>> Stephen Winick: Welcome. I'm Stephen Winick of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. For many years, we have presented the homegrown concert series featuring the best in folk music and dance from around the world. In the year 2020, because of the global pandemic, we shifted to producing an online video concert series, which we call Homegrown at Home. So now in 2021, this is our second year of Homegrown at Home concerts. We were very happy this year at Folk Alliance International to come across a very accomplished Tibetan artist playing a beautiful showcase, and we decided to invite him to perform in our series as the first Tibetan artist we've presented in Homegrown at Home. Now one challenge I have in doing these interviews is pronouncing the names of people from a wide variety of cultures, so rather than introducing him, may I ask you to introduce yourself by telling our viewers your name. >> Tenzin Choegyal: Hi, Steve. I'm Tenzin Chagall, a Tibetan artist now living in Australia. I've been living in Australia since 1997, and yeah, so and since then, I've been practicing my art form, and presenting it to many different places in the freedom of exile. Yeah, so. >> Stephen Winick: Wonderful. So how are things going for you in the in the pandemic recovery right now? >> Tenzin Choegyal: Right now I'm in hotel quarantine. >> Stephen Winick: Yeah, that's what we heard. >> Tenzin Choegyal: Yeah. So right now I'm in hotel quarantine in my sixth day, in Brisbane. >> Stephen Winick: Yeah, and that's mainly because of travel, right? You were -- >> Tenzin Choegyal: Yeah. >> Stephen Winick: Yeah. >> Tenzin Choegyal: Yeah, so just last month, I went to go Scotland, COP 26, to present a concert with The Pathway to Paris, at the opening day of the Climate Change Conference, and then because of the pandemic, I had to make my way home, which took about three weeks, even though the program that I had in Glasgow was for five days, but then I had to come around, and then now, now that I'm home, actually 10 kilometers away from my home, right now, I'm actually in a hotel, and it's not bad, actually, but then, yeah, it's just actually, it's a little challenge in terms of, you know, like, how -- I think it's about how you approach it. And, you know, you could make use of the time that you are spending in the hotel as being in a cave -- >> Stephen Winick: Right. >> Tenzin Choegyal: -- you know, or you can totally whinge about it, so which one would you prefer? So, like, yeah, so, I'm actually kind of taking it in as each day I'm like, actually, maybe Library of Congress might enjoy too. Each day, what -- the way I've been spending the day is researching on one or two little stories from Tibet, those who have, you know, like the Milarepa, the story of Milarepa, the great poet, the great saint of Tibet, the story of Milarepa. So just the other day, I was reading about a little story of him and -- >> Stephen Winick: Interesting. >> Tenzin Choegyal: Yeah. >> Stephen Winick: Well, that's a good that's a good way to spend the time certainly doing research and now that that so much is online -- >> Tenzin Choegyal: Yeah. >> Stephen Winick: -- it's so much easier to do that kind of thing from your hotel, of course. >> Tenzin Choegyal: Yeah, and hotel itself is -- I mean, occasionally, only thing that I didn't really like is, I can't hear any sound, outside sound, other than the air conditioner -- >> Stephen Winick: Right. >> Tenzin Choegyal: -- so there is a constant buzz of the air conditioner sound -- >> Stephen Winick: Yeah. >> Tenzin Choegyal: -- and I can see the rain and birds flying outside the window, and I -- actually the birds are flying so close to the window. Still can't hear them, or I can't -- I can see the droplets of the rain, but -- >> Stephen Winick: Right. >> Tenzin Choegyal: -- I can't hear them. >> Stephen Winick: That's strange for a musician, certainly, yeah. >> Tenzin Choegyal: Yeah. But then, you know, like I can, because of the technol -- 21st century technology, at least I can call friends and hear them through my video contraption or -- >> Stephen Winick: Yeah. >> Tenzin Choegyal: -- [inaudible]. >> Stephen Winick: Yeah, sure. >> Tenzin Choegyal: Yeah. >> Stephen Winick: So to begin talking about the background of your music, of course, the Tibetan culture is ancient and complex and unique in the world. What do you think is most important for us to know as background to your music? >> Tenzin Choegyal: The background of my music is purely rooted in the lineage of Tibetan nomads. The sound that you -- like the sound that I produce. The essence of my sound, actually is in the lineage of Tibetan nomads, because my parents were nomads, and my dad was -- like, both of them were from the nomadic family, and I grew up -- as a child, I grew up listening to them, especially my mom. She had a very beautiful voice, and so I would say actually, my parents are the most -- like they have kind of passed on the wisdom of sound in directly or indirectly, they have passed on to me. Yeah. >> Stephen Winick: So you mentioned the nomadic culture, the nomadic background of your culture. Explain a little bit about nomadism, about how that's important to the music. >> Tenzin Choegyal: I think the way -- you know, in those days, I think the music has been a integral part of the life. You know, like these songs would come from one village to another village, and those songs would contain what has gone in that -- in the previous village. Or songs were the carriers of the news as well, as well as the stories that are happening, so in that way -- and then also the songs were also about inspiring beings to become an enlightened being. Like the songs from Milarepa, you know, like the Milarepa songs are actually about how like the nature of all phenomenons, you know, and then actually teaching. It's actually the teaching of the core essence of the Buddhism, but yet, it's like sung in a very spontaneous gesture, so and I would say Milarepa is a nomad, you know? Like he would wander from one place to another singing his -- what is that called? -- singing his spontaneous thoughts that the beings needed to hear at that point of time. >> Stephen Winick: Well, since you've been researching his story lately, tell us a little about Milarepa since that's, you know, part of what's on your mind right now. >> Tenzin Choegyal: [inaudible] I think Milarepa -- yesterday I wrote a little piece. I think Milarepa's songs were like the, you know, like the yung -- what is that? -- Tsangpo, Yarlung Tsangpo, the Brahmaputra. You know the river Brahmaputra? Before it comes into India, it is called Yarlung Tsangpo in Tibet. >> Stephen Winick: Oh, interesting. Okay. >> Tenzin Choegyal: And I think the way the Yarlung Tsangpo curves and like ingrains these patterns in the gigantic mountains, the Himalayan Mountains, the gorgeous that it makes, similarly, I think Milarepa songs have done that in many beings' mind, minds of many beings, you know, like, has curved around and made all these beautiful patterns and inspired all these beings. And there was one story that I read a couple of days ago and you know, Milarepa he -- do you know about -- you know about Milarepa, yeah? >> Stephen Winick: I don't know much. I just -- I know the name and a basic, you know, essence, so if you want to explain more, please do. >> Tenzin Choegyal: Yeah. You know, when he was meditating in his caves, he used to make soup out of nettle, the stinging nettles, yeah? The big the tip of these -- the tip leaves of the stinging nettles, they make a really beautiful soup. And so as he one day as he was, you know, going to make his he needed cook his soup, he needed to collect -- he needed to go out and collect firewood. So as he went out to -- he left his cave, and as he went out to collect his firewood, and after a while, he came back and as he came back, he sees that his whole cave was like taken over by demons, and so and as he saw all these demons and demons has taken over the cave, then what happened is he quickly rises to the occasion and says I need all these demons out of my cave, but how can I do that? So he starts teaching them about nature of things and about the experience of existence and non-existence and love and compassion and all this. And as soon as he -- so he sat on his meditating -- meditation cushion in the space that he normally meditates and starts giving teachings to them. As he started giving teachings to them about the non-existence and the nature of all phenomenon and all these like, one by one, all these demons started disappearing and dissolve into the space, and as it dissolved into the space, there was one demon that with his fangs coming out and his nails like yeah, and all like super proudly stood steadfast in front of him, and not going to go anywhere, and so he was think -- so Milarepa thought how -- like I have done all the ways, like all the ways whatever I can to shoo them away, and but this particular demon is like steadfast, and the particular demon which has super boasting I written on him, so he stood steadfast, and as soon as -- and then Milarepa just thought okay, there's no way I can get rid of this guy, so how about I offer myself to this demon and maybe that's the way maybe he will go away. So this -- so Milarepa just goes in front of his mouth, this, like with the fangs and his mouth, offers his himself his whole body in front of him, and says, eat me if you wish, and as soon as he offered himself to this giant of a demon, the demon disappeared and dissolved into the space. So in a way, like, I know it's like a really -- what is that called? -- kind of a story about demon and Milarepa, and all this. I think it's all the like -- I think the story is about Milarepa dealing with his own demons. >> Stephen Winick: Sure. >> Tenzin Choegyal: Yeah. And in the cave, all these demons were there, and then that particular demon who was super proud of I, so as soon as Milarepa offered himself to that I, then that demon kind of dissolved into the space, so it's kind of like I think it's a really nice like very beautifully woven story, but at the same time it, you know, like you could sing that whole story. >> Stephen Winick: Yeah. >> Tenzin Choegyal: Like could you hear a song with that? Like, I think you can sing that whole story, but at the same time, you know, like you can contemplate on all this beautiful, like, visual like -- we -- I think you could -- I could even think of visually as well, at the same time, the depth of the story as well. >> Stephen Winick: Yeah, it is a wonderful story, so yeah. >> Tenzin Choegyal: This is a [inaudible]. >> Stephen Winick: No, that's wonderful, though. Thank you. It sort of reminds me of you in your hotel room too, because you mentioned, you know, that you can decide what are you going to do with your time in your cave, you know? And that's sort of similar to what the decision that Milarepa has to make there, so wonderful. Thank you for the story. So, yeah, so one thing that I think must be at least part of the background to most Tibetan people's lives these days is the diasporic experience that is so many Tibetans are either living as refugees in India or settled in India or settled in Australia, as you have, or the US or other places. Talk about the diaspora experience a little bit and how that has affected Tibetan culture, if you could. >> Tenzin Choegyal: The Tibetan diaspora kind of -- I mean, we kind of have elder generations were really amazing beings. They were put from like a free-living country and put into an exile in a span of like, a very short time in 1959, like, particularly 1959, when Tibet came into exile. A lot of our elders were able to adapt into the world, which is totally modern for them. I mean, a lot of our elders wouldn't have seen electricity, like especially my parents who were living as nomads wouldn't have seen any modern technology. I mean, as for me, I saw the electricity when I came into Nepal like. So in that way, I think we were able to adapt into the world that we were like dropped in from one universe to another universe. We were dropped in like that, because of Chinese Communist regime, annexation of Tibet, and so I think early on, Tibetans, they had only the sky and the earth as their friend, but then slowly, the whole world started to friend them, and we were able to -- like His Holiness the Dalai Lama and his generation, which is my parents' generation, like started a whole school system, and because of that, like my generation and the generation now are able to get education, which is supported by a lot of the people out like, probably like, organizations like Library of Congress or, you know, like very many non-governmental organizations for the school system that is in exile, and I came from a Tibetan -- I went to Tibetan children's village school, which is in Dharamsala, which was run by the younger sister of His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, and I mean, living in those boarding schools had its own beauty at the same time. It's got its own -- because you can't -- you don't get to spend your time with your parents -- >> Stephen Winick: Right. >> Tenzin Choegyal: -- because you spend like whole 13 years in that boarding school. >> Stephen Winick: Yeah. >> Tenzin Choegyal: Occasionally, like one or two months a year you get to see your parents or any other siblings, but then you end up acquiring this giant of a family, and now when I go around the globe, like if I come to Washington, DC, or New York, or San Francisco or Japan or Europe, there is this -- those who have gone through that Tibetan children's village school. So actually, I can call one of them up and say hey, can I come and -- >> Stephen Winick: Yeah. >> Tenzin Choegyal: -- stay. So we have got now a huge, big family. To date, that school has even education -- Tibetan children's village has given education to 50 -- more than 50,000 kids. >> Stephen Winick: Yeah. Wow, so -- >> Tenzin Choegyal: Yeah. >> Stephen Winick: -- yeah. So that's a very large family. Yeah. >> Tenzin Choegyal: Definitely. So you could kind of like, I mean, I don't know all of the 50,000 -- >> Stephen Winick: Right. >> Tenzin Choegyal: -- but at least I know, during my time, I think there would have been at least 3,000 -- >> Stephen Winick: Yeah. >> Tenzin Choegyal: -- children who have gone through, grew up with me. >> Stephen Winick: Yeah. >> Stephen Winick: I know quite a lot of them, and it's always nice, like, whenever I do go around, doing concerts in like, pockets of the globe, like little pockets of the globe around, and I see my family, like that school family. So the diaspora, Tibetan diaspora, is like that. It's scattered. >> Stephen Winick: Right. >> Tenzin Choegyal: So what I mean to say is, just as example of the Tibetan children's village school example, we are all scattered around the globe now. Like the diaspora is scattered around the globe, but fortunately, because of the guidance from our elders, and the wisdom of His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, that we actually been able to keep the traditions intact, with moving intact at the same time moving with the time as well, you know, like-- >> Stephen Winick: Yeah. >> Tenzin Choegyal: -- not just stay in -- stay back in the -- what is that called? -- the tradition, but what's the phrase for that raga? Moving forward with the -- >> Stephen Winick: Yeah. >> Tenzin Choegyal: Yeah. >> Stephen Winick: To sort of innovate within whatever tradition you're working with? >> Tenzin Choegyal: Yeah. >> Stephen Winick: It's very important, because otherwise, the tradition will just, you know, will never change and will be boring to people after a while, so yeah, it's very important to be able to create, be creative within the tradition. >> Tenzin Choegyal: I think -- >> Stephen Winick: So -- >> Tenzin Choegyal: one of -- for this one, I think Philip Glass said very something very, very interesting. He said, you know, if you don't know something, then it means that you are doing something new. So, you know, like -- >> Stephen Winick: Yeah. >> Tenzin Choegyal: -- so I think, you know, I think when I'm actually creating, I really enjoy the space that is given where you don't know anything -- >> Stephen Winick: Yeah. >> Tenzin Choegyal: -- but then at the same time, you have something to fall back to, because you carry the stories of all these thousand beings that has gone before you. So you have that at the same time you when you don't know what is going to happen next, then it's very like, it's [inaudible]. >> Stephen Winick: Yeah, that's great. So was it there at the village school that you started to learn music? Were you -- did you learn your instruments and singing at that time or was it later? >> Tenzin Choegyal: At school, there was -- what's that called? -- music school, music classes. And, but then I wasn't, you know, like, the kid that is considered well, good at music. >> Stephen Winick: Right. >> Tenzin Choegyal: And, but then I had affiliation with singing since I was very little. Like, when I look back at, you know -- I think those -- these days, you know, like the, you know, what we have, the Facebook. >> Stephen Winick: Yeah. >> Tenzin Choegyal: Those days, I think we had actually a book-book where they put our like -- we exchange our thoughts with the classmates, and when I was in -- since I was in grade six, since then, I think we -- in that book, we have to write your name, what you want to be in the future and what your hobbies are and all these things, so in that book, since grade five till grade 10 or 11 or something, where it says my aim, I have written like a singer/English teacher. So even though I wasn't considered, like -- what is that called? -- a well musically talented in school, but I had, I think I had this aspiration to do that, an inner voice that was probably already there, and then my school -- my brother is a trained opera teacher, opera master. And my mum was already -- like, even though she is not a trained musician or anything, I really actually credit my mum and my dad even though they were not trained or anything, but they like -- they loved singing and playing music and that karmic imprint of hearing them as a toddler, I think has given that aspiration, I think. >> Stephen Winick: And specifically the instruments that you play, where did you learn them? >> Tenzin Choegyal: Well, the dranyen is a string instrument, a three-string instrument. I started playing that in school, and then I particularly started playing more often in -- when I started working as a shopkeeper for Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts, where my brother was a teacher there, and with the with the limbu, the flute, limbu, it was more of a -- my dad used to play that flute and the sound of him play -- like as I remember, even though I can't remember his face, but I do remember him. Like he passed away when I was young, like little. So, but I remember when I look back and try to visualize him. I can only visualize him playing flute with long hair. >> Stephen Winick: Yeah. >> Tenzin Choegyal: Quite -- like, well built, but I can't picture his face. >> Stephen Winick: Yeah. >> Tenzin Choegyal: But then I can hear him play the flute, so I think that's karmic imprint of that. And then over the years, I have met many friends who play flute beautifully, so I have, you know, like it's -- I didn't have a particular teacher, but it's, you know, like hearing. So it's kind of like taught through listening. >> Stephen Winick: Yeah. >> Tenzin Choegyal: Yeah. >> Stephen Winick: Makes sense, yeah. So how did it come about that you moved to Australia, finally, after being raised in India? >> Tenzin Choegyal: My wife is Bronwyn Richards, and she came to Australia in '95, and -- no, not to Australia, to India in 1995 where I was in Dharamsala, and she came as a Australian volunteer abroad, so she was actually volunteering as an English teacher at the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts, and there, I met her and then, yeah, the rest is like, the story is still going on. >> Stephen Winick: Right. Well, that that sounds like a good story, so I'm glad to hear that. >> Tenzin Choegyal: Yeah. >> Stephen Winick: And so moving to Australia, you ended up being able to collaborate with all different types of musicians. You weren't surrounded by only a Tibetan community or, you know, a sort of small village community. You were in cities and with a lot of different kinds of people from all over the world, so talk a little bit about your collaborations. I mean, the one people are likely to know is Tibet2Timbuk2. Talk about that group a little bit, if you would. >> Tenzin Choegyal: My collaboration has been probably the key in knowing -- like expanding my knowledge of music. And I'm a very keen collaborator with huge space for improvisation. And so coming to Australia, it has opened -- like, the space that I am in in Brisbane, it's a very beautiful community of artists where the artists they get together quite often and we like -- and many different genres of artists, so that's how I came about working with Tibet2Timbuk2. Tibet2Timbuk2 is actually -- the core three members are a guitarist Marcelo Milani, and Shen Flindell, and myself, Shen Flindell on table, and then we have lots of guest artists like Richard Grantham, Katherine Philip, many, many different genres. So in my collaboration, over the years, I have collaborated with my Aboriginal friends on didgeridoo or yakida, and then from that, to classical world of -- like with Philip Glass on with him collaborating on writing scores for films, and then occasionally, I have even collaborated with punk music and stuff. >> Stephen Winick: Right. >> Tenzin Choegyal: So it doesn't -- like for me, music is like the drifting cloud in the sky, which doesn't -- where it doesn't -- it's not bothered about the geographical boundaries that are created by human beings, and I think language a lot of the time, I think -- yeah, like, musical language has no boundary, yeah. >> Stephen Winick: Yeah. >> Tenzin Choegyal: And it's very beautiful in that way. >> Stephen Winick: Yeah, well, so one thing that I think a lot of people might be really interested in is that you've been involved in two different projects based on the texts that in the West are often known as The Tibetan Book of the Dead, but of course, has a different name and in Tibetan life, so if you could talk a little bit about first of all introduce that text and that tradition that for people. >> Tenzin Choegyal: Oh, what do you mean by two different projects? >> Stephen Winick: Well, I was thinking of Cheryaka [phonetic] and of Songs from the Bardo. >> Tenzin Choegyal: Ah, yeah, yeah. The Tibetan Book of the Dead project has been there for -- like, I've been performing that for last probably more than 20 years each year. Initially, it's not really a performance. It's more of a meditation on Tibetan Book of the Dead, which actually, Tibetan Book of the Dead itself is not a actual translation. It's called Bardo Thodol, Liberation Through Hearing. >> Stephen Winick: Right. >> Tenzin Choegyal: Bardo Thodol, yeah. So the Tibetan Book of the Dead is popularized by Evans-Wentz who translated the book with Karma Kanze [phonetic] and I guess he took that from the Egyptian Book of the Dead or whichever the -- >> Stephen Winick: I think so. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. >> Tenzin Choegyal: Yeah, yeah. So actual, like -- but that title itself, I think having that kind of title made it very popular in a way, but actual translation is Liberation Through Hearing -- >> Stephen Winick: Interesting. >> Tenzin Choegyal: -- In The Between, yeah,. so in the intermediate state or something. So for me, I started that project with Michael Askill, and with him, and then over the years, it has, like, manifested in different forms. Like it has taken -- it became Tibetan Book of -- Songs from the Bardo. It became Bardo Songs -- >> Stephen Winick: Yeah. >> Tenzin Choegyal: -- and then it became -- yeah, so many, like, but I tried to perform it once a year at least, and with Michael Askill, it started probably 15 years ago, yeah, and it was like so -- and then, a couple of -- about five years ago, when I had to do a presentation in Rubin Museum, I collaborated with Jesse Paris Smith and Laurie Anderson and Rubin Kodheli, and we presented that performance, I mean meditation, and then we recorded the next day, and that became Songs from the Bardo, which is actually which is recorded, and you can find that on Smithsonian label, yeah. >> Stephen Winick: Yeah, and I think people should know that that was also nominated for a Grammy Award, so it was a highly acclaimed album just last year, so congratulations on that project among others, but -- >> Tenzin Choegyal: Thank you. >> Stephen Winick: Yeah, so -- >> Tenzin Choegyal: Yeah, so that one was very beautiful., Like it was very spontaneous, like especially when we do the performance of that Bardo Songs, or the Songs from the Bardo or Meditation on Liberation Through Hearing on the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the main hero of the performance or the meditation is the text, which is -- and then it is illuminated by sounds, and given -- yeah, so given space for people to contemplate with sound underneath it or in between songs, and yeah. So it's very beautiful. I just did one performance the other month in LA. Yeah. >> Stephen Winick: All right. So yeah, so again, you know, recommending for people to look for Tenzin's performances on -- of that project, but also, you know, the concert that we had on at the Library of Congress was beautiful and involved some traditional songs and some songs that you composed yourself, of course. So if you could talk about the relationship a little bit between traditional Tibetan songs and your own songwriting, I think that'd be interesting to folks. >> Tenzin Choegyal: So I think in the Library of Congress, it was quite a couple of months ago, I think. Was it last year or -- >> Stephen Winick: Yeah, it was sort of midyear. Yeah, so about a few months ago. Yeah. >> Tenzin Choegyal: Yeah. So I think what I did was, I did present it, one particular nomad song, which is very, like, in my own way, but it uses the whole lineage of nomad, the traditional nomadic sound, and then I took the -- I took it into where how I would present my own pieces, and then at the end, I think, I did a piece from the Tibetan Book, the Songs from the Bardo where there's the spoken word, where I read the spoken word with the elemental praise, and then it's about the safe passage of the consciousness as the consciousness goes from like when all the five elements resolve into each other, and then the consciousness leaves. So where for that I have I think as if I remember it clearly, I can't remember totally clearly since I've done quite a number of online things so I can't exactly remember, but I think this was the Library of Congress where that final piece was elemental prayer song, so I have incorporated as a soloist, how I would do. Like you could -- one could kind of see -- hear the essence of Tibetan nomadic tradition at the same time, with like, how I have kind of taken it into the modern -- the contemporary world than I am now. Yeah.