Research Guides: International Music Resources by Country: Nepal

Map of Nepal

Citation (3)

Garland Encyclopedia of World Music-Nepal

Nepal
Read more about Nepali music!

Popular Musicians

Shailesh Shrestha - film music composer/singer/songwriter

Himal Sagar - singer/songwriter

Navneet Aditya Waiba - folk singer

Listen to the Music of Nepal

Facts in Brief

Capital: Kathmandu

Official Language: Nepali

Current Population: 30,378,055

Area: 147,181

Climate: The climate varies sharply with altitude, from arctic on the higher peaks of the Himalaya mountains (where the air temperature is permanently below freezing point) to humid subtropical in the central valley of Kathmandu, which is warm and sunny in summer.

Main Religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam

Citation (2)

Nepali Music

Music in the Kathmandu

One of the most complex musical cultures in the Himalayan region is that of the Newars of the Kathmandu Valley, who speak a Tibeto-Burman language. Over a period of two millennia the Newars developed an elaborate civilization based on agriculture and on trade with India, Tibet, and China. Performance in Newar culture serves a variety of ritual and entertainment functions. A universal feature is the worship of the god of music and dance, Nāsaḥdyaḥ, by all Newar communities. Many performances serve to articulate ritual and urban space. Newar music and dance are performed almost exclusively by men. Women are excluded from the performance of all genres except rice-sowing songs and Buddhist devotional songs of the bhajan type. Indian influence on Newar music is manifest in the use of rāga and tāla names for melodic and rhythmic structures respectively.

Traditional Music Outside the Kathmandu Valley

Hardly any of the music cultures of the 30 or so ethnic groups living outside the Kathmandu Valley have been studied. Religious rituals, oral narratives, and festivals have been investigated as if they were silent, ignoring music which plays an essential part in them. The mountainous topography has kept local cultures relatively isolated from each other. In addition to the music of mass media adopted by rural people, some musical genres, such as the jhyāure dance, are known all over Nepal. A song duel, dohorī gīt, in which individuals or groups compete in invention of new verses, is also popular.Most of the music in villages is made by ordinary people during their leisure time and while working it is conceptualized as being collective and reciprocal. Only singing and playing in a group for an audience (visible or invisible) is regarded as music: songs sung alone or in groups while working are not regarded as music but as an inseparable part of the work at hand.

Indo-Nepalese

Indo-Nepalese society is organized according to a strict hierarchy of castes. The caste system is thought to have been introduced to Nepal by high-caste immigrants from north India who, fleeing from Muslim oppression, made their homes in the Himalayan foothills and soon became the dominant group. Damāī, meaning ‘kettledrum player’ are tailors and musicians. The kettledrums (damāhā) are usually played in pairs, with paired shawms (śahanāī), small kettledrum (ṭyāmko), cymbals (jhyālī), barrel drum (ḍholakī), and paired c- or s-shaped horns (narsiṅga). This ensemble, known as pañcai bājā, has a ritual function and is an essential accompaniment to any Indo-Nepalese procession, life-cycle rite, festival, or sacrifice. In addition to the music of the musician castes, other Indo-Nepalese castes enjoy recreational and devotional music-making. Playing the small barrel drum (mādal) is not caste restricted, and it is used across the country to accompany traditional songs and dances.

Citation (4)

Books

Recasting Folk in the Himalayas by Stefan Fiol Colonialist, nationalist, and regionalist ideologies have profoundly influenced folk music and related musical practices among the Garhwali and Kumaoni of Uttarakhand. Stefan Fiol blends historical and ethnographic approaches to unlock these influences and explore a paradox: how the oefolk  designation can alternately identify a universal stage of humanity, or denote alterity and subordination. Fiol explores the lives and work of Gahrwali artists who produce folk music. These musicians create art as both a discursive idea and as a set of expressive practices across strikingly different historical and cultural settings. Juxtaposing performance contexts in Himalayan villages with Delhi recording studios, Fiol shows how the practices have emerged within and between sites of contrasting values and expectations. Throughout, Fiol presents the varying perspectives and complex lives of the upper-caste, upper-class, male performers spearheading the processes of folklorization. But he also charts their resonance with, and collision against, the perspectives of the women and hereditary musicians most affected by the processes. Expertly observed, Recasting Folk in the Himalayas offers an engaging immersion in a little-studied musical milieu.
Call Number: DS432.N46 F56 2017
Singing Across Divides by Anna Marie Stirr An ethnographic study of music, performance, migration, and circulation, Singing Across Divides examines how forms of love and intimacy are linked to changing conceptions of political solidarity and forms of belonging, through the lens of Nepali dohori song. The book describes dohori:improvised, dialogic singing, in which a witty repartee of exchanges is based on poetic couplets with a fixed rhyme scheme, often backed by instrumental music and accompanying dance, performed between men and women, with a primary focus on romantic love. The book tells the story of dohori'srelationship with changing ideas of Nepal as a nation-state, and how different nationalist concepts of unity have incorporated marginality, in the intersectional arenas of caste, indigeneity, class, gender, and regional identity. Dohori gets at the heart of tensions around ethnic, caste, and genderdifference, as it promotes potentially destabilizing musical and poetic interactions, love, sex, and marriage across these social divides.In the aftermath of Nepal's ten-year civil war, changing political realities, increased migration, and circulation of people, media and practices are redefining concepts of appropriate intimate relationships and their associated systems of exchange. Through multi-sited ethnography of performances,media production, circulation, reception, and the daily lives of performers and fans in Nepal and the UK, Singing Across Divides examines how people use dohori to challenge (and uphold) social categories, while also creating affective solidarities.
Call Number: ML3917.N3 S75 2017
Theorizing the Local by Richard Wolf (Editor) Over the past four decades, the "globalized" aspects of cultural circulation have received the majority of scholarly-and consumer-attention, particularly in the study of South Asian music. As a result, a broad range of community-based and other locally focused performance traditions in the regions of South Asia have remained relatively unexplored. Theorizing the Local provides a challenging and compelling counterperspective to the "globalized," arguing for the value of comparative microstudies that are not concerned primarily with the flow of capital and neoliberal politics. What does it mean for musical activities to be local in an increasingly interconnected world? To what extent can theoretical activity be localized to the very acts of making music, interacting, and composing? Theorizing the Local offers glimpses into rich musical worlds of south and west Asia, worlds which have never before been presented in a single volume. The authors cross the traditional borders of scholarship and region, exploring in unmatched detail a vast array of musical practices and significant ethnographic discoveries-from Nepal to India, India to Sri Lanka, Pakistan to Iran. Enriched by audio and video tracks on an extensive companion Web site, Theorizing the Local is an important study of South Asian musical traditions that offers a broader understanding of 21st-century music of the world.
Call Number: ML330 .T44 2009

International Music Resources by Country: Nepal