Aims

Primary:
The project’ s aim was to make high fidelity audio recordings of aspects of the Monpa culture of Tawang District. These recordings included liturgical music, derived from the rich Tibetan Buddhist inheritance of the region and the primarily Gelukpa monastic communities, as well as folk-music, which, while most often found in secular settings, was also steeped with religious sentiment.

Our methods included transcription, interview and video as appropriate to contextualise our recordings, so that our results might give a full representation of the music, its background and its meaning.

Secondary:
WWith our recordings, we also investigated surviving traditional accounts of the sixth Dalai Lama, Tsangyang Gyatso, who was born in Tawang. He composed songs and poems, and many more were inspired by his outlandish lifestyle and presumed murder. Where extant, we recorded these pieces as above, adding locality to our expedition’s results.

Our expedition’s results will henceforward be preserved in various international collections. These include the Tibetan Himalayan Digital Library and other collections such as the Oxford University Archive of Tibetan Arts, the Archive and Research Centre for Ethnomusicology at Gurgaon, and the British Library.

The impression we have recorded of the region’s culture and character has also been captured in a photographic portfolio. This will be presented in conjunction with the recordings in some settings, but also provides a stand-alone viewpoint into Tawang's geography and heritage.