नेपाली भाषा | English Version

Wednesday, 9 August 2019 (Shravan 9), Vancouver, BC, Canada   

Dr. Anna Stirr, is an Associate Professor by profession, and is invited as a singer of Nepali folk and Dohori to celebrate CANFACS 'Nepal Day' in Surrey, Vancouver BC, Canada.

Engineer-cum-journalist Mankajee 'Jena's interviewed here recently to learn about her. Here is a transcription of the interview. 

Anna jee, Namaskar and Aloha.

1. Thank you for accepting the invitation to interview with me today. Lets start at the beginning, alright?  Please give a brief description of your birthplace, the place you currently work, teaching qualifications, and interests.

I was born in Del Rio, Texas, where my dad was stationed in the Air Force, and I grew up in California and Wisconsin. Now, I am Associate Professor of Asian Studies at the University of Hawaii, in Honolulu. 

I studied Music and Religious Studies at Lawrence University in Wisconsin for my BA (2002), and studied Ethnomusicology at Columbia University in New York for my MA (2005), MPhil (2006), and PhD (2009). After I finished my PhD, I had postdocs at Oxford in England, and at Leiden University in the Netherlands. I’ve been in Hawaii since 2012.

In 2017, I published a book based on my dissertation and several years of follow-up research: Singing Across Divides: Music and Intimate Politics in Nepal (Oxford University Press). The book won the 2019 Bernard S. Cohn Prize for best first book on South Asia, from the Association for Asian Studies. I’m currently writing a new book, and making a film, on progressive and revolutionary songs in Nepal. 

2. We hear that you've done your PhD on the challenging subject of Nepali folk dohori song, and you're probably the first one (or at least the first person of foreign origin) to have done so. Can you tell us some stories of the ups and downs of that time? (Sources of inspiration, at which educational institution did you start, in which year, and when did you finish, and how did you manage to come so far from America?)

There are many others, both Nepali and foreign, who have done scholarly work on dohori and other types of conversational song genres in Nepal. My work is the first PhD and ethnographic book on the field of lok dohori that encompasses both its traditional practices and their relationships with the commercial music industry. 

I started studying in Nepal in 2000, as an undergraduate student on the School for International Training’s Nepal study abroad program. Before I got interested in lok dohori, I had been in Nepal several times, played in pop and fusion bands as a flutist, and done some short studies on religion, classical music, and folk music. In 2004 and 2005, when trying to decide on a topic for my PhD, I wanted to study something about music and language. I returned to Nepal and saw the increase in dohori restaurants all over Kathmandu, and even in Narayanghat. I was intrigued, and I asked a flutist friend to take me to the dohori restaurant where he worked. When I got there, I saw how singers improvised lyrics back and forth, teasing each other. I saw how the restaurants were recreating a festive rural village atmosphere in the city. I saw how the professional lok dohori field was linking various rural practices with nationalism, and how dohori brought together people of different backgrounds in rural and urban areas. So, I felt that it would be a fertile topic to study for my PhD. That’s how it all started. 

To make my study possible, once I returned to the US, I took my PhD exams and applied for research grants. I was lucky to receive grants from Fulbright-Hays and the Social Science Research Council in 2006-2007. I then extended my stay for another year in 2007-2008, with grants from the P.E.O. Sisterhood and Columbia University. 

3. As an engineer in Nepal's national language, I have to ask, how do you think the Nepali language compares to other languages (say, English), and can you tell me a bit about your experience in reaching fluency?  And, what was the subject of the dissertation, who were your teachers, and who were your classmates?

I’ve studied several other languages but among them I had the greatest affinity for Nepali. Before I started my dissertation research, I’d already been learning Nepali for six years. I had great introductory language teaching from the School for International Training Nepal study abroad semester in 2000. Then, I took Nepali in summer programs at the University of Wisconsin, with Budhendra Joshee and Prof. Gautam Vajracharya, and took private language tuition in Nepal with Manjul Nepal. All of this formal training gave me a good base for language learning. I haven’t had any formal instruction in Nepali since 2005, but I feel like my language abilities are still growing as I branch out into learning new musical genres, and reading and discussing literature on new topics. I recently took a course from the Global Translation Institute and became a certified translator between Nepali and English. 

The title of my dissertation was Exchanges of Song: Migration, Gender, and Nation in Nepali Dohori Performance. My advisors were Aaron Fox and Ana Maria Ochoa, who are both anthropologists who study music in the Americas. Others on my dissertation committee were historian Anupama Rao, who studies the history of caste and gender in India; anthropologist Laura Ahearn, who wrote a famous book about love letters and literacy in Nepal; and ethnomusicologist Ellen Gray, who studies songs of sorrow in Portugal. My cohort at Columbia included three other ethnomusicologists, none of whom do research in Nepal; some other PhD researchers studying in Nepal at the same time as I was were Peter Graif, Sara Shneiderman, and Amanda Snellinger. 

4. One interesting topic is that, instead of other genres related to musicology (eg songwriting, singing, sung drama, instrumental music, muktak, poetry, pop songs, rap, etc.), either lok dohori entranced you or you entranced lok dohori.  And, is this lok dohori genre original to Nepal, or do you think it can be found in other countries? 

I got interested in dohori because improvised conversational singing was fascinating to me, and because intersecting issues of gender, caste, ethnicity, nationalism, and migration were all so prominent in the dohori field that this particular music genre seemed to be a perfect way to learn about changes in Nepal today. Other genres are of course interesting to me as well. For 6 years now I have been writing and making a film about progressive and revolutionary songs, which encompass many musical genres. The film is about Maoist revolutionary artist Khusiram Pakhrin, and it’s called Singing a Great Dream. 

It’s true that Nepali dohori is only found among Nepalis, but that’s like saying that Wisconsin’s famous Door County cherries can only be found in Door County. Technically true, but there are other cherries in other places. There are types of improvised conversational singing found all over the world. Some famous ones in the Americas include son in salsa, which is usually sung between men, and coplas in various rural traditions in Bolivia and Peru, where men and women flirt in song just like in dohori in Nepal. Closer to Nepal, there are similar singing traditions in Tibet, in other provinces of China, in various parts of India, and in the countries of mainland Southeast Asia. These are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head.  

5. After you completed your studies, when, where, and with whom was your first lok dohori performance, and what was your experience like?

My first dohori performance occurred while I was doing my PhD research, not after. It was in a village in Lamjung during Dasain in 2006. I tell the entire story in Chapter 2 of my book. I performed in some dohori restaurants after that, like any other guest. And then, my first dohori performance on stage was at the 2063 Waling Mahotsav in Waling, Syangja, with Devi Prasad Aryal. It was great fun! 

6. Can you say something about your favorite dohori song, show, and artists so far? 

The heart of dohori is live performance rather than recorded songs, so my favorite songs are always songs sung with friends and from the heart. In terms of recorded songs that I think are beautiful, the old song Gau Sahara Lamjung Darbara is a favorite of mine. And my current favorite dohori television program is Indreni, run by Krishna Kandel at ABC Television. I don’t have a favorite singer! 

7. Can you comment briefly on the past, present, and future of the Nepali lok dohori field?

Improvised conversational singing, including what is now known as lok dohori and all forms of “juhari geet” in multiple languages and traditions in Nepal, from Far-Western deuda in all the languages of that region, to Tamang selo, to Tibetan language la gzhas, to Limbu language palam, has a multitude of long histories all over Nepal and across its borders. I’ve written about the development of Baglunge Jhyaure geet over the past two centuries, as soldiers in the Gorkhali armies interacted with songs in other parts of the Himalayan region, and innovated them as they brought them back to Nepal. And in Singing Across Divides, I’ve written about how the Nepali state in the 1980s popularized the form of lok dohori best known in the hills around Pokhara through nationwide competitions that used songs in that area’s musical styles. Also in the 1980s, Music Nepal began recording and marketing lok git, and their first dohori releases, Khola Pari Nirmaya and Paanko Paat were so successful that they started a trend of lok dohori recordings. New startup recording companies in the 1990s began to depend on dohori cassette sales, and new startup FM stations began to depend on long dohori songs to fill airtime. All these things helped circulate lok dohori around the country and familiarize more people with it. And those who were interested became fans, and some became interested in becoming involved professionally. 

The first dohori restaurant in Kathmandu was Pukar in Sundhara, which opened in 1998. The singers and musicians who started out there all went on to become famous: they include, among others, Raju Pariyar, Badri Pangeni, and Sharmila Gurung. In the 2000s, the period during which I did my initial research, the People’s War and economic challenges in rural areas spurred migration to Kathmandu and abroad, and dohori restaurants filled a niche. They represented a rural festival atmosphere for those who couldn’t return to their villages just yet. At the peak of the dohori restaurant boom, there were about 80 restaurants in Kathmandu. They employed over 600 performers, and triple that amount of waiters, cooks, and other staff. From the time I did a demographic survey of the field in 2007 until today the number of restaurants in Kathmandu has been about 40, which is still a lot of dohori restaurants! 

The recording industry, in Nepal and around the world, has changed drastically after digitization, and it is no longer as inexpensive to produce a dohori song as it once was, and there is much less monetary return on the investment. Fans expect music videos available for free on YouTube; how is an artist, formerly dependent on cassette royalties, to make a living? Professional lok dohori singers now try to maintain their media presence through recorded songs, while making a living through live performances. So, they travel on the festival circuit and perform throughout Nepal and abroad. The challenge for this field post-digitization is to find a way for artists to make a good living while also maintaining the vitality of the tradition in all its aspects: the cultural base of dohori songfests for fun among friends along with madal, khaijadi, and flute or sarangi, at any time of year as well as in traditional contexts of festivals and planting and harvest; a vibrant stage performance tradition that relies on live instrumental performance as an integral part of the show; and a recording industry that showcases new takes on traditional forms from around Nepal, with high-quality music videos and high-quality audio recordings. 

What makes me happy is that through all of this, ordinary people continue to sing. I think this is the heart of lok dohori. The locations for their performances may have changed over the years as people move from villages to towns and cities and abroad, but singing in the kitchen in England and singing in the forest in Nepal still create the same kind of camaraderie and sociability through musical interaction, despite the drastic differences in setting. I think Nepali people should value and promote their musical heritage, including and beyond lok dohori. 

8. In Nepal, how many singers have been involved in this genre so far, who were there in the early days, and who are the current celebrities?  and who are your favorites?  Can you remember the names of those who offered help, support, and encouragement in this field?

Based on my 2007 data, there were between 600 and 700 performers employed in restaurants in Kathmandu. I think this figure is also a good estimate for how many performers there are who think of themselves as professionals at a given time. Not all are working in restaurants, of course, but the dohori restaurants are like training grounds for new professional artists who may move on from the nightly restaurant performances to more studio and concert work when they start being able to support themselves that way. 

Great folk singers of earlier eras were often remembered as poets, as their songs were recorded with pen and paper rather than with audio technology; the prime example is Ali Miya. Remembered as Nepal’s foremost folk poet of the 20th century today, he was also known to be an excellent dohori singer. The singers who initiated today’s professional field of lok dohori were those who ran, and took part in, the lok dohori competitions in the 1980s. The framers of the competitions and their rules include Kumar Basnet, Ganesh Rasik, and others, under the direction of Sharad Chandra Shah, who was chairman of the Sports Council that ran the competitions. Early participants in competitions who remain active and prominent in the lok dohori field today include Komal Oli, Prajapati Parajuli, and Pabitra Gharti, among others. 

Prominent new singers today include—but are not limited to—Prakash Saput and Shanti Shree Pariyar, and the more established Pashupati Sharma, Ramji Khand, Devi Gharti, Jamuna Rana, and many others. Rita Thapa Magar produces high-quality videos of traditional genres like roila and thado bhaka. Raju Pariyar’s live dohori performances, with any song-partner, are still hard to top.  There is no one that I can say that I like best—there are those who are my close friends, like Maya Gurung; those whose voices I love but would never be able to imitate, like Sharmila Gurung; and those whose singing styles I try to learn from in order to become a better performer, like Devi Gharti. 

Those who have helped me along the way are innumerable. Some of them include Komal Oli, Prajapati Parajuli, Durga Rayamajhi, Maya Gurung, Rita Thapa Magar, Kusum Gurung, Ganesh Gurung, Rajkumar Rayamajhi, Badri Pangeni, Sharmila Gurung, Bima Kumari Dura, Raju Pariyar, Shila Ale, Ram Kumar Singh, Kharka Buda Magar, Krishna Gurung, and many others. Institutions that helped me include the Lok tatha Dohori Geet Pratisthan Nepal, the Lok Dohori Vyavasayik Sangh, Music Nepal, Radio Nepal, and the Sat Muhane Deurali Tamu Samaj, along with the other friends, academic colleagues, universities, and granting agencies that have supported me. 

9. This is your first performance in Canada. You’ve been given the opportunity to form a mitini ritual friendship with the famous singer Sushma Pradhan. How do you feel about that?

It’s an honor to be invited to perform here and to create closer ties with another singer and her community. 

10.  Which is easier and more fun - to teach or to sing?

They are totally different things. But my favorite thing about being a professor is the ethnographic research that I do, and singing is one of the best parts of my research. 

11.  How many shows have you performed on stage so far, and particularly, how do you arrange for musical instruments and dohori artists while traveling abroad? and, when presenting such events, what have been some of their interesting (positive or negative) aspects, or other unforgettable situations you could share with us?

I have performed onstage numerous times in Nepal, Bahrain, the UK, the Netherlands, and of course in the US; I haven’t counted them. But, I was in Nepal for ten months of the past year, and performed onstage four or five times a month. Most of the time, the people who invite me to perform are people for whom dohori is part of their own culture. So, they themselves arrange a group of experienced instrumentalists and invite at least one dohori singing partner, sometimes more than one. 

What is interesting about dohori as a genre is the improvisation of couplets in real time. Along with the interaction between singers that everyone comes to hear, this requires interaction between singers and instrumentalists. Instrumentalists must know when to stop, when to start, and how to play musical cadences to cue for the singers to start or stop singing. At least one madal player and ideally two, along with some other percussion, and at least one and ideally more than one melody instrument like harmonium, flute, or sarangi, are necessary to make a good live dohori event happen. Because dohori singers need time to improvise their lyrics, it is harder to sing dohori with a backing track. Tracks don’t wait for you to think up your best lines! Thus, when there are no instrumentalists experienced with dohori and no other professional dohori performers at an event, I am always happy to sing short dohori songs with audience members without instrumental accompaniment. 

About interesting stories, positive and negative: One of my favorite programmes in which I’ve performed is when I was on the show Indreni in January. I had a great time singing with Krishna Kandel and helping to showcase other foreign performers who were interested in Nepali music. But my favorite lok dohori interactions are the ones that happen after the program, among the artists when they’re just having fun. That’s when the most meaningful and beautiful lyrics come out. 

One of my most embarrassing moments was when I was just starting out. At a festival in Syangja, I was going to sing a song called “Green Mustard Fields.” There are actually a lot of songs with that name. I said the name of the song, and the musicians played a different song than the one I was going to sing. I couldn’t figure out what was going on, so I kept singing until I realized they were playing a totally different beat! Needless to say, I finished that song after one verse only! 

12. What do you think are the keys to success in this vocal profession (1, 2, 3), what roles do musical practice and anything else play in maintaining your standards, and how do you manage it? and, what more do you think needs to be done to make this whole field more attractive and professional? Any good singer needs to have a deep understanding of timing and how to sing in tune, and knowledge of the genre in which they are performing. Clearly, this takes practice of many forms, onstage and off, with others and alone. Growing as an artist requires listening to and learning from others’ performances, getting deeper knowledge of the tradition, and trying new things. However, in a capitalist music market, professional success often relies more on money and marketing than it does on actual artistic ability.  

To make the field of all Nepali folk music better, I think two things should happen. 

The first is music education for children. Children should be exposed to all kinds of music in schools, and be given multiple opportunities for informal learning. This includes everything from formal music lessons in instruments and singing, to dancing to songs played on recordings at home, to getting together to make music with friends. Formal musical learning should expose students to various forms of folk music and provide a basic musical understanding of them. This will give students a starting point to learn many different kinds of music, and also send the message that folk music is valuable. 

The second is that the industry should continue to demonstrate the value of folk music. Lok dohori is music that fans like to sing—it is not only for listening consumption. It shouldn’t become so focused on glamour or musical novelty that ordinary people have a hard time singing the songs! To illustrate this with the songs of one singer, Prakash Saput: genre-crossing innovative songs like Dohori Battle 1 and 2 are great, and so are musically challenging ballads with short-film-like videos such as Bola Maya. But along with these, and most importantly, lok dohori needs songs like Galbandhi—new songs that ordinary people, themselves the “folks” of folk songs, can also sing. And it’s a plus if they come with great videos highlighting the fun and festivities of songfests in village life. 

13.  It is said that the supernatural power of music can slake hunger and thirst, make it rain, and entice lovers into one’s arms. Even more so, lok dohori songs are powerfully sensual, as their exchanges of words of love shoot erotically charged arrows of youthful energy back and forth in the song-partners' wordplay, and the end result can even be tying the knot of marriage! What are your experiences with this?

I have talked to many people who got married through dohori, some younger, and some older, but most older than me. The most recent person I talked with was a 103-year-old grandmother. Her eyes lit up when she said “I got married by singing!” Even if they don’t necessarily “win” each other’s hands in marriage through dohori competitions, it is still common nowadays for people to fall in love through singing together!  

14. In the end: what is the meaning of life, do you think? 

Life is what you make it; we all have a responsibility to take care of our planet and each other and make the world a better place while we are here in this life. I believe that it’s important to care about, recognize, and support the creation and maintenance of beauty in the world. Being an artist, and someone who writes about the social and cultural importance of art, is a way that I try to do so. 

15. Do you have anything to say to all Nepal, Nepalis, and CANFACS? 

Thank you for the opportunity to learn about, write about, and perform Nepali songs. I hope that you all will continue to support music as listeners and as performers yourselves, of whatever genres you like best! 

16.  Do you have anything you wish to say about your current activities and plans, or anything else we have missed?  Thank you so much for giving us your time amidst your busy schedule. 

Nothing further—thank you very much!