Singing the nation: modern tibetan music and national identity

An unwelcome effect of the scholarly preoccupation and public fascination in the West with Tibetan Buddhism is that other salient aspects of contemporary Tibetan culture are often neglected. Modern Tibetan music is one such overlooked cultural phenomenon which offers many insights onto a people undergoing drastic transformations, while also illuminating the complex influence of Buddhism on the creative output of the contemporary Tibetan laity. In tandem with modern Tibetan literature, popular music indicates the tentative formation of an embryonic public space within which Tibetans are expressing their common concerns and collective identity under difficult political circumstances. Popular songs provide a channel for voicing dissent, while also reinforcing Tibetan national identity by evoking images of a shared history, culture, and territory, bemoaning the current plight of Tibetans and expressing aspirations for a collective destiny. To use a concept of Karl Deutsch, popular music is an effective and wide-reaching “communicative facility” that stores, recalls and transmits information and ideas in a predominantly oral society like Tibet. As with poetry, its power lies in its inherent ability to effect delight in the audience. Tibetan popular music, like contemporary literature, is one of the artistic means through which Tibetans imagine themselves as a nation. It is also a mode of subversive narrative that counters the master narrative of Chinese state power and its colonial conception of Tibetan history and society. This paper provides a close reading of a sample of typical lyrics, drawn from contemporary songs, to support such an assertion