Mountain music

The things I know about Nepal can be put in dot points:

Mountains (generally, and one very big mountain in particular)
Sherpas (who help rich westerners climb said mountains)
Kathmandu (the city, not the clothing franchise)
A Maoist insurgency
Yaks

That’s about it.

Two of the things I know about Nepal. Image: travelwayoflife – Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0, Link

Of the music of the people of Nepal, I had never heard any until this random op-shop LP came my way. In the 1970s, a man called Stefano Castelli visited Nepal with a microphone and tape recorder, and captured the music of the people of the mountains. I can learn nothing about Castelli, except that he was probably Italian (the LP was first issued in Italy). The LP does not have much in the way of notes, and I know nothing of the Nepali language (or, probably, languages).

Even so, the sounds Castelli recorded are fascinating, absorbing.

Some are obviously religious ceremonials. Others are folk songs, and even in a strange tongue you can tell that they are telling a story. It is one of these which I want to share. It is titled “Soldier’s Letter”.

The LP sleeve tells us nothing else: not even the name of the singer, or where or when it was recorded. So I’m just guessing, but to me it sounds as if the song is about a soldier writing home. Could be an ANZAC in France, or a GI in Vietnam, or a Roman soldier on Hadrian’s wall: the message is the same. He is enduring danger and boredom and physical hardship, but worse than that is his yearning for home, for his wife and children. Will he ever see them again?