Men of Dharamsala Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts

• 1Chinbep Puja (Blessing of the Environment)09:09
• 2Great Eastern Sun03:15
• 3Gyalue Namthar and Ringa04:04
• 4Rangyul Rangla Mayna04:14
• 5Rime Soldep (4 Lineages Puja)05:29
• 6Nangsa Woebum02:11
• 7Zandang Palri03:48
• 8Ayr-sha01:57
• 9Drelkar08:22
• 10Losar Puja01:52
• 11Homage to the Lama02:53
• 12Tashi Shoelpa06:52
• 13Drowa Sangmo: Dopoe Namthar01:04
• 14Prince Norsang: Norsang Yab Ki Namthar01:32
• 15Gyalue Namthar01:17
• 16Gyun, Chak Sumpa (Refuge Puja)03:19
• 17Amdo Glory03:26
• 18Tibetan Long Horns02:02
• Total Runtime01:06:46

Info for Men of Dharamsala

The first institution that His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama created in 1959 while establishing his Tibetan government in exile in India was TIPA, the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts. We created this album in honor of the Dalai Lama's 80th birthday on July 6th, 2015 and to support TIPA and these valiant musicians who struggle to keep Tibetan performing arts alive. The repertoire includes Tibetan opera, dance and folk tunes, nomad songs from the Tibetan plateau sung in Amdo, and special stage purification dances. We recorded this album in the auditorium at TIPA in McLeod Ganj, perched above the Indian hill station of Dharamsala. Monkeys sat on the roof and contributed 'percussion' when they felt like it by banging on the roof when they liked something. They were a frustrating if appreciative audience.

Joining TIPA musicians on this album are monks of Nechung Monastery singing special pujas (prayers) unique to this monastery. Nechung Kuten, the Tibetan State Oracle, encouraged this recording and graciously invited us to record these pujas in his Monastery. The album opens with a blessing of the environment recorded in the new Nechung monastery in Dharamsala, a prayer to the four lineages of Tibetan Buddhism and a Losar prayer for the New Year. Tibetan wind instruments, human skull rattles and Tibetan long horns accompany them with vigor.

Randy Bellous in not only executive producer of Men of Dharamsala but he and his team at Randy Bellous Productions also filmed recording sessions and subsequent interviews with Sophisticated Lady jazz quartet. Snippets of the interviews can be found here.

We owe a great deal of gratitude to our Associate Producer Tsering Youdon, who helped with logistics in India and worked with us on the music. Tashi Delek! And to His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, Happy Birthday!

Produced by Randy Bellous

The Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts
Hidden from the outside world for centuries, between the Himalayas to the south and the forbidding Taklemakhan Desert to the North, the country of Tibet and Tibet’s culture and religion remained largely unchanged since the Middle Ages. But starting in 1949 when the Red Army invaded Tibet to “liberate the people,” most of Tibet’s 6,000 monasteries were destroyed with dynamite and aerial bombardment. Political and religious expression has been systematically repressed by the Chinese government, which means that much of the native Tibetan cultural landscape was in danger of dying within a generation. Thanks to the importance His Holiness placed on the preservation of unique Tibetan traditions, the first institution he established after his escape to India in 1959 was the Tibetan Dance and Drama Society, now called the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts, or “TIPA.”

His Holiness acted swiftly to preserve what he could during this cultural genocide. The Dalai Lama started TIPA so the surviving opera and dance masters, costume and instrument makers, could teach future custodians of the song and dance dramas instigated by Thangtong Gyalpo in the fifteenth century.

Booklet for Men of Dharamsala