter-tea breaks and brief rests for the monks to readjust their sitting positions.

Traditionally, each ritual has a specific purpose, such as the blessing of crops or the healing of sickness. By commissioning particular rituals for recording, we were mirroring the traditional arrangement whereby a layperson would pay for a particular cure or incantation to be performed. 

The monks chant from sheets of manuscript, but much of the performance, including stylised hand gestures and melodic ornamentation, is remembered through repeated practice. The chanting is accompanied by a variety of ritual instruments: dung, three-metre long extendable horns; kangling, trumpets once made from human thigh-bones; galing, an oboe-like reed instrument; and a range of different cymbals, drums and hand bells.

Although the Bodong-pa monasteries previously housed up to 3,000 monks, they currently average around ten. Changes to the monastic system over the past half-century have also meant a reduction in the number of young apprentice monks entering monastic life. They are badly needed to sustain the tradition.

Traditional arts in areas such as Porong face an uncertain future. As well as being returned to the villagers of Porong, the recordings made by the expedition team will be preserved outside the region. They are available on the expedition website (www.tibetmusic.org) and the website of the Tibetan and Himalayan Digital Library (www.thdl.org), as well as in libraries in Oxford, London and Lhasa.