Nabokov, Nicolas [Nikolay]

I. Music in the Kathmandu Valley

1. History.

2. Newar music.

3. Classical music.

4. Popular music.

Nepal, §I: Music in the Kathmandu Valley

1. History.

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. Buddhism, Hinduism and many other cultural elements were adopted from neighbouring India but re-shaped according to local needs. The influx of Buddhist and Hindu refugees from northern India following the Muslim conquests of the 12th–13th centuries was an important stimulus to Newar culture. Newar civilization flourished under the Malla kings (13th–18th centuries), whose rival kingdoms of Kathmandu, Patan and Bhaktapur competed in architectural, artistic and cultural splendour; several rulers themselves excelled as musicians, dancers, composers, poets and art patrons, particularly Jagajjyotīr Malla (reigned 1613–37) and Bhūpatindra Malla (1696–1722) of Bhaktapur, and Pratāp Malla of Kathmandu (1641–74). Newar autonomy was brought to a sudden end by Prithvī Nārāyan Shāh of Gorkha, who conquered the valley in 1768–9, setting up his capital in Kathmandu. His successors hold the Nepalese throne to this day, but from 1846 to 1951 the Rānā prime ministers were de facto rulers and wealthy patrons of classical music. Since 1769 the Indo-Nepalese have constituted the politically dominant group in the valley (see §II below), but the Newars maintain many aspects of their culture, including an elaborate round of urban rituals in which music and dance play a large part.

Nepal, §I: Music in the Kathmandu Valley

2. Newar music.

(i) General features.

Contemporary pressures inevitably ensure that traditional Newar culture is undergoing rapid change and decline, but in 1987 a survey of the Newar town of Bhaktapur (70,000 inhabitants) identified 220 music and dance groups still functioning. Performance in Newar culture serves a variety of ritual and entertainment functions. Thus a Navadurgā masked dance enacts an awesome cosmic drama in which the deities themselves participate, but it is also an occasion for spectacle, humour and festive enjoyment (Levy, 1990). Such performances establish intimate connections between ritual, space, time and society, and between the material and spiritual realms. Each genre is performed at specific ritual occasions, in specific places (temple, street, public square, river crossing), at ritually determined times (according to the lunar and solar calendars) and by specific castes (jāti) and associations (guthī) in honour of one or more specific gods, goddesses, Bodhisattvas etc.

A universal feature is the worship of the god of music and dance, Nāsahdyah, by all Newar communities (Wegner, 1986, 1992; Ellingston, 1990). He resides in aniconic shrines and in musical instruments. Offerings to him, accompanied by special music (dyahlhāygu), must precede and conclude any music or dance performance or any period of musical apprenticeship. Nāsahdyah is a god of unseen forces, manifested not only in music but also in geomantic lines of power that transect the urban landscape.

Many performances serve to articulate ritual and urban space. Annual dance performances of the Navadurgā mark the centre and boundaries of each quarter of the town of Bhaktapur. Each quarter has its own Nāsahdyah shrine, at which local inhabitants are initiated into musical performance. A temple courtyard may have specific spaces reserved for different musical genres. Groups of performers tend to belong to the same locality, from which they set out in procession at festival time. The destination of such processions may be a series of Hindu or Buddhist shrines or a cremation-ground, and the way is marked with special music for each shrine passed or stage of the journey completed. In such ways the urban landscape functions not only as a stage, but also in an almost prescriptive manner analogous to a musical score (see Wegner, 1988).

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. Apart from the Jugī tailor-musician caste, performers are not musicians or dancers by profession. Some genres or instruments are restricted to members of a particular caste, but performance may require inter-caste cooperation, as for example when Jugīs are required to provide melodic accompaniment on shawms for Jyāpu drum or dance performances. Many performance types are organized by societies (guthī), a pervasive institution in Newar culture deriving from the ancient Indian craft-guilds (gosthī). Thus a particular guthī may be responsible for providing daily music at a particular temple. A land holding, sometimes a royal donation, would have provided the guthī with income for the maintenance of instruments, copying of song-books and other expenses, but these holdings have now been abolished by the central government, and the surviving music guthīs are impoverished. Each guthī comprises members of a particular caste, from a particular quarter of a town, worshipping at a particular Nāsahdyah shrine.

Indian influence on Newar music is manifest in the use of rāga and tāla names for melodic and rhythmic structures respectively (see India, §III, 2 and 4. In religious vocal genres the melody (lay) of each song (me) is attributed to a specific rāg, introduced by a short, non-metrical exposition called ālāp, rāg kāyegu (‘taking up the rāga’) or simply rāg. In some cases these rāgas have specific functions, as Mālaśrī for the autumn Dasaĩ festival, or Dīpak (the fire rāga) for funeral music. Most rāgas are diatonic heptatonic or anhemitonic pentatonic in structure. Modes with augmented 2nds, used in Indian classical music since the 16th century, are absent, and the frequent absence of a drone accompaniment in Newar music allows an ambiguity of tonal centre that the drone of Indian classical music tends to eliminate. The melodic structure of individual rāgas is somewhat variable from town to town or temple to temple.

Metrical structure (tāl) is articulated by cymbals of various types, often played by the singers themselves in vocal genres. Metres of four, five, six, seven beats and their multiples are employed. A single tāla normally persists throughout each musical item, but the tāla and/or tempo may change during the course of some dāphā songs, cacā dances and navabājā drum compositions (change of tāla was a feature of some medieval Indian prabandha). The playing of drums, either as an instrumental item or as accompaniment to melodic music or dance, is the most elaborate element of Newar music today. Each of about 15 different drum types has its own complex, pre-composed repertory (or repertories), used for specific functions by particular social groups. Each drum repertory is encoded in an oral notation, in which a large variety of drum sounds are represented by corresponding syllables, selected according to phonetic principles that also underlie Indian drum notations (Kölver and Wegner, 1992). Similar notation is used for the long, straight natural trumpets (pvangā, pãytā) employed in some religious vocal music and dance.

(ii) Castes, genres and instruments.

One of the oldest surviving repertories of Newar ritual music and dance is that performed by the Buddhist priests (Vajrācārya). Called cacā or caryā, it is believed to perpetuate the medieval caryā prabandha practised in eastern India by Buddhist mystics of the 11th century and earlier. Cacā songs have texts in esoteric Sanskrit and are set in supposedly ancient rāgas and tālas. A performance begins and ends with a short ālāpa, and a verse describing the iconographic attributes of the rāga may also be recited (see India, §I, 3(iii)(c)). A group of priestly singers accompany themselves on small cymbals (tāh), and the meaning of the words may also be conveyed through dance. This performance, which normally occurs only in the secrecy of the tantric shrine and in the context of highly potent rituals, is a form of meditation in which the singer or dancer invokes the deity to take up residence within himself; cacā is therefore held to confer magical powers on the performer. At particularly important festivals, the cacā dance is accompanied by an ensemble of drum (pañcatāla), cymbals and five pairs of trumpets (pãytā). Similarly constituted ensembles accompany Hindu tantric dance forms established during the Malla period (navadurgā pyākhã, devī pyākhã, bhaila pyākhã, jala pyākhã, gã pyākhã, katĩ pyākhã, dyah pyākhã etc.).

Contrasting with the refined and cloistered tradition of cacā are public musical performances of the Newar Buddhists, which reach a climax in the processional month of Gũla (July/August). Daily processions to the Buddhist shrines are accompanied by ensembles of valve trumpets and clarinets (for the high-caste gold- and silversmiths) or shawms and fipple flutes (bāẽca) for the low-caste oilpressers. These wind instruments are played not by the Buddhists themselves but by Hindu tailor-musicians (Jugī). At the same time the oilpresser children play three varieties of goat- and buffalo-horn (ghulu, cāti, tititāla), and the adults play drums of ten different types, cymbals and natural trumpets. Each Buddhist relic or shrine is saluted with a deafening invocation. The use of these instruments is prescribed in the Svayambhūpurāna (c1550).

The Newar butcher caste (Nāy) play their drum, the nāykhĩ, to accompany funeral processions to the cremation ground. En route their drum patterns reflect their passing of every street corner and every stone related to the spirit world, ceasing at the moment when the pyre is ignited. They also play during other ritual processions, always indicating with their drum patterns the nature of the ritual and the phases of the procession.

The Jugī are believed to be the descendants of a sect of Indian mystics, the Nāth or Kānphatā Yogins, who settled in the Kathmandu Valley during the late 17th or early 18th century. They took up the profession of tailoring and of playing shawms and trumpets in temples. They are the only players of shawms (originally five different types) among the Newars, providing musical services on this instrument to other castes. Today they also play valve trumpets and clarinets in Indian-style wedding bands.

The large, middle-caste, mixed Hindu and Buddhist community of farmers (Jyāpu, Mahārjan) constitutes a veritable repository of Newar musical and other traditions. Several types of devotional music are performed in temples, of which the oldest, dāphā, is believed to date from the 17th-century heyday of Newar civilization. In Bhaktapur there remain some 60 dāphā groups attached to different shrines and deities. Song texts in Sanskrit, Newari and Maithili, many ascribed to Malla royal authors, are contained in manuscript song-books that specify the rāga and tāla for each. The songs are performed by two antiphonal choruses, accompanied by cymbals, natural trumpets (pvangā) and barrel drum (khi). The most complex Newar tāla structures are those of dāphā – especially the songs known as gvārā, in which the tāla periodically changes – and the most elaborate drum repertory is that of the khi. The dāphā repertory includes the Gīta-govinda, a famous collection of Sanskrit poems on the erotic and mystical relationship between Krsna and Rādhā, composed in the 12th century by the eastern Indian writer Jayadeva. This work has been known in Nepal since at least the 15th century.

In Bhaktapur, eight of the ritually most important dāphā groups were expanded (beginning with a royal donation in the early 18th century) to include sets of nine different drums (navabājā). These are played at festival times by a master-drummer in a three-hour sequence of contrasting drum solos, accompanied by the shawms of the Jugī and interspersed with dāphā songs.

More recent types of religious group singing with drum accompaniment include the Indian-style Hindu bhajan (with harmonium, tablā and Indian tāla), and its Buddhist equivalent called jñānmālā bhajan. Intermediate between these and the older dāphā stands dhalcā bhajan, using dhalak instead of tablā and Newar instead of Indian tālas.

Processional music of the farmers, bricklayers and potters is played during civic and family rituals. These are ensembles of cylindrical drums (dhimay, dha) accompanied by cymbals, or of transverse flutes (basurī, up to 20 per group) accompanied by drums and cymbals (and sometimes augmented by violins and harmonium). The flutes play the melodies of folksongs related to seasons or types of agricultural work (sīnā jyā, puvājyā, silu, ghātu, byaculi, mārsi etc.). The origins of such processional traditions may be very early: a 7th-century inscription at Badikhel testifies to the existence of a contemporaneous music guthī (Sharma and Wegner, 1995).

(iii) Dance.

Two types of Newar sacred dance can be distinguished. In one the dancers become possessed by the gods, who take up residence in the dancers’ heavy, elaborately painted masks (navadurgā pyākhã, jala pyākhã, pacāli bhairav, gã pyākhã, dyah pyākhã). All such dances include ferocious goddesses of vital importance in Newar religion, and are performed by particular castes, often low in social status. Typical of this type is the navadurgā dance of Bhaktapur, performed by members of the gardener caste, whose annual cycle of performances in every quarter of the town and surrounding countryside ensures the blessings of the gods – and especially goddesses – for the current year. The dance and its accompanying music (played on drum and cymbals) are but one element in a complex of rituals including the making and painting of the masks, their destruction by cremation at the end of the annual cycle and frequent blood sacrifices.

Dances of the second type, though often superficially similar, are performed mainly for entertainment (mahākālī pyākhã, kha pyākhã, katĩ pyākhã, bhailā pyākhã). The enactment of religious narratives connected with festivals may bring merit to the participants and observers, but the dancers are not possessed by the deities they represent. During the Festival for the Dead (Sāpāru, August) in Bhaktapur, about 60 different dances and other entertainments are performed, including a stick dance (ghẽtãgisi), using face paint instead of masks, masked dances of the tantric gods and goddesses (bhailā pyākhã), acrobatic entertainment (khyāh pyākhã) and cabaret with political themes (khyālāh).

The Buddhist tantric cacā dance belongs to the first type, since the dancer seeks possession by the deity or Bodhisattva represented. In recent years attempts have begun to bring elements of cacā dance on to the public stage as a form of Nepalese ‘classical’ dance. In its gesture language it appears to be related to some of the classical dances of India (e.g. Bharata-nātyam).

Nepal, §I: Music in the Kathmandu Valley

3. Classical music.

Rulers of the Kathmandu Valley patronized the classical music of north India from Malla times onwards. The Newar kings promoted the performance of elaborate dramas, involving music and dance, on the model of Indian classical drama. A number of Indian music and dance treatises were known – some of the oldest (14th-century) manuscripts of the Nātyaśāstra survive in Kathmandu – and new treatises were composed, in Sanskrit and Newari, especially during the reign of Jagajjyotīr Malla of Bhaktapur (1613–37), who also patronized a local tradition of rāga-mālā painting (see India, §II, 3(iii)). By the 18th century, and probably earlier, Muslim musicians from India were at the Kathmandu court. Although banished by Prithvī Nārāyan Shāh (reigned 1768–75), Indian musicians returned under his successors and flourished under the Rānā prime ministers (1846–1951). Leading musicians (including the singer Tāj Khān, the sarod player Na’matullah Khān and his two sons Keramatullah and Asadullah ‘Kaukabh’ Khān) were attracted from Banaras, Lucknow, Calcutta, Rampur and other Indian centres, and were appointed tutors to the Nepalese aristocracy. With the fall of the Rānās most of these musicians returned to India, though some of their descendants and pupils remain. Although classical music (śāstrīya sangīt) is nominally supported by the monarchy (HM Queen Aishvarya holds an MA in sitār), there is now little state, public or media patronage for it, partly owing to the rival attractions of local traditional and popular music.

Nepal, §I: Music in the Kathmandu Valley

4. Popular music.

Although it is heard throughout Nepal, modern popular music is performed and recorded mainly in Kathmandu and transmitted largely via national radio. Radio was banned during the Rānā regime but developed rapidly after 1951, followed by 78 r.p.m. and 33 r.p.m. records in the 1960s, indigenous films from 1973 and cassettes from 1980. Until the 1980s these media were government sponsored, and they remained under government supervision thereafter. Indian films (see India, §VIII, 1) have dominated the film market since the 1950s, but radio has been the more important medium in Nepal. The employment of Nepalese artists by radio broadcasters has ensured the development of indigenous genres of popular music despite competition from Indian film music. The principal genres are the ‘folksong’ (lok gīt) and ‘modern song’ (ādhunik gīt).

‘Folksongs’ were first collected (from various regions of Nepal) and popularized by Dharma Raj Thapa (b 1924) in the 1950s. Among later singers, Kumar Basnet (b 1943) is known especially for Tamang songs, and Jhalakman Gandharwa (b 1935) for the songs of his own Gaine musician caste (see §II below). Lok gīt performances tend to combine elements such as instrumentation from different ethnic groups and from the ‘modern song’; the language is usually Nepali.

‘Modern songs’ also began in the 1950s, with the Newar singers Nati Kazi (b 1925) and Shiva Shankar (b 1932). They drew on Nepalese folksong idioms, to which Ambar Gurung (b 1937) added elements of Indian rāgas and Western harmony (Grandin, 1989). The texts are composed by the singers themselves or drawn from contemporary Nepalese poetry. The standard format is a refrain (sthāyī) alternating with verses (antarā). Tablā or mādal supply the rhythmic accompaniment using repetitive patterns borrowed from the ‘light classical’ tradition of north India or from the local repertory. Melodic accompaniment employs a variety of instruments, including not only Nepalese flute and sārangī but also Indian sitār, santūr, jaltarang and harmonium, and Western guitar, mandolin, saxophone, clarinet and electronic keyboard. Melodies are derived from rāgas, local songs or are freely composed, and they employ diatonic heptatonic scales, with some chromatic alteration and added harmonies. The metre is usually 6/8 or 4/4. Vocal production is based on Indian popular styles and local practice. All these elements are assimilated into a highly successful genre that permeates life in Nepal wherever there is electricity. Many ‘modern songs’ have been adopted enthusiastically by young people in the hills, who sing them, along with traditional songs, as their evening entertainment.

Since the early 1960s love and patriotism have been the only acceptable themes for popular songs transmitted through the official media, and in 1965 Nepali was imposed as the only permitted language, in the interests of national integration. The situation has altered little even following the restoration of democracy in 1990. Some artists, such as Prem Dhoj (b 1939) and Narayan Gopal (b 1914), have therefore remained independent of official institutions, disseminating their songs via stage performances and cassette recordings; these songs express social concerns and employ regional languages as well as Nepali. Such songs are musically similar to ‘modern songs’ and ‘folksongs’, but employ a smaller ensemble suited to stage performance.

Nepal