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Global Hit (click go there for full audio)
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The World (Public Radio International), Global Hit (click go there for full audio) >>
"Selwa" is the second CD by American guitarist and music producer, Steve Tibbetts, and Choying Drolma, a Buddhist nun from Nepal. Tibbetts first met Drolma in 1996 when he was working as a travel guide in Nepal. Drolma was living in a monastery called Nagi Gompa. A friend suggested that Tibbetts visit the monastery to hear Drolma singing. Tibbetts agreed and brought along his recording equipment. He says he was amazed by what he heard. In Drolma's singing he found, "extraordinary melancholy, longing, (and heard) the sound of a trained voice." In fact, he was so impressed with Drolma's meditative chants, that he forgot to press the record button on his tape deck, and when he returned to his hotel that night he found his machine still stuck on pause.
Drolma and Tibbetts released their first CD, "Cho" together in 1997.
"Selwa," is their latest collaboration. The title means "luminous" "clear," or "awake." It has 11 tracks, but it is intended to move as a single, unified expression. Tibbetts' instrumental percussion augments Drolma's ancient Buddhist chants.
The album was built around recent recordings Tibbetts made in Boudhanath, a Tibetan enclave in Nepal.
Not far from that remote recording facility, Choying Drolma has founded the Arya Tara school for nuns. After her first album with Tibbetts, Drolma suddenly had the opportunity to start building the school she had always dreamed of, for poor Nepalese girls. Drolma's school offers young girls an education, "not just in practicing Tibetan Buddhism, but in learning Math, English, and basic medicine." She says, "the Tibetan word for "woman" translates as 'low birth.' I hated that. I strongly believe that girls have a lot of potential to not only help ourselves but to be able to help others."
10/21/04 >> go there
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