By ASHWINI BHATIA
DHARMSALA, India – Exiled Tibetans are elated that an album of their monks’ chants has been nominated for the most prestigious American music award – the Grammy – and they see the music’s increasing popularity as a way to raise awareness of their culture and history.
The album, called Sacred Tibetan Chant: The Monks of Sherab Ling Monastery, was nominated last week for a Grammy in the category of best traditional world music.
“It’s more evidence of the cultural richness of Tibet and proof of the relevance of Tibet in the world,” Lhasang Tsering, a Tibetan political activist, told The Associated Press in Dharmsala, 250 miles north of New Delhi, where the Dalai Lama lives.
“Any avenue to create more awareness is positive,” Tsering said Monday.
The chants were recorded at the monastery on the outskirts of Dharmsala more than a year ago and the album was released last January.
The 46th Grammy Awards will be held in February in Los Angeles.
The monks were happy to hear the news of the nomination, though their only involvement was allowing themselves to be recorded, said Tenam Shastri, personal secretary to Lama Tai Situ Rinpoche, whose seat is at the monastery. He is the teacher of Ugyen Thinley Dorje, the 17th Karmapa, third-highest ranking lama in Tibetan Buddhism, who fled Tibet as a teenager three years ago, crossing the mountains by foot to reach Dharmsala.
The Indian government allowed the Dalai Lama, the leading figure in Tibetan Buddhism, to set up a government-in-exile in the town after he fled his homeland with thousands of followers in 1959, after a failed uprising against Chinese troops.
“It’s high time for Tibetan music, whether religious or secular, to find acceptance in the West,” said Dashi Tsering, director of the Amnye Machaen Institute, a school in Dharmsala dedicated to preserving Tibetan culture. “This is a very positive outcome and I hope that it will cause other music companies to take interest in Tibetan music.”
“It’s very interesting and encouraging,” Tsering Rhitar, a Tibetan documentary filmmaker, told the AP. “I hope that popular Tibetan music that’s more topical, that’s more political, will get acceptance in the West and shed light on political issues.”
The central political issue to the Tibetans in northern India is the fight for autonomy in their ancestral home just over the Himalayan Mountains.
When asked whether it was appropriate for religious music to be compared with the more secular, commercially driven nominees in the world music category, Shastri said that he had no qualms.
“I see no harm in it competing with the other traditional music,” he said. “In a way all traditional music is sacred.”
“Any action that attempts to bring peace and harmony in the world is good karma,” Shastri added. “As long as the proper ritual in our sacred tradition is maintained in the recording, it is beneficial to bring it to the public.”
