Homecoming: a vist to Sokhang (gso khang) Village

Please note that this document is under development; not all links function at this point (13 August 2001).

The music we encountered in Penam was relatively diverse, reflecting the village's mixed agricultural and herding lifestyles, the infuence of older singers who remembered the old songs, and the introduction of new musical styles by young people. Family ties, and circles of elders and peers formed a distinct community musical tradition in Sokhang. This community tradition serves as a resource to one group of young men from the village who are creating a repertoire that synthesizes local and pan-Tibetan music.

In August, 2000, I spent a week in the village of Sokhang with Tenzin, one of our project's research partners from the Tibet Academy of Social Sciences. We came at the invitation of the "Sokhang Quintet" [link to separate page], a group of five musicians we befriended in Lhasa, where they spend the summers busking at the Norbulinka. During one of several sessions recording them in Lhasa, I expressed interest in their homeplace, and they suggested a visit since they planned to return to Sokhang for the Wangkor ('ong skor) harvest festival. Two of them rode with us from Lhasa; we met up with the other three in front of the Tashilunpo Monastery in Shigatse, and continued on to their village the next day.

Our hosts in Sokhang were Tenzin (bstan 'dzin, a dramyen player in the Sokhang Quintet), his older brother and head-of-household Ngodup (dngos grup), and their wife Chokyi (phyogs skyid). We stayed in the common room of their home, where we also took our meals, and which served as the meeting place and studio for some of the recording sessions that week. The first few days in Sokhang were spent wandering about: checking in at the township government compound, located across the river from the village houses; touring the ruined mansion of the pre-1950 local aristocratic family, now housing three households; stopping at the water-powered mill, and lingering at the village spring. Above all, we visited. Each of the Sokhang Quintet had us over to drink yak-butter tea (in the morning), chang barley beer (the rest of the day), and to meet the family. All the while the young men of the group were making arrangements for recording local singers.

The idea was that they would be our guides to the music of their area—the songs and people who had helped shaped their own music. Our goal was not to make a systematic survey, but rather to get an impression from their perspective. None of the songs, with the possible exception of the drinking songs (chang gzhas), were performed in their normal context, but it was refreshing to have the chance to at least share meals and a few drinks with the people we recorded. Overall, the atmosphere was relaxed, even fun, in contrast to the sometimes stressful conditions surrounding other, too brief fieldwork encounters that summer (what the Chinese would call "viewing flowers from horseback").

The first person the Sokhang Quintet chose for us to meet was Molhakyi (mo lha skyid), an eighty year-old woman who was blind, and who knew the most songs of anyone in the area. We went to her home, where she was joined by two other women, Tsering (tshe ring, 79) and Drolkar (sgrol dkar, 52), dressed in holiday finery. Since it was a hot sunny morning, we set up in the storage room of their courtyard. The women performed nine songs, beginning with ceremonial songs (gzhas chen) unique to their region. The first of these songs, entitled "The Local Deity (yul lha)," Molhakyi said she learned from her mother when she was young. The song was performed at the New Year (lo gsar) celebrations, summer festivals, and during weddings. The second song they sang was "The Four Cornered Lower Lake (mtsho smad gru bzhi)," for which we have a partial translation of the lyrics:

The surroundings around the lake and the sky above
The fields of earth beneath
The forest and meadows
The blue space
The clear water
The fish in the water
The creatures in the meadows
The wild grass-eating animals in the forest
I praise the living beings who sustain themselves in this place around the edge.
Transcribed by Konchok Jiatso, translated by David Germano

This song was also described as quite old and sung in the immediate area when Molhakyi was young. Konchok Jiatso notes that she said that this ceremonial song "is performed during religious circumambulations at New Year's, a ritual practiced by farmers in which they carry religious texts and statues around the fields so that they will get a good harvest," and that it is also sung during the summer festival and plowing (sa ka) festival.

The dancing in these songs was vigorous, complex, and highly syncopated. One of the characteristics of ceremonial and dancing songs in the region (at least from what we saw in Sokhang and the neighboring village of Tindrok) is the rhythmic counting aloud of the steps as they are danced (e.g. "one and two and three and one"). This counting off had a practical effect as the older women taught the young men of the Sokhang Quintet some of the steps. In the first three ceremonial songs, all antiphonal, the women sang both the male and female parts, but then the young men of the Quintet joined in, sometimes learning the song as they performed it. The songs they performed together were dancing (zhabs bro) songs, one of which they also characterized as a 'West' song (stod gzhas). In this song, one can hear the "spoken shuffle" of the dance, the women instructing the men, and the higher degree of vocal ornamentation in the women's singing—a generational difference we noted frequently in our fieldwork. Konchok Jiatso (on reviewing the session recordings) notes that the ceremonial songs of Sokhang are performed at "new year celebrations, religious festivals, birthdays, summer parties, and during the harvest." These songs typically express good wishes, for example "Prayer for prosperity", by the older women and young men together.

The Sokhang Quintet clearly admired the energy and feeling with which Molhakyi performed . They respected her knowledge and wanted to learn songs from her (one reason they set up the recording session). Molhakyi herself noted that "young people can't sing these songs anymore," and that she was happy that the young men were studying these older songs. It is clear that new musical styles attract the younger people in the village, especially the kind of popular music modeled on the 'West' songs performed by the Sokhang Quintet with instrumental accompaniment, in contrast to the purely vocal traditions of their village. The influence of the old local dancing, however, is evident in their performances, and they do perform local songs as part of their repertoire. Musical sources such as Molhakyi and other elders of the community are important to them, as are the musical traditions in their own families.

The next place we went was the neighboring village of Tindrok (thin 'brog), a half hour walk to the east of Sokhang, where we visited the home of Tenzin's older sister Phurbu Tsamjo. We recorded her, members of her conjugal family, and neighbors, first performing dancing songs (zhabs bro gzhas) that are part of the New Year celebrations. These songs can be rather long and physically exhausting. One example they performed, appropriately titled "Explanation of the World", is over twelve minutes long. The tune is similar to other dancing songs they sang, as is the antiphonal structure and circle dance . The lead singers in these songs were Sonam Dojre (male, approximately 56 years old), Luyang (female, approx. 72), and Dawa Donma (female, approx. 60), with the two younger women (both around 35 years-old), Phurbu Tsamjo and Kyidzom following, though clearly familiar with the songs. Dancing songs begin slowly, and midway through the songs the performers do a complicated dance break, then the song tempo becomes progressively faster. The older members of the group also performed two "narrative songs" (rnam thar) in the distinctive glottal vocal style that we heard no young people use. In his commentary on the recordings, Konchok Jiatso explains that "the lyrics of narrative songs are generally concerned with religious history, Tibetan history, or stories about the gods," but one of the narrative songs sung in Tindrok "is about the five monastic seats (Drepung, Sera, Ganden, Potala, and Tsuglakhang."

The last songs we recorded in Tindrok were drinking songs (chang gzhas), which were in fact performed in a normal context of entertaining and seeing off guests (us) with the ritualized serving and drinking of chang. As noted in the short introduction to the Penam music page, chang is served with barley flour added on top, and the flour is also smeared on the guests' shoulders to express good wishes for prosperity and abundance. Chang accompanied by drinking song is also consumed according to etiquette, with the guest dipping a finger in and sprinkling a drop skyward three times, and usually drinking three cups. We drank quite a bit of chang, which has a rather low alcohol content, and it was a prominent feature of every get-together. We also recorded several drinking songs, which were typically performed by a female soloist, or by a small group of young women singing together. The next recording session, held in Tenzin's home in Sokhang, featured three young women from the village (all about 24 years-old), Yangchen, Migmar, and Tsamcho, the younger sister of Pema Dondup, one of the Sokhang Quintet. They sang several drinking songs, holding a pitcher of chang as they sang and serving it after they had finished.

After drinking chang and singing all afternoon, late in the day (August 7) some singers of pastoral songs (glu gzhas) or songs in the "nomad style" ('brog lugs) came over at the Sokhang Quintet's invitation. Pastoral songs are sung while herding yak and sheep in mountain pastures. The singing style of glu gzhas is highly melismatic; the singers in Sokhang start low and then quickly soar with glottal shifts to a high crescendo, a style locally described as "atak" for the sounds the singer makes. The first we recorded was by Buti (bu khrid),a woman of about 45 from the neighboring village of Gode (rgod sde), also in Mak (mag) township. She sang four songs, the first three sharing the same tune with different words, the last a different melody. The next singer was Dratul (dgra 'thul), a man of about 35 who was introduced to us as a good friend, and as coming from a Sokhang family specializing in herding and pastoral singing. Drathul's singing was more confident and ornamented. Dawa Ngodup indicated to me (with broken Chinese and a "thumbs up") that Dratul was very good, and his songs were "typical" of the genre. Noting that I was impressed, Tenzin showed that he could sing glu gzhas, too, ending his song with a triumphant whoop. In a separate session the next day (August 8), we recorded several pastoral songs by an older male singer, Phurbu Wangdu (phur bu dbang 'dus) . The same session had two women from the village singing solos of what can be termed "folk songs" (glu), for lack of a better term, about which we learned very little. On August 8 we also recorded Ngodup (dngos grub) (Tenzin's older brother) chanting a wedding song, which outlines the proper setting up of a household. He performs the chant, as his father did before him, as a service to the community, and he had just returned the day before from a wedding in a neighboring village (a photo of him in his official regalia is on the Penam music page).

As the August 7 session continued, it gradually turned into an informal music party. Dinner that night (August 7) was pretty much the same fare as every night: tsampa, potato soup, and whole legs of dried sheep, which we passed around, cutting strips off with a large knife. Quite a few people joined us. Each of the members of the Sokhang Quintet arrived carrying his own bag of barley flour and butter, leg of dried mutton, and jug of chang. Friends and family also came by, and a jam session developed. It started when a friend, Penpa Tsering (spen pa tshe ring, 29) was urged to sing a particular favorite song of the group. After he had finished singing it as a vocal solo, the consensus was that it sounded better accompanied by the dramyen, which was then brought out. It is interesting to note that this was a popular song of the 'West' song (stod gzhas) genre, the kind of music typically performed by the Sokhang group, but not 'native' to their village, rather from regions further west. It was also interesting to note that as more of these songs were played, everyone present joined in the singing and dancing, and the men passed the instrument around. Penpa Tsering played another song, with the three young women from Sokhang singing with him, that is part of the Sokhang Quintet's regular routine in their busking in Lhasa.

The performances during the impromptu party suggest that there is a circle of young people in the village who share a common repertoire of songs, and who form a relatively open community of music, rather than a closed group. In a later interview with members of the Quintet conducted by David Germano, it was revealed that there are seven or eight men in the Sokhang area, ranging in age from their late 20s to mid-40s, who play music together in various formations. It is significant that the songs played that night were stod gzhas, since it suggests that young people are learning new styles, and innovating beyond the strictly vocal and local musical traditions of their village. In fact, the Sokhang Quintet performs songs from regions as far-flung as Kongpo, Amdo, and Tingri in their repetoire, which could be characterized as "pan-Tibetan." Perhaps most interesting is that, even as the group is reaching out for new kinds of music, they are still interested in learning more about and developing the local music from their village. In creating new songs, they are consciously drawing on old local traditions (e.g. the syncopated dance steps learned from Molhakyi), and in their self-presentation—even self-"folklorization"—they consciously emphasize the particularity of their home place in the clothing they wear and the local songs they sing.

The synthesis of local and pan-Tibetan music by the Sokhang Quintet is a complicated story (broached in a separate essay), and their main motivation in performing is clearly to make money. But the roots of their music in Sokhang lie in more than the particular songs or musical traditions there; they have a pride of place. Dawa Ngodup put it quite simply: toward the end of the party, perhaps a bit overwhelmed by chang and the nostalgia of homecoming, he gestured at his friends singing and said, "this is our culture."

John Flower
University of North Carolina, Charlotte