Carol Tingey Nepal Collection

Long description:

Recordings in this collection can be played by anyone.

This collection consists of approximately 100 hours of field recordings of folk and ritual music made in Nepal from 1984 to 1992.

Dr Carol Tingey conducted several trips to Nepal in the course of her research each with a particular focus. Carol’s initial focus was the music of the Damai (tailor musicians) and the role of the pancai baja ensemble and its music in Nepalese culture and society. Her main area of research was in Gorkha, Central Nepal.  However she also travelled to other regions of Nepal, including Lamjung, Dhading, Jumla, Kalikot, Bhojpur and Baglung to compare regional pancai baja traditions. The results of this research were documented in her Ph.D. thesis 'Nepalese Pancai Baja Music. An Auspicious Ensemble in a Changing Society', which was published by SOAS (1994) as ‘Auspicious Music in a Changing Society: The Damai Musicians of Nepal’.

In 1986 Carol returned to Nepal to try to retrace Arnold Bake's footsteps, and to record the same musicians, songs and pieces that he had recorded in 1955-56 (see collection C52 Arnold Bake Collection), intended for a study of continuity and change in musical tradition.

The final recordings were made in 1992 as part of a collaborative research project with Dr Richard Widdess (Collection C1264 Richard Widdess South Asian field recordings) and Gert-Matthias Wegner (University of Kathmandu). The aim was to compare selected Nepalese and Newar music traditions with their counterparts in India. Carol’s part of the project was to research mangalini female ritual singing, the gaine and their repertoire and the Newar jugi musicians of the Kathmandu Valley. Mangalini were recorded in Nuwakot and Kathmandu, and gaine in Lamjung and Kathmandu. The recordings of jugi baja were made in many of the communities of the Kathmandu Valley, including Bhaktapur, Balambu, Dhulikhel, Lubhu, Naikap, Sanga, and Thimi.

The majority of the sound recordings were made at live events, such as weddings and festivals and include all sorts of background noise, people, animals, shotguns, and sometimes other music groups, (but not mobile phones!), capturing the atmosphere and excitement of the events. Some of the recordings were notoriously difficult to make, for example, during processions along the mountain paths, when the musicians are moving in relation to the microphone position and each other. The Kalika nagara bana and pancai baja at Gorkha Darbar played simultaneously in a small, open fronted pavilion – the Sitalpati – and it took many attempts to record these large and loud ensembles without distortion from over-recording.

The collection may be of historical value in a number of ways. It documents:

• a year in the musical life of the community of Gorkha
• pancai baja traditions across various regions of Nepal
• nagara bana temple music played at shrines across Central Nepal
• jugi baja repertoire of a range of Kathmandu Valley bands
• the ritual repertoire of mangalini singers
• a broad range of repertoire current at the time, including some pieces that were already recognised as being ‘archaic’ and going out of use
• musical traditions immediately before a period of rapid and significant cultural change
• single items of repertoire played by the same musicians on different occasions
• items of repertoire performed in a variety of styles by pancai baja, gaine, jugi baja, folk singers and/or mangalini
• some rarely heard instruments such as arbajo (plucked lute played by gaine), and hudka (hour-glass drum played by the damai of Far-West Nepal)
• significant events in the lives of Nepalese people through their music.