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HERE is a kind of music that is natural, healing, and melodious. Listeners can gain spiritual edification and relea the pressure in their soul by listening to its songs and chants. Its roots extend back to ages ago, yet still lin-gering with us today. It is Buddhist mantras.
Birth of a New Music Style
直接用英语怎么说This type of music, originally a medium of pray-ing for blessings, has now gained national recog-nition as a national intangible cultural heritage. Four years ago in September 2017, five young people from China’s Tibet Autonomous Region founded a band named Tuo Le. They combined
By LIJIA TSERING
Spreading Love and Joy through Buddhist Chants
花字诗句folk music with Buddhist chants to create a new music genre which is written in the form of Tibet-an Buddhist praying. It is beautiful, soothing, and relaxing.
全国农业普查
Tuo Le’s band members include two Tibetan women, who are twin sisters, and three Tibetan men. During the performance, they sing gentle melodies that come from the faraway Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. For their performances, they u neither complicated instruments nor multifarious stage effects. What lingers in the hearts of the au-dience is only the melodious music of their gentle singing accompanied by musical instruments. Au-diences sit enraptured during every performance, while being carried away by the music to the snow-capped land of Tibet.
The music Tuo Le produces originated from a
CulTure / new visTas
Tuo Le Band on stage during an interval at one of their performances.
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their own bands. Though not trained as musical professionals, they were all pursuing their music dreams relying on their own talents and what they have gained from the environment in which they grew up.
“In the past, each of us was involved in differ-ent bands, and mainly played popular music. As a child, we all heard a lot of old men chanting sutras in our hometowns, but none thought of it as a kind of music. To young people who only wanted to go out of the mountains to the bigger world, the chanting was not at all attractive,” said Twang, the band leader.
Over time, they gradually changed their minds. As the central government has incread support for the protection of intangible cultural heritage of ethnic minorities, this traditional Tibetan music form has been injected with new vitality. Its primitive, pleas-
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“We hope to share the love and joy of China with other coun-tries around
the world.”
文科院校of voting to ttle them. After deciding on the final plan, we practice our music again and again in or-
der to prent the best performance we can,” said Rinchen, the band’s percussionist, who believed that properly resolving differences is the key to guarantee-ing the band’s success.
“What we’ve been exploring is how to prent traditional musical elements in a modern way. After much practicing, we finally decided to hit the heart of listeners with the simplest yet still charming ele-ments,” said Zhade, songwriter and guitarist of the band, who firmly believed that the shared under-standing of music and collective mission of his fellow band members would lead to good music.
Since its inception, Tuo Le has given more than 100 performances at home and abroad, and every performance was warmly received by audience. Their music brings listeners back to nature at once, creat-ing a place where pure love and joy permeate. Every-one is enthralled with the music.
绿造句
Tian Qing, a famous Chine musician and ex-pert on intangible cultural heritage, affirmed their achievements in protecting the cultural inheritance of Tibetan music and encouraged them to share it with the whole world.
灵敏的意思“The band us zha nian [a six-stringed vertical fiddle], supplemented by guitars and drums. The singers do not apply too many techniques to their singing style. On the stage, the five members perf
orm in a manner that totally immers the audience in
their music, enabling them to feel the emotions de-livered through the music,” said their teacher Sonam Drolma, who loves the band as a mother loves her children.
Their efforts have gradually gained them much popularity. They have won many honors such as the title of cultural ambassador from the cond Chine Painting and Calligraphy Spring Festival held by China Central Television (CCTV). But beyond all this glamor and honor lies their initial dreams. Sonam Drolma said, “Honors and fame are the recognition we get from our audience, but our goal is to help people enjoy Tibetan music. We hope to share the love and joy of China with other countries around the world.”
In 2020, the band dedicated an original song “Kindness of the Earth” to medical workers who fought the epidemic in the city of Wuhan. The song is a prai of human’s protection of the earth, and all the people who have helped each other in the face of the global pandemic. The lyrics are as follows:Between heaven and earth,Rivers and as ri and fall,
Flowers grow and wither on the warm earth;Between heaven and earth,
当兵工资多少钱一个月My love goes to you and yours to me,
The world is at peace on the warm earth. C
LIJIA TSERING is a young scholar and has a master degree in philosophy in Tibetan Buddhism.
CulTure / new visTas
Tuo Le Band performs at Poly Theatre in Beijing.
