Bloggers for Tibet

Today is both World Tibet Day and the birthday of His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, and concerned bloggers worldwide are supporting the cause of Tibetan freedom. 'World Tibet Day has opened many hearts to fundamental rights of the Tibetan people to preserve our culture and to practice our religion freely. The event had greatly raised public awareness to the present threat to the very existence of the Tibetan people' - His Holiness the Dalai Lama

Now follow these links and listen to the culture of Tibet in the form of superb streamed Tibetan music from Tibetan Avenue and Phayul Radio while you read the following:

'As you know, Tibet has, for forty years, been under foreign occupation. Today, more than a quarter of a million Chinese troops are stationed in Tibet. Some sources estimate the occupation army to be twice this strength. During this time, Tibetans have been deprived of their most basic human rights, including the right to life, movement, speech, worship, only to mention a few. More than one sixth of Tibet's population of six million died as a direct result of the Chinese invasion and occupation. Even before the Cultural Revolution started, many of Tibet's monasteries, temples and historic buildings were destroyed. Almost everything that remained was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. I do not wish to dwell on this point, which is well documented. What is important to realise, however, is that despite the limited freedom granted after 1979, to rebuild parts of some monasteries and other such tokens of liberalisation, the fundamental human rights of the Tibetan people are still today being systematically violated. In recent months this bad situation has become even worse' - from His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama's 1989 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech.

Now please read On An Overgrown Path's small contribution to World Tibet Day - Freedom to Tibet's serfs and slaves, Tibetan Monk up for Grammy, and The wheel would scar the earth ...

* Sakya Monastery in Seattle has a lot of audio and video resources on their excellent blog, while Tibetsites.com has links to more radio and video resources.

Any copyrighted material on these pages is used in "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Comments

Pliable said…
And on the Dalai Lama's birthday comes news that India and China have reopened the Silk Road.

A strategucally vital Himalayan pass was opened on 5 July to border trade, 44 years after a brutal frontier war shut down the ancient route.

Senior officials from Tibet and the tiny northeastern Indian state of Sikkim cut a ribbon marking the border at the Nathu La pass.

Read the full story here
8:31 am
Aqua said…
Thank you for supporting the Tibetan Cause and World Tibet Day!
9:26 am
Pliable said…
The profile of Aqua who posted the comment above describes the blogger as ... Tibetan, Indian, Darjeeling, Bangalore, Dreamer.

Do visit Aqua's Dreamscapes
9:46 am
Pliable said…
Dalai Lama cancels European tour

Associated Press in Helsinki
Thursday July 6, 2006
The Guardian

The Dalai Lama has cancelled a European tour scheduled to begin in Helsinki next week because doctors have ordered him to rest, Finnish organisers said yesterday.
Doctors advised the 70-year-old Tibetan spiritual leader "to take complete rest" because of his "extremely hectic and nonstop schedule" since the beginning of this year, the Dalai Lama's office in London told organisers in Finland.

The Dalai Lama had been scheduled to give a public lecture in the Finnish capital on July 11, followed by a two-week teaching and lecture tour of French towns and a visit to Spain.
2:36 pm
AdSenseMaker said…
Pliable, yeah like aqua said thanks for writing about this. I just wanted to let you know that when you click on the Tibetan Avenue radio, it just opens up in the same window so you can not read while reading your blog. Otherwise, nice work in blogging man.
7:04 pm
Pliable said…
Zikpo, well spotted, I had forgotten that the default code in Blogger doesn't open a new window for links.

I've tweaked it now so you can listen to that gorgeous Tibetan music and read the article at the same time now.

Thanks for pointing it out, and enjoy the rest of World Tibet Day.
9:24 pm
Post a Comment

Recent popular posts

David Munrow - more than early music

Image
'David Munrow and the Early Music Consort of London transformed our view of medieval music. The impact of their performances far surparssed any that had gone before: by demonstrating how medieval music could sound normal, they created a niche for it in the concert hall and on record that it has never lost' ~ From Daniel Leech-Wilkinson's notes for Music of the Gothic era May 15 2007 is the thirty-first anniversary of the death of David Munrow. His contribution to the acceptance, understanding and performance of early music almost defies summary. He was born in 1942, and learnt the bassoon and recorder as a child. Between school and university he travelled and taught in South America , and started the collection of ethnic instruments that were to give him, and the world, a new perspective on early music making. He read English at Pembroke College , Cambridge, and was encouraged by Thurston Dart to take an active role in the music-making of that most musical of cities. ...
Read more

She was not just a woman

Image
My passion  for the music of Alice Coltrane  is shared by  a number of prominent musicians .  This passion was reawakened recently by listening to albums such as Journey in Satchidananda , Illuminations and above all  World Galaxy when travelling in Kerala down in the south of India. That header photo shows  Swamini Turiyasangitananda  - aka Alice Coltrane - at the Sai Anantam Ashram which she founded in 1983 in the Santa Monica Mountains, California. In 2018 the Ashram, which had been closed for a year, was  destroyed in the Woolsey wildfire ; a demise which neatly symbolises society's progression from the the metaphysical to the material.  Alice Coltrane is one of those great women musicians who are still overlooked because they do not fit into the rigid pigeonholes defined by today's virtue signalling culture . (Another great but totally overlooked woman musician has sold millions of albums and influenced, among others, Bob Dylan and Ro...
Read more

Classical music must be doing something wrong

Image
Classical music's website of choice Slipped Disc  today runs a story on the latest RAJAR UK radio listening figures . This story states that a "...record number of individual hours was spent listening to [BBC Radio 3]. They must be doing something right". Which is good news; but only for those who believe that facts should never stand in the way of a good story. Because simple arithmetic shows that BBC Radio 3 is not doing very much right, while UK classical radio in its entirety is doing something wrong.   In the quarter ended September 2024, BBC Radio 3 and Classic FM audiences were 2.039m and 4.416m respectively. Which gives a total audience for the two classical stations of 6.455m. For the same quarter in September 2023 the audiences were 2.002m and 4.467m, giving a total classical radio audience 12 months previously of 6.469m.  So BBC Radio 3's "something right" turns out to be a fractional increase in its audience year on year, and a contribution ...
Read more

Soundtrack for a porn movie

Image
"No, you have not landed on Slipped Disc by mistake. Respected electronic music pioneer Klaus Schulze tells the story himself.  The origins of " Body Love " are quite funny. I received a call from a movie producer named Manfred Menz and I wound up becoming his principal composer for a period of time. Amongst others, I composed the "Barracuda" soundtrack for him [1978, previously unreleased on album]. This led to a friendship which lasts till today. Menz now lives in Malibu, California where I visited him a couple of years ago. Anyway, this guy calls me and asks if I would compose the score to a porn movie. I said: "Porn? Nah, I don't do that kind of thing".  As it turned out, the director of the movie, Lasse Braun, had already shot it and had used my albums " Timewind " [1975] and " Moondawn " [1976] as a kind of "working soundtrack". This was obvious because the couples in the film were moving in time to my gro...
Read more

Late night thoughts after listening to BBC Radio 3

Image
My thoughts about Radio 3 today are summarised very well in this saying attributed to the sixteenth century  Hindu mystic poet Meerabi . I have felt the swaying of the elephant's shoulders, and now you want me to climb on a jackass?   Try to be serious.  More than a thousand sacred songs - bhajans - and Hindi poems are said to have been composed by Meerabi. Header image is cover artwork from the album Ineffable Mysteries from Shpongleland by the Goan trance duo Shpongle .
Read more

All aboard the Martinu bandwagon

Image
Depressing, but predictable, to see the mainstream media scrambling aboard the Bohuslav Martinů bandwagon as soon as BBC Radio 3 announces a cycle of his superb symphonies . Equally depressing, but a sign of the times, to see the Independent publishing an appreciation of the composer's symphonies by a writer who confesses elsewhere to never having heard a single note of them. As Norman Lebrecht famously wrote in the Evening Standard back in 2006: ‘... until bloggers deliver hard facts … paid for newspapers will continue to set the standard as the only show in town’. Sadly the hard facts now show that Norman is no longer at the Evening Standard , and, as from next Monday, the Evening Standard will no longer be a paid for newspaper . But you can find pre-bandwagon appreciations of Martinů here and here . Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of ...
Read more

Nothing but malice, unchecked egoism, rawness...

Image
German violinist Christian Tetzlaff has explained his decision to cancel his American concerts saying "I feel utter anger. I cannot go on with this feeling inside. I cannot just go and play a tour of beautiful concerts". Tezlaff then goes on to express a sentiment that many of us share: "There seems to be a quietness or denial about what’s going on". This prompted a post by the ever-wise Alex Ross headlined The Spirit of Casals . Which in turn prompted me to reread articles I wrote many years ago after visiting Casals' beloved Catalonia . These reminded me that Casals' wisdom is still as painfully relevant today as it was when he was railing against Franco's authoritarian regime. Here is one example  of that wisdom: Music must serve a purpose; it must be a part of something larger than itself, a part of humanity; and that, indeed, is at the core of my argument with music today - its lack of humanity. A musician is also a man, and more important than his...
Read more

The Berlin Philharmonic's darkest hour

Image
Wilhelm Furtwängler was born on 25th January 1886. He was Music Director of the Berlin Philharmonic from 1923 to his death in 1954, and held this position for the twelve years that Hitler was in power. In January 1945 he was conducting in Vienna, and fled from there to Switzerland where he remained until the Battle of Berlin ended in the defeat of the Nazis. The musicians of his orchestra remained in Berlin during its darkest hour. Here is their story: On 28th March 1945 the Russian forces commanded by Marshal Georgy Zhukov were just twenty miles to the east of Berlin. A month previously Albert Speer had been replaced as Nazi armaments minister after trying to persuade Hitler that defeat was inevitable. Speer now turned his energies to preventing the musicians of his adored Berlin Philharmonic from perishing in the inevitable final battle. Reich Commisioner Dr Joseph Goebells, who was in charge of the defence of Berlin, had ordered the entire orchestra to be drafted into the Vol...
Read more

Echoes of ECM

Image
Pierre Boulez used the term musique savant to describe 'knowing music' that transcends conventional categories. In the same way should we not now be using the term musique sans frontières to describe classical music that transcends the conventional frontiers between East and West? An excellent example of musique sans frontières is the newly released CD Mantra , seen above. Musical conversations across the Indian Ocean is the disc's subtitle and it brings together The Orlando Concert and Indian forces. Mantra takes as its starting point the mix of Catholic liturgy and Indian instruments heard in the churches founded by Portugese missionaries in Goa in the 16th century. These medieval experiments in musique sans frontières were not notated so the CD is an exercise in conjecture rather than scholarship. Which is not a problem as it is the music that matters and musically this is a very adventurous and stimulating release. If you want to hear what the plainsong Salve Re...
Read more

Is this the greatest-ever woman musician?

Image
Recent celebrations of women musicians as part of International Women's day started me musing on the question of who was the greatest-ever woman musician? There are many great contenders for the title, from Hildegard of Bingen to Maria Callas and Edith Piaf to Janis Joplin. It can be argued convincingly of course that debating greatest-ever rankings is meaningless as any such judgement is subjective and highly personal. But stay with me, as my nominated contender is particularly noteworthy because she is not the stereotypical white Judeo-Christian celebrity woman musician. Despite her ethnicity Om Kalthoum has a very strong claim on the title of greatest-ever woman musician. When she died in 1975 four million Egyptians attended her funeral, and the diva's recordings continue to sell around a million copies a year. Moreover, her claim to the greatest-ever title is not just based on popularity: among those who have acknowledged her influence are not only Maria Callas, but also B...
Read more