Newari Music and Dances

Performance in Newar culture serves a variety of ritual and entertainment functions, establishing intimate connections between ritual, space, time, and society, and between the material and spiritual realms: each genre is performed at specific ritual occasions, in specific places (temple, monastery, street, public square, river crossing, paddy field, cremation ground), at ritually determined times (according to the lunar and solar calenders), and by specific castes and associations, in homour of one or more specific gods, goddesses, Boddhisattvas, etc.
A universal feature is the worship of the god of music and dance, Nasadyo, by all Newar communities. He resides in shrines and in musical instruments. Offerings to him, accompanied by special music, must precede and conclude any music or dance musical apprenticeship.
Newar music and dance are almost exclusively performed by men. Apart form the Jugi tailor-musician caste, performers are not musicians or dancers by profession. Some genres or instruments are restricted to members of a particular caste, but performance may require intercaste co-operation, as for example when Jugis are repaniment on Shawms for Jyapu farmers' drum or dance performances. Many performance-types are organized by societies (guthi). Thus a particular guthi may be responsible for providing daily music at a particular temple; a land holding, sometimes a loyal donation, would have provided the guthi with income for the maintenance of instruments, copying of song-books and other expenses, but those by the central government, and the surviving music guthis are impoverished.


Tantric Buddhist Songs and Dances
One of the oldenst surviving repertories of Newar ritual music and dance is that performed by the Budhist priest (Bajracharya).These caca songs have texts in esoteric Sanskrit and are set in priestly singers accompany themselves on samll cymbals, and the meaning of the words may also be conveted through dance. This performance, which normally occurs only in the secrecy of theTantric shrine and in the context of highly potent rituals, is a form of mediation in which athe singer or dancer invokes the deity to take up residence within himself; caca is therefore held to confer magical power on the performer. At particularly important festivals, the caca dance is accompanied by an ensemble of drum (panchatala), cymbals and five pairs of trumpets. Similarly-constituted ensembles accompany Hindu Tantric dance-forms (pyakhan) established during the Malla period (Navadurga pyakhan of the gardeners, Mahakali pyakhan of the farmers and other castes, Bhaila pyakhan of the potters). Nowadays a popularized version of some of these dances is presented to tourists in hotels.

Buddhist processional Music
Constrasting with the refined and cloistered traditional of caca and public musical performances of the Newar Buddhists, which reach a climax in the processional month of Gunla (July/August). Daily processions to the Buddhist shrines are accompanied by ensembles of trumpets and clarinets (for the high-caste gold and silversmiths) or shawms and flutes (for teh low caste oilpressers). These wind instruments are played not by the Buddhist themselves but by Hindu tailor-musicians (Jugi). At the same time the oilpresser children play three varieties of goat-and buffalo horn, and the adults play natural trumpets, saluting each Buddhist relic or shrine with a deafening invocation.

Tailor-musicians

The Jugi are believed to be the decendants or the sect of Indian mystics, the Nath or Kanphata Yogins, who settled in the Kathmandu Valley. They took up the profession of tailoring, and also that of playing shawms in temples. They are the only players of shawns among the Newars, and provide musical services on this instrument to other castes. Today they also play value trumpets and clarinets in Indian-style marriage bands. In Bhaktpur, there are only seven shawn players left playing only one variety of shawn (Gujarati guthi land in the early 1960's the Jugis do not receive their payment or most of their musical services, resulting in the present state of decline not only of their daily music at shrines but also of those large instrument ensembles comprised of various castes, which cannot perform without the Jugis.

Farmers and others
The large, meddle-caste, Hindu communist of Farmers (Jyapu) constitutes a veritable repository of Newar musical and other traditions. Several types of devotional music are performed in temples, of which the oldest dapha, is believed to date from 17th century heyday of Newar civilization. In Bhaktapur, there remain some sixty dapha groups attached to different shrines and deities. Song tests in Sanskrit, Newari and Maithili many ascribed to Malla royal authors, are contained in manuscript song books which specify the raga and tala from each. The songs are choruses, accompanied by cymbals, natural trumpets and barrel drum.
In Bhaktpur, eight of the ritually most important dapha groups are expanded begining with two royal donations in the early 18th century to include sets of nine different drums (navabaja). These are played at festival times by a master-drummer, in a three-solos, accompanied by the shawms of the Jugi and interspersed with dacha songs. unfortunately most of these 'navadapha' groups ceased playing or perform only once or twice a year. As the musicians do not get frequent practice, they forget the complex repertory. The younger generation is mostly interested in commercial music.
More recent types of religious group singing with drum accompaniment include the Indian-style Hindu bhajan (with harmonium and tabla), and its Budhist equivalent called gyanmala bhajan, intermediate between these and the older dapha stands dhalca bhajan, using dhalak instead of tabla. These groups combine members of various castes. Some of the bhajan groups have adopted the Indian malpractice of electronically amplifing their sessions, thus drowning all over traditional forms of music.
Processional music of the farmers, bricklayers and potters is played during civic and family rituals. These are ensembles of cylindrical drums accompanied by cymbals, or of transverse flutes accompanied by drums and cymbals (and sometimes augmented by violins and harmoniums). The flutes play the melodies of folk-songs related to seasons or types of agricultural ensembles of Bhaktapur, only one single genre of processional music of the farmers (dhimaybaja) is still really popular among young men; only reason may be that they can attract the attention of the girls while playing their drums.

The Royal Nagara Drums
In 1690, King Jitamitra Malla of Bhaktapur donated two large cooper kettledrums (nagara) to his favorite deity, the goddess Taleju, to be played along with the daily offering. These drums ha been in the state of neglect for years, until Bernardo Bertolucci decided to restore and use them during the production of his film 'Little Buddha'. Unfortunately, the original room for these splendid drums has been occupied by an office. For the time being, they kept behind wooden screens in two dank cells below the Bhaktapur palace, where only the rats can play them. Hopefully, local authorities will re-install these unique kettledrums in their original home facing the large bell of their regal roar can be appreciated by every visitor.

Dance

Apart from the secret dances of the Buddhist priests, the most sacred ritual dance is the Navadurga pyakhan of Bhaktapur, performed by members of the gardner caste, whose annual cycle of performances in every quarter of the town and surrounding countryside ensures the blessings of the Tantric Gods and Goddesses for the current years. The dance and its accompanying music are but one element in the complex of rituals including the making, painting, stealing, and consecration of the masks, their destruction by cremation at the end of the annual cycle and frequent blood sacrifices.
Other dance types, through often superfically similar, are performed mainly for entertainment: the enactment of religious narratives connected with festivals may bring merit to the participants and observers, but the dancers are not represent. During the festival for teh Dead (Gai-jatra) in Bhaktapur, about 60 different dances and other entertainments are performed, includeing a circular stick dane using face paint instead of masks, masked dances of the Tantric Gods and Goddesses, acrobatic entertainment and cabaret with political themes.