Instruments of Bhutan

The Trongsa Tsechu Orchestra

The Dungchen at the Trongsa Tshechu

The Jaling and the Yanchen (Dulcimer)

Remo

 

10th January, 2012. Head office of Music of Bhutan in Thimphu, a research centre dedicated to the documentation and preservation of traditional Bhutanese music and instruments. The Opera Bhutan team is warmly welcomed from the cold chill of a Himalayan winter afternoon with some saving hot ginger tea by the jovial and wonderfully hospitable president, Jane Hancock. Jane is an expert photographer and the founder of a Bach academy who was not so long ago struck by a coup de foudre for Bhutan and in particular, the music of Bhutan.

Jane collaborates with one of Bhutan's finest musicians, Kheng Sonam Dorji, player of many instruments, composer and noted internationally for his contribution to the soundtrack of the the film 'Travellers and Magicians'. We first met Sonam at the fabulous Gangtey Palace in Paro where he visited with Jane and gave us a memorable recital of song and dramyen playing, with the captivating Yak Song as an encore. 

Back in the Thimphu headquarters, gratefully clasping our hot tea mugs, we were about to be taken into the mysterious soundscapes of traditional Bhutanese musical instruments. I have the mad idea that those sounds which somehow arrive at our visceral primordial sensibilities, could be used in someway in the project. The storyline we are working with comes after all from a distant time in the memory of our own Western culture and these strange Himalayan sounds perhaps could work transversely to unlock those memories. I suspect Pasolini was attempting to do this in the soundtrack of his Medea. 

As we sat in the cosy office, Sonam presented us with an enormous range of sound-producing objects, some you would call instruments and others, like the GIANT seedpod which you tilted so that the seeds inside made a delicious rain-like patter, were nature's objects of wonder. 

Here is a video of the Bhutanese oboe, the Jaling.

For more information on Jane and Sonam and their inspiring work, see http://musicofbhutan.org