I’d forgotten how incredibly good this record is.
The follow-up to John Levy’s astonishing ‘Tibetan Buddhist Rites from The Monasteries of Bhutan’, this second volume again sees the London ethnomusicologist (fit that on your passport!) delving deep within a sacred culture and bringing out a clutch of affecting material. Combining together the Tibetan and Bhutanese tradition of lutes and fiddle, the spectrum of field recordings included here range from the borderline Delta Blues of Go-Te Do-Pe through to the haunting percussive rattles perpetrated by Tibetan Monks. Having somehow gained access to the most private of ceremonies, Levy has allowed those of us unlikely to ever see the Himalayas from anything other than a plane window to access some of the bewildering array of cultural fabric that has bound this remote region for centuries.
Stream for free above, or click the player to buy the digital download, or Amazon seems to still have physical copies. That’s where I had to source my CD copy in 2019. Music to disappear into.