An Offering of Sound
Sound, Space, and Place
Development, Nationalism, and Religion
Methodology
Sounds from a Dream Place
An Offering of Sound
Sitting in the courtyard of the Kag Chode Monastic School drinking a cup of butter tea before class, I looked up to find the khenpo of the monastery walking over to me. It was the first time I met the head monk in person, after being at the school for a few days. The courtyard was quiet, with my students still in their early morning classes. A Hindu family wandered around, snapping pictures and talking to another monk as construction workers moved around them. A sheep slowly chewed the grass in the center of the green, its bell chiming with every movement.
After introducing ourselves, I told the khenpo about my research project on the modalities of sound in Kagbeni. “What is the significance of the instruments used in the daily puja, a ritual performed by the monks?” I asked. “Why are certain instruments used, and what is the role of sound was in the ritual?”
At the gompa, a puja takes place every morning between 6:00 and 7:00. Before answering my questions about the instruments, the khenpo took a step back in order to put their use into context. He explained that in the daily puja, there are eight offerings given to the Buddha. One of these offerings is sound. Altogether, the eight offerings are:
- Two bowls of water (one to wash the feet, one to wash the mouth);
- tsampa, a buckwheat flour;
- incense;
- light, by means of a butter lamp;
- scented water, or perfume;
- torma, a sacrificial cake;
- and sound made by the instruments, or just the instruments themselves.
Each puja requires a different combination of instruments to be played, and in some cases the instruments are placed on the altar in front of the Buddha, but are not played. Since Kag Chode is a school, the novices all learn how to play each instrument, rather than having specializations and becoming an expert in one.
Not only is sound an offering performed with instruments in rituals, it holds power in the spoken form. By creating certain sounds, it is possible to align the body with larger forces in the universe (Coward and Goa: 2004). Through the sonic vibrations, the body is physically changed. Together, the khenpo said the mantra and instruments in a puja
bring a special energy into the practitioners so that one can transform their energy or their mental mind stream into spirituality, and that can bring big changes into the practitioners life. It is a means of meditation. Even if one does not know the meaning of all of the rituals, just by sitting there in the ritual one can have the effect of transformation. So I think [sound] plays a very important role.
As the khenpo described, it is the combination of the instruments and the mantra, along with sitting in the room having the sound pass over you, that has this powerful effect. In the darkened room of the gompa, sound becomes a dominant sense as the ritual is performed, overtaking the otherwise primary sight. Julian Henriques (2003) refers to this shifting dynamic as “sonic dominance.” As a physical entity, the sound frequencies pass through the body and vibrate differently, hitting different areas of resonance, certainly causing a person to feel physically different when close to the source of sound. The large gong which sits outside of the new monastery building is a good example of this, because its tone is low enough that you can really feel the vibrations move through your body even when sitting 30 feet away across the courtyard. Just like when you are near the speakers at a concert, the sound hits right in the chest, and it is impossible not to feel the power carried in its waves.
Although I had known that sound was important in Tibetan Buddhism before I went to Kagbeni and talked to the khenpo at Kag Chode, I had not realized that sound is actually an offering until this conversation. While the daily puja has a standard eight offerings and a specific set of instruments that are used, other pujas utilize different combinations of offerings and instruments. The khenpo explained to me that sometimes there are additional offerings, like providing extra torma, and that each instrument plays a different role in the ritual. As a result, some pujas have only a few instruments present, while others may use all them. The main instruments used at Kag Chode, a monastery in the Sakya sect of Tibetan Buddhism, were two cymbals, a conch shell, a variety of flutes, a long tonquin horn, a drum, and bells.
As the khenpo explained to me, each instrument was adopted into use according to time, place, and the community where the ritual was first performed. As a result, the instruments used in Tibetan Buddhist rituals represent a wide range of places, coming not only from the Bon rituals that existed in Tibet before Buddhism was introduced, but also from China and India in some cases (Crossley-Holland 1976, Tethong 1979). Even the names of the instruments allude to this, as the Tibetan name for the flute literally translates to “Chinese flute,” the khenpo explained.
“I think it is quite skillful means to adapt to the time and place and people in this way, adopting and integrating,” the khenpo told me. Skillful (or expedient) means is a principle explained by the Buddha in the Lotus Sutra, one of the foundational texts for Mahayana branches of Buddhism. It is the idea that the teachings fit the audience, or that certain methods are used in order to have a more expedient path to liberation from the cycle of rebirth. Sometimes this requires lying, in order to reach the audience where they are. When the khenpo said that adopting various musical instruments was a method of skillful means, he touched on an expansion strategy of Buddhism. In order to reach new communities, Buddhism integrated practices from other traditions it met. In Tibetan communities like those in northern Nepal, this is apparent in the way that Buddhism and Bon, a folk religion predating Buddhism, mingle.
In addition to being an example of skillful means, the origins of the instruments and other offerings also reveals a relationship to place. Take the two bowls of water, for example. In India, where Buddhism originated, it is common practice to cleanse the entire body with water. Although Buddhism no longer remains in India in its original form, it is possible to compare the Tibetan Buddhist practice regarding washing to that of Hindus in Southern Nepal and India. In these warmer regions, there is no problem finding water to bathe in, and it is also not so cold that bathing fully would be a problem. North of the Himalayas, however, Tibetan Buddhists choose to lay out only two bowls of washing water for the two most important parts of the body. One bowl is for washing the feet, and one for the mouth. Unlike in India, it is too cold to shower every day, or to wash the whole body. In addition, much of the Plateau has very little rainfall, and so having access to water itself can be an issue.
Katas, the silk scarves which are a sign of blessing and respect in Tibetan Buddhism, provide another example of this place-based skillful means. Sherab, a Nepali man I have known for a few years, explained that the reason Tibetan Buddhists have these silk scarves instead of the flower wreaths of Hindus and other Buddhists in warmer climates is because of the geography and climate of where the religions are primarily located or originally arose. Sherab is not from Mustang, but has spent a lot of time there leading treks alongside members of the royal family. If you ask him about any animal or plant, he will tell you the Nepali, English, and Latin name, and any medicinal properties it may have. Mustang, and the Tibetan Plateau as a whole, are incredibly windy, as everyone I talked love to point out. As a result, some physical materials associated with religion need to be hardier in order to function in this landscape. Whereas Hindus and Buddhists living in warmer climates use wreaths or baskets of flowers as offerings of respect and good fortune, Tibetan Buddhists have katas. These scarves come in many colors and patterns, and serve a similar function to the wreaths of flowers that are so common in the south. It is an adaptation to the geography and climate which does not allow for the plentiful growth of flowers.
These connections between religious or cultural practices and place are what initially interested me in the Mustang region, particularly the town of Kagbeni. As I spent more time there, however, they also provided insight into how a marginalized community makes space for itself and adapts to changing global forces. Mustang is consistently distanced from other regions on both a national and global scale, through a discourse focused on political boundaries, cultural or religious differences, and tourism literature emphasizing the exotic nature of the people and landscape. In this project, I argue that thinking about Mustang as different, or separate, or special in these ways is problematic because it contributes to historical and orientalist narratives of the Exotic “Other,” and prevents people from understanding the complex realities of a community.
Kagbeni, Nepal is a town which sits at a series of overlapping crossroads, both literally and figuratively. The paths around the town trace political, economic, and cultural issues impacting contemporary Nepal. Situated between the restricted region of Upper Mustang to the north and a popular pilgrimage site to the east, the town is constantly being shaped by globalization, religious and cultural identities, and tourism. This project focuses on the ways in which sound works to amplify some of these issues and to silence others, on how certain sounds are valued and cultivated, and how particular voices are heard while others are ignored. In doing so, I bring anthropological methods of participant observation together with theories from sound and religious studies in order to present a new way of understanding the forces shaping Kagbeni.
What is the role of sound in Kagbeni’s daily life? How does sound claim space? How does it reshape the communities who live there? How do different listening practices change the way visitors perceive a place or community?
In order to answer these questions, I have curated a series of sound compositions to accompany this project. Each composition focuses on a theme: politics, religion, and tourism. Taken as a series along with a written analysis of the forces effecting daily life in Kagbeni, these compositions draw attention to the ways that outsiders perceive the Loba community who lives there, and how these perceptions impact the lives of community members in turn. In addition, I seek to convey the ways in which selective imaginations of place are common in our global discourse, and are often damaging to the people who live in historical borderlands.
Sound, Space, and Place
“Is the soundscape of the world an indeterminate composition over which we have no control, or are we its composers and performers, responsible for giving it form and beauty?” (Schafer 2012: 96).
People experience or imagine a single place in a variety of ways based on their life experiences. We see this in the way someone interacts with a space sonically; for example, a person who is an avid bird lover, when travelling to a new area, will most likely be more perceptive of different bird calls and species present than someone who is there primarily for sightseeing. This difference in personal experience or background changes the way that two people might experience the same place, even if they are travelling together.
In order to represent the extent to which people create their own perception of a place like Mustang, I turn to the medium of sound. Sound is an important part of Tibetan religion and culture, thus giving it importance in the daily life of Kagbeni. Sound, just like place, is often only selectively comprehended. As R. Murray Schafer reminds us, we cannot turn off our ears. This does not mean, however, that we are always listening (Schafer 2003). As a result, sound plays a part in the ways that a region is conceived in a variety of ways. In this project, I will use the sounds of Kagbeni itself in order to help present these selectively created perceptions of Mustang.
Schafer’s question posed above about the human relationship to soundscapes is one I want to explore throughout this project. Not only do humans shape the world around them through construction and physical changes to the landscape, we also choose what we listen to and what to block out. Listening to the sounds of a place and coming to understand the people who live there shapes global interactions. Some sounds are deemed beautiful, others invasive. Some are given attention, others remain unnoticed. Schafer writes about this distinction, saying “noises are the sounds we have learned to ignore” (95). What is considered noise and what we give our listening attention to is related to issues of control and power. “Noise” is generally considered unfavorable, while “sounds” are something you distinctly listen to or for. Contrary to this, many sound studies scholars would argue that listening to noise is just as important as listening to other aspects of a soundscape, and that much can be learned by looking at what is considered “noise” by whom (Novak 2015, Schwartz 2011).
Historically, listening and hearing have been described in contrast to each other. Hearing is passive, whereas listening is active (Rice 2015, Sterne 2015). Increasingly, however, sound studies scholars argue that listening can be just as selective as hearing. This idea was laid out in Hillel Schwartz’s “The Indefensible Ear,” which ends with a call to action: stop talking about the ear as if it is defenseless (Schwartz 2003). It might be true that we do not have the capability to block out any specific noise that bombards our ears, but we are in fact capable of focusing only on specific sounds, and reducing the rest to the background. This is what I refer to as selective listening.
Clearly, the listener has agency. In choosing what to listen to, or what to disregard and label as noise, we enact power in a situation. Tom Rice explains that there is a huge variety of modes of listening and qualities of attention, which have a range of distinct purposes, functions, and techniques (Rice 2015: 104). The way we listen and focus our attention is in part determined by our context. In fact, “ways of listening are an aspect of ‘habitus,’ a set of culturally informed bodily and sensory dispositions” (101-102) which shape how we understand stimuli. Thus – to apply what Steph Berns argues about museum patrons – each listener brings with them their own cultural “baggage” which impacts the way they listen to and understand a specific set of sounds (Berns 2017). I find this a helpful frame to use here, as the “baggage” someone carries directly shapes how they interact with and understand the world around them. Sound is constructed, just as culture is, by the meanings communities apply to different noises. These modes of listening are an integral part of how we process information and understand the world (Feld 1988). Thus, ways of listening must be “understood by reference to the broader cultural and historical context within which they are formed” (Rice 2015: 102).
Schafer defines the soundscape as an acoustic field of study, a sonic version of a physical landscape (Schafer 2012: 99). In his definition, a soundscape has three components: keynote sounds, signals, and soundmarks. Keynote sounds are those which are ever present in the landscape, a central figure around which the rest of the soundscape forms. They often fade into the background, and are not necessarily listened to consciously. Signals are listened to consciously, and communicate a message. Finally, soundmarks are unique to each community, and may have special meaning to the people who live near them.
Emily Thompson, in response to Schafer, adds that “a soundscape is simultaneously a physical environment and a way of perceiving that environment; it is both a world and a culture constructed to make sense of that world” (Thompson 2002: 1). Here, the link between sound and culture becomes even more apparent. Sounds mean nothing to us without a cultural context that informs how we listen. This addition by Thompson points to an important trend in the field of sound studies, where the agency of the listener is studied and recognized in addition to the sounds and their human relationships more generally. This pairs nicely with Steven Feld’s argument that sounds contribute to our meaning of humanity by adding understanding, compassion, and identity (Feld 1988). Thompson goes on to argue that “a soundscape, like a landscape, ultimately has more to do with civilization than with nature, and as such, it is constantly under construction and undergoing change” (2). Here, Thompson connects sound and space, and pushes her readers to think about the ways in which both are shaped and understood by those who encounter them.
The link between sound, landscape, and meaning goes deeper than this, as what we hear relies on the physical landscape around us. Sound exists as a physical entity, directly shaped by the landscape it moves in. Waves of sound bounce off surfaces constantly, impacting the way we hear. In a gorge like the Kali Gandaki of Mustang, for example, the walls of the mountains rising up on either side make sound bounce around and reverberate much more than it would on a plateau, or in a forest. As Eisenberg argues, “sound and space… are phenomenologically and ontologically intertwined” (Eisenberg 2015: 193). In other words, our experiences of a place or sound interact with how we understand the world more broadly. Steven Feld articulates this in his ethnographic work with the Kaluli, who live in the rainforests of Papua New Guinea (Feld 1988). This relationship occurs in part because of sound’s inherent spatial qualities, which attach a narrative meaning as sounds move across a space.
Addressing the way in which people interact with the spatial qualities of sound, Eisenberg explains:
As a phenomenon that exists at once within and beyond perceiving subjects, sound cannot but reveal social space as an artifact of material practices complexly interwoven with semiotic processes and the ‘imaginations, fears, emotions, psychologies, fantasies and dreams’ that human beings bring to everything (202).
The meaning attributed to certain sounds teaches us about other processes and ontologies. Sound thus becomes a site where we can interpret how people understand the world.
The other component of the physical quality of sound is that it takes up space. Sounds permeate spaces, shaping the people who come into contact with them. Eisenberg sums up this territoriality of sound, saying “sonic practices territorialize by virtue of combining physical vibration with bodily sensation and culturally conditioned meanings” (199). In other words, human understanding of what sounds are appropriate in a certain situation are shaped by both the physical properties of sound, as well as the cultural norms surrounding the location or the sound itself. Beyond cultural constructions, sound is also physically constructed, actively put out into the world by humans claiming space. Speaker systems amplify sounds, allowing them to take up more room and interact with more bodies.
This use of space leads us to consider the politics of sound and space. What sounds are listened to? What meaning do they carry? How do sounds interact and overlap with each other in space? Brandon LaBelle argues that sound “exists as a network that teaches us how to belong, to find place, as well as how not to belong, to drift. To be out of place, and still to search for new connection, for proximity” (2010: xvii). His book, Acoustic Territories: Sound Culture and Everyday Life, examines the exchanges between environments and people within them through aural experiences. Through this, LaBelle shows how sound conditions and contours subjectivity as a method of social negotiation. It becomes clear through his discussion that sound is not only a key factor in creating cultural meaning, but also in belonging.
In the Nepali context, sound is linked to the dominant religious beliefs of Hinduism and Buddhism. In both traditions, sound allows for a connection to the divine. As the khenpo of Kag Chode explained to me, sound is both an offering and a way of reshaping people performing the puja. In South Asian languages, the term āwāj refers to sound and metaphoric meanings of voice. Nepali-English dictionaries translate this alternatively as sound, noise, and voice. This term thus brings together the physical and discursive qualities present in sound: resonance, tone, pitch, power, subjectivity, representation, agency, and so on. Thinking about sound in this way “helps us focus our attention on the connections between the rational and the affective, the articulate and the inarticulate, rather than their fundamental division” (Kunreuther 2018). Sound does not have clear boundaries. It is messy, always shifting, and perceived differently by each listener. Therefore, it becomes a good medium for exploring the messiness of a town at overlapping borders. Kagbeni, like sound, is always shifting under the force of imposed boundaries, and is looked upon differently by each group who interacts with it.
Development, Nationalism, and Religion
Anna Tsing uses the term “friction” to describe “the awkward, unequal, unstable, and creative qualities of interconnection across difference” (2005: 4). Global friction is a necessary force which propels us forward, though it also creates tension between groups. Developments like roads, which are a main source of contention in Kagbeni, are one example of the dual nature of friction. According to Tsing, “roads create pathways that make motion easier and more efficient, but in doing so they limit where we go. The ease of travel they facilitate is also a structure of confinement. Friction inflects historical trajectories, enabling, excluding, and particularizing” (6). Friction relies on and reinforces structures of inequality, as does colonialism. In these global interactions, the superiority of groups in power are used to define the roles of others. This creates new power arrangements, limiting how much the less powerful are able to grow and change.
This is true on a national scale as well. Nepal has a history of what David Gellner calls “Hinduization,” where ethnic minorities are shaped to appear more Hindu than Buddhist or practicing “Folk Traditions.” This process ties religion to ethnicity and caste, dating back to Prithvi Narayan Shah’s formation of Nepal in the 18th century (Gellner 1997: 23). In this understanding of Nepal as being primarily a Hindu kingdom, defined by the Hindu caste system, everyone in Nepal must fit into Hindu categories. This not only links Nepali nationalism and unity to Hinduism, it excludes those who do not fit into the Hindu system. For ethnic groups living in the mountains, this has meant that they were seen as less legitimately Nepali than those from the hills surrounding Kathmandu. Both scholarly and political discourse often understand nationalism to be a modern, unifying, process, while strengthening minority ethnic practices is perceived as backward or returning to a previous time (Gellner 1997). Hinduization in this context is a process which brings Nepal together in a modern global setting. In a country which has long promoted a Hindu identity as the true nationalist (modern) form, this discourse of nationalism and development then implies that other religious, cultural, or ethnic identities, while accepted, are not given the same validation or recognition by the state.
In this landscape of Hinduization, the link between nationalism and religion becomes especially clear. Religion also becomes relevant when looking at development projects and NGOs. Whereas the Nepali government has long neglected Mustang because of its borderland qualities and cultural differences from central Nepal, NGOs are particularly drawn to the region for those same reasons. Organizations like the American Himalayan Foundation, UNESCO, National Geographic, and various environmental advocates flock to Mustang to start projects working on cultural preservation and environmental conservation. For them, the perceived uniqueness of Mustang within a Nepali and global context is what sets it apart as an important location to do these projects, where they can promote their work and be supported by outside donors, particularly from Western Europe and the United States.
Given the close links between nationalism and religion in the Nepali context, religion becomes an important theme in the discourse around Mustang. Tibetan Buddhism, Bon, and Hinduism are engrained in everyday life, and can be seen across the landscape. Prayer flags are hung from high places to flap in the strong winds. Construction sites are littered with katas, scarves that signify respect and protection. Monasteries and mani walls are painted with the colors found in the landscape around them. While the separation between Mustang and the rest of Nepal is sometimes distilled to a result of cultural and religious differences, especially around cultural preservation, it is important to remember that religion is not the sole process working on the landscape. Religion is not practiced in isolation, nor does it constitute the whole of Tibetan culture and identity. It is impossible to disentangle religion from the other forces acting on Mustang or Kagbeni, though popular and scholarly discourses tend to at times neglect these relationships in favor of science and politics.
As a result, this project seeks to convey these entanglements between politics, religion, and tourism, in order to bring attention to complicated nature of the shifting boundaries around Mustang. Friction appears in many ways throughout this analysis, each time contributing to how Kagbeni (and Mustang more widely) is perceived by outsiders, and how the community interacts with these imposed barriers. Communities in Mustang are both Nepali and Tibetan, and they identify strongly with their local village and region as well. There are no clean boundaries or boxes to check for exclusive belonging, which presents a problem for nations claiming development and unity.
Methodology
Over the course of one month during the summer of 2018, I traveled to Kagbeni, Nepal in order to learn from the people who live there. This followed a previous month-long trip to Mustang with the University of Vermont in 2016. While I was able to explore a few of the other villages nearby in 2018, most of my time was spent in Kagbeni, teaching English to 64 novice monks and wandering around the village. Most of my conversations occurred with monks or with locals involved in tourism, such as shop owners, hotel staff, and trekking guides. In addition, I talked to many foreigners passing through who were either staying at the same hotel as me, or who visited the gompa when I was there. My interactions with people ranged from a single conversation with a tourist over dinner, to daily interactions with Kagbeni locals, to conversations with friends I have known for two years. Conversations were limited by language, as I only have a basic understanding of Nepali and even less knowledge of Loke, the Tibetan dialect in Upper Mustang. None of my conversations were meant to be formal interviews, and all occurred organically. In addition to these interactions, I also spent hours observing how people went about daily life in the town.
While I was living in Kagbeni, I benefitted from being a teacher at the monastic school. The people I talked to generally knew that I was helping teach there, and that I was working on a research project as well. This became clear to me when one of the teachers from the government school approached me near the end of my stay in Kagbeni, saying that he knew I was the girl who was teaching English at Kag Chode. Tourists were open to talking to me because I seemed as out of place as they did, and trekking guides approved of me because I ate with my hands in the staff dining area instead of in the main dining room of the hotel.
I obtained IRB approval from the University of Vermont in order to do this work. As such, all of my informal interviews were done with people over the age of 18 who were made aware of my project, and were able to refuse a question at any time. I have changed the names of my informants here in order to help preserve anonymity, though occasionally I use kinship terms to refer to someone (like Mama, or Aama). Although I took other pictures for personal use, none of the pictures I use in this work include people who could be identified.
As someone researching the area, I certainly play a role in the ongoing discourses surrounding Mustang. With this in mind, I did my best to wipe away any assumptions I had before arriving in Kagbeni. As it is impossible to remove biases, however, I fear that this piece of work is a product of exactly what I am about to analyze. I have tried to represent the disparities between how various groups of people perceive Mustang, and I am aware that I am one of the people whom I aim to analyze.
Based on my observations of and conversations with people in Kagbeni, I collected recordings of sounds that are significant in the every-day life of the village. The recordings were made on a handheld TASCAM DR-05 recorder, which I mounted on a tripod. Some of these recordings were made with the goal of capturing a single distinct sound, such as a bell or spinning prayer wheel, while others sought to capture more holistic soundscapes. I have used both of these forms of sound capture together with the aim of representing the relationships between identity and place through the medium of sound. Although I did my best to record as much as possible, what was included in the final compositions is still mediated by the logistics of IRB concerns and having a recording device available when certain sounds occurred, in addition to my own daily patterns and what drew my attention.
It is important to note that, while the microphone is used as an ear to record sounds, the microphone is not an ear. Laura Kunreuther reminds us that “when you have a recording of sound, you’re not just immediately taken right to that place. Recording is itself a kind of mediated experience” (Furmage 2018). Microphones collect everything that hits them, regardless of frequency. Some have internal equalizers, which boost certain frequencies or cut others. They do not have the ability to focus on certain sounds and tune out others. Directionality matters, because most microphones will not pick up what happens behind them. Each recording involved a conscious decision to place and turn on my microphone. As a result, every sound in this project is mediated by myself and by the TASCAM recorder.
As for the production of final versions of the sound recordings that are included in this work, I have tried to maintain as much of the original qualities of the sounds as possible, while making the recordings easy to listen to. In some cases this simply meant changing the levels of the recordings so that they are louder or softer. Due to the windy nature of the region, many of the recordings have a high pass filter applied, which cuts out the lowest frequencies present. This eliminates the worst of the noise from the wind, while keeping everything else intact. While the point of some recordings is specifically to hear the way the wind moves through different materials, I felt that in others the wind diminished the experience of hearing the main subject, and thus wanted to bring the listener’s ears to the bell or other sound instead.
From my observations and conversations, I have identified important sounds present in daily religious, social, and physical landscapes of Kagbeni, guided by Schafer’s notion of keynote sounds, signals, and soundmarks. Not only are these sounds representative of life in the small town north of the Himalayas, they present a manner through which the it can be reimagined and shaped by the selective listener. While I recorded general soundscapes when in Nepal, the final product is a stylized representation of the ways in which we selectively listen to and understand a region. I use the word “composition” to refer to the sound components of each chapter because each one is purposefully created and shaped to achieve a certain purpose. As such, I believe “composition” is the word which best points to what I have done with the raw recordings. These compositions were created by determining what keynote sound would be the underlying, ever-present base of the piece, and then building other sounds up from that base.
This methodology is influenced by the work of R. Murray Schafer, put in conversation with the work of anthropologist Steven Feld. Schafer says that keynote sounds “help outline the character of men living among them” (2012: 101). They are sounds associated with the landscape and geography of a place, and are ever-present in the lives of the people who live there. In his theory of the soundscape, however, Schafer leaves little room for anthropogenic sounds – relegating them solely to the categories of “sound signals” and “soundmarks.” Steven Feld complicates this idea in his anthropological study of sound, by showing how ingrained sounds of a place are in the people who live there, and that there is more of a dynamic relationship between the two (Feld 1988). With this in mind, I think of keynote sounds as ones that are always present and that people build their days around, but are not necessarily purely environmental.
Finally, a small note on spelling. Most words and places in Nepal can be written a variety of ways. Add in the extra layer of having both Nepali and Loke (and sometimes also Tibetan) spellings of places in Mustang, and there are often a confusing number of alternate ways to write the same word. For example, the town of Tsarang in Upper Mustang can also be written as Charang. Tiri is also written as Ty. The Tibetan word for monastery, gompa, is also often written as gomba. Throughout this piece, I have used the spelling that I came into contact with most while I was in Kagbeni. I have chosen this because it is what I was taught during my time there. In addition, I use “Nepali” to refer to the people, language, and other products of Nepal. Again, this is what Nepali people use to refer to themselves, as opposed to the term “Nepalese” which is often used by foreigners and some scholars.
Sounds from a Dream Place
A week after returning home from Nepal, I decided to go to a Nepali restaurant and get some thukpa, a Tibetan-style noodle soup. After ordering my food I started talking to the waiter, who was curious about my time in Nepal and wanted to know where I went. I told him the majority of my trip was in Mustang. The waiter, who was also in college and was from a village near Pokhara (the second largest city in Nepal), responded “Mustang is like a dream place. I want to go there before I die.”
This sentiment, imagining Mustang as a special place somehow different from the rest of Nepal, was something I encountered over and over. It presented itself in many forms, each encounter focusing on different aspects of life in the region, but almost every person I spoke to about Mustang applied their own filter over the region. Throughout this project, I hope to illuminate some of the reasons why Mustang is demarcated this way, and the impact that its designation as a dream place has on the people who live there. The sound compositions paired with each chapter each represent a way of imagining Mustang as a dream place.
My conversations with people about Mustang generally followed one of three main themes: politics, religion, or tourism. As a result, I have grouped my observations and analysis by these themes to convey how people think or talk about the region. I begin by looking at how political forces have shaped Mustang throughout history, and exploring the impacts of different governmental policies had on the region in Chapter 1. Then I turn towards the argument that Mustang is different because of its religion or culture in Chapter 2, focusing on the connections between religion, landscape, and identity. Finally, in Chapter 3, I explore the impacts and assumptions of the tourism industry and how the romanticization of Mustang plays into a larger discourse around the region. Although I separate these categories, all three are entangled and constantly shifting in their interactions around Kagbeni. In my conclusion, I look at how these forces are all connected, tying them to a concrete example of a past UNESCO initiative in Upper Mustang.
For each of the chapters that follows, I have created a sound composition which will frame the discussion of its theme. Each of the three compositions pulls from the same stock recordings created over the course of one month, but they have been reconstructed in various ways in order to highlight specific practices of listening. The first composition, paired with the chapter on politics, highlights the sounds of the landscape itself and the noises of construction which are currently working to change it. The second composition pulls attention to the voices and instruments of people interacting with the landscape and with the Tibetan Buddhist world in order to highlight religious and cultural themes in Kagbeni. Finally, the third composition emphasizes what foreign visitors to the area expect to find in Mustang, in addition to the sounds they add to the environment, mirroring tourism in the region. In the conclusion, I provide one final composition. This uses the same keynote sounds introduced in the previous pieces, but aims to present them in a way which is more in tune with how the locals themselves experience Kagbeni, as opposed to how outsiders do. By providing these compositions and frames of thinking, I hope to assert the agency of the listener in Kagbeni, and point to the ways in which ways of listening impact the lives of others through the assumptions and histories that different listening practices carry.