Raithane Bhakha

The Sunuwar community is a community of Kirant people living in East and Central Nepal. Like many Kirant communities, they celebrate the two major festivals of Undhauli and Umbhauli, which they call 'Syandar Pindar'. This is a time to remember and worship ancestors and nature. The festivals are deeply linked with nature, agriculture and nomadic pastoral lifestyle: Umbhauli is celebrated when the a...

Sangini songs are sung by women, especially Brahmin-Chhetri women, in east Nepal and adjoining north-east India. They are sung by groups of women while they are working, or during festivals, weddings, and celebrations. They depict life and the world through women's point of view. They include detailed analyses of social structures and women's place in families and societies. They also include folk...

Dafa Khalahs are traditional Newa music groups in the Kathmandu Valley. Maharjan and Manandhar families have Dafa Khalahs in every tole (locality), which sing traditional, devotional songs, either every day or during certain months. Hitherto, the tradition had been completely male. But that is changing as a small number of women have started entering Dafa Khalahs. Women overcome many challenges to...

Mangalinis are women who sing auspicious songs for religious rituals. The tradition of women singing auspicious songs for rituals was once widespread among Nepal's Hindu communities, but is declining today. This episode is concerned with the royal Mangalinis employed by Nepal's erstwhile royal family. After the end of monarchy, the women continue to sing for Dashain rituals at Hanumandhoka...

The Uranws are a unique indigenous community living in South-east Nepal. The small community of just over 40 thousand Uranws is highly marginalized but their culture and language continue to flourish in their dense settlements. The Uranw language (also called Kurux or Kudukh) is Nepal's only Dravidian language, they worship nature and build no temples to worship their deities. In this podcast...

The Sherpas are famous all over the world for their close relationship with the highest mountains of the world - the Himalayas. This relationship is also reflected in their songs. Many Sherpa songs sing about the Himalayas, praise their beauty, and revere them as sacred places. Also, the songs sing about the relationship between nature and life, and the need to conserve and love the mountains.

Tamangs live mostly in the Central hills and mountains of Nepal, and their music is rich in rhythm and lore. In this episode, we touch upon various aspects of Tamang music. Phapare songs that are unaccompanied by any musical instruments, and may be sung to the rhytm of the quern stone - indicating that since the dawn of humanity, music has been used by humans to make work bearable. Searching for t...

Music not just entertains, but also has the capacity to plumb the depths of human emotions and portray the full spectrum of human experiences. An example of one such song is a bhajhan that is sung to console people after the death of a beloved ones. Singer Basanti Chaudhary brings us this and a few other Tharu songs from Dang. The Tharus are an ethnic community who live in South Nepal, spread from...

Dolpa is one of the most remote regions in Nepal, and it takes two days to walk to Pungmo village from the district's only airport. In Pungmo, some music conservationists are trying to conserve their traditional songs. The songs are sung in a language similar to Tibetan, also called Zhang Zhung by the residents, and reflect the wide spectrum of life in the Himalayas. Recently, the musicians from P...

Listen to the sounds of Kusunda , a language isolate with no other language in its category, one of the rarest languages in the world with just one native speaker alive. The last Kusunda speaker Kamala Khatri is a resource person for the language Commission's project Kusunda curriculum. Sewa Bhattarai brings excerpts from this audiobook, and speaks to Kusunda language teacher Uday Raj Ale and one...

This trailer introduces the podcast Raithane Bhakha. Raithane Bhakha is a podcast about Nepal's music. There are more than a hundred ethnic communities in Nepal, each one with one or more musical traditions. The podcast is mostly focused on the folk music of these communities, especially on indigenous and ritual music which is rarely played, heard, recorded or commercialized beyond its immediate c...