Search - Various Artists :: Anthology Of World Music: The Music Of Tibetan Buddhism

If, as the Lamas say, "Religion is sound," then the Anthology of World Music's focus on The Music of Tibetan Buddhism is witness to worship, an equally passive-active response to deity on the part of the listener. Bypassing the art and folk music of Tibet, this three-disc set reissues the 1961 field recordings of four main Buddhist sects in the Tibetan monasteries. Reverent liturgy and ritual is chanted and incanted in guttural droning vocal tones, tootled on horn, rung by bell, clanked by cymbal, and beaten on drum. Created is an amalgamation of layered tonal and atonal melodies as well as instrumentation and tradition drawing upon multiple influences from Buddhism's 8th century pilgrimage from India and the "Red Hat's" (Nyingmapa Sect) deep association with shamanism to the decade-long (at that time) Chinese occupation in Tibet. The results are highly intriguing, complex structures that serve not only as historical and cultural documentation, but collectively as a harbinger of faith. --Paige La Grone