Tibetan ritual music is not a pastiche of gentle good feeling about the Universe. It is an alarm to the system, waking us up to the vibrancy of the world we are placed in and the prevalence of sound as a means to form our home.
Whatever one's relation to Buddhism, whether from within or without, the religion appears at once to be admirable. There have been few wars fought in its name; indeed, its teachings seem to aim for a kind of composed peace in the Universe. Though, at times, apparently indifferent to the upheavals of our present world, its visions lie beyond politics. Its aesthetic of calm can prevail behind all that seems to be changing far too often, far too fast.
All this composure can be shattered on first hearing the ritual music of the Tibetan monastic traditions. In the Himalaya, it can still be heard in the gompas hidden away in the mountains. Approach the heavy wooden monastery door, tiptoe so as not to disturb the silence, gently push open the portal and pass through a heavy, muffling cloth. Inside, lit by torches burning on either side of a podium, sits the leader of an assembly, deeply engrossed in a religious text. Hear the faint, low rumbling from two rows of monks on either side suddenly surge to an uproar as they pick up their instruments. Huge, thirty-foot metal horns anchor the sound with a groan- as if from the bowels of the Earth, cymbals clang from a crash to a wash, like a wave receding from the shore and preparing to strike, small trumpets made of human bone scream shrilly and large drums beat in rhythmic acceleration, from boom, to bum bum bm bm bm bbbb booom, each instrument with its own rhythm, falling like the leaves of trees that are then blown up into the air as if by sudden gusts of wind, a cacophony of crispness defining the spirit of autumn, the harbinger of winter and the time when snow will drape the valley in a hallowed stillness. At first it is noise, but a din that still understands the rise and the fall, far from the whirring of machines or the honking of traffic. Rather, it is something welling up from the slopes of the mountain, carried down into the winds of the world. The swirls and voices of the spiritual jam session go on long into the night, allowing the sound to overwhelm the players as the candles wear down into darkness.
Crazy Wisdom