Various Artists - Songs and Dances of Nepal / Various - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Gaines (GUY-naze) literally translates as InchsingersInch in Nepalese and refers to the Nepali musician caste. The Gaines of Nepal, released in 1982, features 20 minutes of music played on the sarangi and mahadai. The sarangi is a 4-string fiddle-like instrument, and the mahdai is a two-sided drum. Selections feature folk songs and religious songs. The liner notes include a translation of the long InchBallad of the Murdered DaughterInch as well as a history of gaines.

In 1973, anthropologist John M. Bishop recorded music of the remote village of Melemichigaon, Nepal. With influence from Tibet, this Nepalese music is characterized by unison singing and occasional accompaniment on the damian, a stringed instrument in the lute family that provides a strong rhythmic base. The musicians generally sing in Helambu (a Sherpa-Tibetan dialect) and sometimes in Tibetan on themes of religion, a desire for material wealth, the natural landscape, and a Inchsense of an ordered world in contrast to the nomadic pattern of many peoples' livesInch (Bishop). Liner notes include a description of the village and it's music, track notes, and lyrics in Helambu/Tibetan and English.

The familiar clash of cymbals pulses from a nearby monastery. Men at an archery match laugh, teasing each other with folk lyrics. A woman wraps her traditional kira dress and prepares for a days work at her family's loom. The air is thick with the smell of butter tea, and from the valleys resonate the muttering storms of Druk Yul, the Land of the Thunder Dragon, the country known to the world as Bhutan. Aided by the region's physical isolation of the Eastern Himalaya, the Bhutanese have a carefully-paced response to modernization. The Royal Government of Bhutan opened it's borders to tourist travel in 1974 and has regulated international communication ever since. The Bhutanese people proactively embrace and preserve their Himalayan Buddhist traditions, protecting them from the rapid challenges of modernity. The soundscapes collected in Music of the Bhutan offer invaluable documentation and serve as a pillar by which the success of Bhutan's cultural preservation can be measured. Anthropologist and early Himalayan traveler, Dr. Johann S. Szuszkiewicz, produced Music of the Bhutan in 1978, a time when scholars had just begun to study Bhutanese music, in an era when many Western recordings of the Himalaya focused only on Buddhist liturgical music. Despite inherent political, developmental, and demographic changes throughout the years, the very songs, instrumental music, dances, and spoken word compiled in Music of the Bhutan are often still heard in Bhutan today. Bhutan is a nation fervently preserving tradition and of a people with endless enthusiasm for their heritage.