In 1951 the Chinese communists occupied Tibet. Since then, lots of Tibetans have fled their home country — most of them together with the 14th Dalai Lama in the year 1959. Presently there are approximately 20,000 Tibetans living in Nepal. For these people the situation is quite different than for the Tibetan refugees staying in other countries. This is mainly due to the very poor living conditions in general in Nepal, but also due to the fact that the political situation of Nepal forces its government to consider the interests of its two large neighbouring countries, India and China. Of special importance here is the Chinese financial support to Nepal, which in part makes it urgent for the Nepalese government to keep the Tibetans from shouting too loudly about their political situation.

Public performance cancelled
During two short stays in Kathmandu, respectively in 2000 and 2002, I got the impression that it is not possible (or at least not accepted by the Nepalese authorities) for the Tibetans to have public concerts outside the refugee settlements in Nepal. This impression stems from two sources of which the first is from my own firt-hand experience in Kathmandu in December 2000, documented with the photographs you will see below.

At that time I witnessed some limitations in an officially planned public concert. The concert and cultural performance was attended by hundreds of school children and was planned to take place at a public school outside the centre of Kathmandu, near the reception for the Tibetan refugees. However, the Nepalese police came and announced that the concert was not allowed to take place.

Everything was ready for the performance, and lots of people had shown up at the location when this happened. I was there with my Tibetan friend, but eventually, after hours of waiting, we went home, since it seemed like nothing was going to happen. Later on my friend was told me that the concert did take place, but not at the school location — they moved it to an uneven yard just across the road, several hours later than originally planned.

Whether the cancelling/postponement of this Tibetan cultural event by the police happened because of misunderstandings, lack of information the Nepali officials from the Tibetans planning the event, or whether it was a part of an overall policy of the Nepali authorities to ban or hinder the Tibetans in showing their culture in public places, I am not about to comment. I simply, as one of the very few non-Tibetans attending this event, wish to report what I observed on that day in 2000.

The other source (to give my impression of limitations for the Tibetans to perform in public spaces) comes from the work with my dissertation entitled “Tibetan Youth Culture in Kathmandu” which I produced at the University of Copenhagen in March 2003. For this I recorded about 30 short interviews with Tibetan youngsters. In those interviews I, among other questions, asked some of the young people how they felt the opportunities to perform music was for them in Nepal. Here is one reply which I received from a young music teacher:

(H=Helle, I=Informant)

I: They don’t allow for us to show our culture and just prevail our culture and traditions. It is very difficult for we the Tibetan people. We don’t have that much power.

H: Can you think of an example of this?

I: Yes, yes, when I was in another school during that time we just practised nearly two months to show our culture programme... but just the last year we didn’t get a permission from CDO (Chief District Office in Nepal) — they don’t allow us to perform. So during that time we got in lots of trouble. We already spent the money to book the hall, we already made the tickets, we spent a lot of money just for the equipment, buying instruments and just for making our customs – but it is useless.

H: So things like that...

I: ...happen in exile! We don’t have freedom.

If the rest of the Tibetans in Nepal share this point of view, there’s no doubt that they see it as a violation of their freedom that they haven’t been able to perform some of their planned shows. Especially since they thereby don’t get a chance really to celebrate their national holidays. (see: www.tibetjustice.org / ‘Tibet’s Stateless Nationals: Tibetan Refugees in Nepal’, 2002, pp. 77-80).

Many of the young Tibetans were explaining similar experiences to me — perhaps even referring to some of the same incidents. For instance, this statement by a young girl, (who didn't speak English all that well):

H: The political situation in Nepal – does it have any influence on the possibilities for Tibetans to perform their culture?

I: Even once we got problem in showing our culture, cultural dance of performing. In Norbulingka [a Tibetan sports club in Kathmandu] also they have practiced dance, and they have already sold the tickets and all these things... now we are going to show the show then suddenly the police came and stopped it — we are not allowed to show this dance. So that’s also... we don’t have rights in showing our own culture, even – I didn’t saw, but I heard that in some part of Kathmandu, Tibetan people are not allowed to show the Dalai Lama picture in hall when we are having some dance, this Tibetan culture dance, and all these things. Yeah, we can show only by saying it’s a school competition, dance competition – so through that thing we can do this.

H: Does the political situation in Nepal mean anything for you in order to express your culture?

I: Yeah, of course. We have got four Tibetan exile schools over here, so in every school there’s some cultural-programme-saving, something like that, There’s cultural dance, dance, and music teachers that teach Tibetan. There’s some sort of programmes we do have, like in Dalai Lamas birthday there’s some opera show and there’s some cultural show by schools respectively, but due to the political situation we are unable to show them to the public. Like two-three years ago we didn’t get chance to show in Halls and Theatre – we didn’t get chance. So... If we don’t get chance to show — our culture will demolish.

H: Do you get that chance now?

I: Now I don’t know – let's see what happens.

In the book ‘Echoes from Dharamsala’ the American anthropologist Keila Diehl analogously reports of a Tibetan band called Ah-Ka-Ma from Dharamsala. This band faced trouble when, in the beginning of the 1990s, it wanted to perform in Nepal. In order to play concerts the band members had to make the booking of their performance venues under a false name because of their affiliation to the Tibetan government in exile.

I have found no reports about any kind of restrictions in listening to the Tibetan modern music or pop music in discotheques. The young people explained to me that it depended on the crowd which music the DJ’s played, and even the Nepalese youngsters sometimes wanted to listen to a few of the best Tibetan pop songs. Also, I have no idea to whether Tibetan music of any kind is being played on the local radio stations in Nepal.

To my overall knowledge it therefore seems like the limitations for the exiled Tibetans mostly are happening in cases of larger public assembly’s that needs permissions from the government to take place. But musical performances inside in smaller places did in fact happen when I was there in 2002. For instance I attended a New Year’s concert at Annapurna Casino in Kathmandu celebrating the Tibetan New Year. Also I heard a group of Tibetan musicians playing in a Tibetan restaurant in Kathmandu, where they were playing regularly.

In general I believe that the Tibetan refugees living in Nepal are facing two different kinds of musical considerations in their daily life. The first is the quite obvious limitations inflicted on them by the Nepalese officials that I’ve just been showing above. The second has to do with the fact that in order to remain Tibetan as a people, the Tibetans have to sustain their traditional life, culture, and music as much as possible. This leaves the musicians to first and foremost see to it that they’ll pass on the musical traditions from one generation to another (still hoping at that the other generation will be able to get back to Tibet some day).

The consequence of the last consideration is, that it naturally limits the development of the Tibetan music. Some Tibetans in exile – especially those working for the government in exile in Dharamsala, India – have been so keen on sustaining their traditional music that they’ve not been very open to the musical environment of which they’ve been living. Due to their situation one therefore can say that any natural evolvement of the Tibetan musical life in part have been on hold by their fear of loosing the Tibetan traditional music.

This is actually what these days have been reported as had happened in Iraq, according to New York Times: “Saddam Hussein manipulated artistic expression so completely that many musicians, writers and artists now wonder if they can ever again find their own voices.”

Photos by the author