My independent study for the demonstration of Nepali language proficiency in the spring of 2024 explored the role of music and ritual within Limbu culture and the religious practices of Kirati Mundhum. For the purpose of this exploration I stayed in Dhungesaghu, a village located within Taplejung, the first district of Nepal. This region comprises the far northeastern corner of Nepal bordering Tibet and India. It is home to a vast number of impressive peaks including Kangchenjunga, the world’s third tallest mountain. Within Taplejung’s population of 120,590 people, 39.4% speak Limbu as their first language, 42.6% identify as Limbu, and 44.2% practice Kirat Mundhum– an indigenous religion practiced by the Kirati ethnic groups of eastern Nepal. Dhungesaghu is a majority Limbu community located in the Maiwakhola Rural Municipality in which Mundhum is the most commonly practiced religion.
Throughout my early days in Taplejung I began to listen to everything that I could. I listened to the kitchen and to the road, to close sounds and to far sounds. I listened to sound with visible sources and to sound carried from just beyond my field of sight. I went on long walks through the village, listening to and recording the sonic environment that emerged around me.
I recorded sounds without regard to aesthetic value, a methodology that resulted in a range of distinct sonic events: river water in the morning, plastic flip flops against the soles of feet, tractors navigating construction sites, rain against tin, the bells of a local phedengba, passing motorcycles. Through sound, I began to recognize the patterns of daily life – what time of day constituted rush hour, when in the afternoon students walked home from the school down the hill, and on which day of the week the local market opened. Through sound, I began to recognize the patterns of the environment – which insects held sonic presence in the morning – and which held sonic presence in the evening, where the web of streams led from the main road, and which hills were popular with grazing goats. What evolved from this field recording practice was a narrative soundwalk composition, titled Sounds in Dhugesaghu, that allowed my peers and teachers at Pitzer College in Kathmandu to sonically experience daily life in Dhungesaghu.
It is important to mention that all recordings were taken with the explicit consent of those who are sonically represented.
