Global-Local Interaction in Nepali Mix Pop Music

Nepali remix pop music is one of the most popular song types since the 1990s. Though other musical genres like log geet and adhunik geet have come under the ambit of scholarly research (Ghimire ,M.P,1975, Grandin,I, 1989, Liechty, 1995 and others), very little attention has been paid to the mix pop music. This may be owing to the relatively late development of pop music in Nepal. Though a few scholarly researches have been done, those studies have tried to show that Nepali mix music is an offshoot of western music. This paper differs with those studies in that it primarily interprets Nepali remix pop songs as a locus of global-local interaction. Though Nepali mix music is heavily influenced by western music, it is loyal to the local or Nepali indigenity as well. Secondarily, the paper will try to show that due to the ‘glocalization’ (Featherstone) of Nepali mix music, the whole process of imagining nation Nepal has also changed.

Globalization has been one of the buzz words these days. Studies are being done on the impact of globalization the various aspects of life. There is still debate among the critics as to whether globalization is overwhelming the local elements or the global itself has been affected by local. Some critics like Featherstone take the middle ground arguing that neither global can overwhelm local or vice versa. Rather, there is a space where occurs the interaction of both, and what he calls ‘glocal’ comes into existence.  My attempt in this paper is to analyze some of the Nepali mix pop songs to show global local interaction takes place in them. I partly agree with Ross Harley who argues that “music has blurred the boundary between local and global: National boundaries matter little in the contemporary world.” (qtd. In Martini, 193) My point of departure is that though due to what Appadurai calls the mediascape[1], the boundary has been erased, localism does not give way. Though Nepali music has been heavily influenced by the western music, unique Nepali elements exist within making Nepali music glocal.

Foreign sounds travel to Asia so quickly through radio, TV, recordings and the internet that they are detached from their histories and their original context. A leading genre of the new sound is the remix, which may be defined as a studio produced reworking of a familiar song, often intended for dancing, in which a vocalist is heard before a shifting backdrop commonly involving several musical styles. Remixes became very popular in Nepal in Nepali pop in the late 1990s, and musical styles from both Nepal and above began to reverberate and juxtaposed in studio-produced mixes. In the opening rap in “Deusee ray extended mix” by Brazesh Khanal in 2000 combines passages from rap, hard rock gitar, lok geet and folk songs from the Nepali Tihar festival in which young men seek the elder’s blessings:

This is an age of jazz. This is an age of having long, tangled hair, and of wearing an earring, and of wearing caps backwards. And it is also a period of rap. Some are known as bhatti rap, and some are known as party rap. And some are meaningless rap. But at this moment, it is a kind of deusee rap. Deusee rap!!

This example of the Nepali mix pop music shows the global local interaction. Rap music itself is a western product.[2] But in this song, there is not the reproduction of the rap music. The rap music has been indigenized to sing about a local festival.

            It is not accurate to conclude that young Nepalese musicians are trying to recreate a western society in Nepal. Those who charge Nepali pop mixes of borrowing the western style mixed sounds like heavy metal, rap, disco sounds, blues guitar and so on fail to notice that these pop mixes do not borrow the vocal blues, punk and gospel. Arjun Appadurai arguesk, as the cultural forces brought into new societies from various metropolises, they tend to become indigenized in one way or the other way, and the same thing happens in Nepali pop mixes. Though the western music has entered the Nepalese music, Nepalese music is faithful to its original. As shown in the “Deusey ray rap”, though the sounds are western, the voice is Nepali.

            Mike Featherstone, while critiquing the notion that in the “master process of globalization, local cultures give way”, argues that global and local are not to be taken as dichotomies separated in space and time. Rather, globalization and localization should be taken as inextricably bound together in the current phase. (“Globalism, localism and cultural Identity”, 342) The global forms get indigenized in local. Although Nepali sounscapes are filled with western sounds, these sounds are taking different meanings and association within the Nepali context. This is probably because the sounds have become detached from their original western interpretive frameworks and histories. This is probably due to this reason why on the Christmas Eve the western rock and pop songs are played so loudly rather than the Christmas songs in Thamel and in King’s way, Kathmandu. Similarly, “jingle bell” song is largely used by Nepalese young people as ringtones in their mobiles. In both the cases, sounds are detached from their original cultural contexts and frameworks. Christmas song is given different meaning in Nepal. This is also an instance of what Featherstone means by “glocal”—the mixing of global and local.

            Arjun Appadurai suggests that in the complex currents and cross-currents of today’s global cultural flows, some elements travel around the world at a faster rate than others. (“Disjuncture”) Sounds travel especially quickly through electronic media, but the original meanings, histories and cultural frameworks of these sounds do not travel so quickly, and through this disjuncture, new meanings emerge. For instance, rap music-- very popular among Nepalese these days, especially after late 1990s--was developed in American inner cities, and that it originally served as a vehicle of social protest. It originated in working class or lower class communities, and it had the elements of protest (Tricia Rose (1994)).

                              

Figure 1. Advertisement for Nirnaya’s album by Taal Music in internet.

 But in Nepal, rap music is cosmopolitan, happy dance music, rather than a vehicle of protest. Nirnaya is one of the rap singers in Nepal whose songs, while having many elements of western original rap song, have many indigenous elements too. Rather than as a protest, his songs glorify the Nepali life, Nepali notion of love and relationships. In the advertisement of his album (see figure 1) Nirnaya presented himself in the image of western rap singers (with baggy pant, heavy shoes, funky cap and with his fingers in typical rap forms) but departed from the western models with the album’s title “Mechi dekhi Mahakali.” The songs included in the album sing Nepali life in rap form. For instance, in the song Gaule Jeevan in his album Ma Nepali in NSK Style (SAV, 2003) Nirnaya has presented himself in the typical western rap image; the entire song is both in Nepali language and English, and is about typical Nepali love. In addition, apart from western instruments like electric guitar, bass, drum and synthesizers, traditional Nepali instrument like madal [3] is used that creates a kind of uniqueness in the poem. And his co-singer Prasna is there to represents local side. Prasna sings in Nepalese folk tone. In the excerpt below, the italics is what Prasna sings.  All these make the poem glocal.

Yeah for the people who missed me, this is back Nirnaya with NSK style. Yeah Prasna this is how we do our job. Our Gaule Jeevan has gone away from us. We used to dance and enjoy together. We used to play with eachother and used to make fun, but this life has gone away from us. Who knows our pain, who knows our story here?Our gaule jeevan has gone away from us and I am looking for that life again, I am looking for my love left there…(Italics my translation)

This excerpt shows the song is about the loss of his rural life and lost love but in western rap style. Instead of the sense of rebellion as in the western rap, here is the sense of love, pain and nostalgia for the past Nepali village life.

                                            

Figure 2. Advertisement for Cobweb album, Anjaan (Wave)

Heavy metal is another subtype of Nepali remix pop music that became popular since 1990s, when the band “Cobweb” brought heavy metal guitar sound into Nepali pop (see figure 2). Heavy metal originated in Western working-class context (Welser, x) and continues to speak to working class frustration. These guitarists shock the established aesthetics by deliberately using heavy distortion, insisting that sounds which had always been heard as ‘noise’ be reinterpreted as music. Although the sounds and imagery of heavy metal are quite accurately reproduced, it took on quite different connotation in the context of Nepal; instead of the exploration of darker side of life or challenging the dominant institution that the American heavy metal music did, the songs of cobweb were presented in the manner of sentimental and adhunik Nepali songs: “In your eyes/I had seen world of mine,/Your are the sun rays of morning/And also the cool breeze /In this song of mine,/I had heard your voice,/You are the sun rays of morning/And also the cool breeze” (“Timro Maya” by Cobweb. my trans.)

In Nepal this music became popular among the urban youths just in contrast to the West where it was among working class. In Nepali pop as a whole, one hears the heavy metal guitar employed successfully to express or intensify expression of a wide range of emotion including joy and sadness. So, the heavy metal in Nepali pop has cathartic effect rather than transgressive one. The song “Behosima” by Deepak Bajracharya is one of his rare heavy metal songs in a tragic tone. Deepak Bajracharya ends the song “Behosima” precisely at a moment that in heavy metal would most likely to be the song’s most intense or energetic section. This is one of the ways in which the western music is localized. In the like ways, in his song Amira, half of the lyric is in English and the music is heavy metal style but the theme is his love for his beloved Amira. And other half of the lyric is in Nepali language: “Oh Amira, Love you forever and ever,/need you forever and ever,/ and we’ll be always together./Oh! Amira, let’s have a love plantation/like you love your imagination/let’s make everlasting relation/Jindagi ho bageko khola,/milan hamro kahile hola,/jiwanko yo har khushi mero timilai diula./har modma ma timrai saath chu/timrai laagi ma hansi jane [….] (“Amira” by Deepak Bajracharya) If we take the use of English and the use of heavy metal music style as western, the use of Nepali language and the whole song as his love towards his beloved unlike the western original heavy metal meant to be challenging the whole institutions can be taken as local. So, the claim that Nepali music has been westernized looks baseless.

Most recently, the musical bands like “Robin and Revolution” and “Unity” others are some of the most popular ones in Nepali music industry. In the songs of “Robin and New Revolution”, we can find the influence of western music in terms of rhythm, musical instruments and even the music videos. Yet, the localization enters with the subject of the songs.  “Unity”, whose virtually all songs are in rap form, sings about love and separation in Nepali locale.

            My attempt in this paper is also to argue that pure mix pop music is no longer purely Nepali; it has been influenced by the western ones. And this move from traditional lok geets to extended pop rap music has affected the whole process of imagining the contemporary Nepal as a nation too, as Paul Greene argues:

[…] Nepali mixes reflect a specifically Nepali condition which relates to the new circumstances in which young Nepalese find themselves today. As they journey towards professional identities they contemplate the many contradictory worlds—both traditional and highly westernized—in which they are expected to live and work in the new urban Nepal. ‘Remix’ characterizes not only their music and their soundscapes, but also the way that they imagine contemporary Nepali urban society. (“Unsettled Cosmopolitanism”, 170)

The mix music in a sense breaks with the long standing music genre of lok geet in which elements of Nepal’s diverse traditional musics are organically fused together, bringing to mind the unified notion of Nepal. Now, through the popularity of rap, mix music, which itself is the fusion of global and local, the whole process of imagining the nation is affected.[4] Nepali lok geet that emerged in the 1950s celebrates the rural Nepali cultures in distinctly Nepali tone. It invokes mountainous settings and imagines mountainous Nepal as a location of nepalipan, Nepali-ness. Like in Darmaraj Thapa’s “Hariyo danda mathi halo jotne sathi”[5], Nepal is imagined as full of green hills and Nepali people as farmers who are laborious and industrious. However, towards 1990s, in Nepal urbanization had developed. And the popularity of the mix pop songs became suggestive that Nepal is no longer a traditional agrarian nation; it is no longer a culturally unified as the lok geets used to show. Nepal is one of the members of global communities with gradual development in science and technology, urbanization and modernization. So, now the listeners, mostly the cosmopolitan urban young people are not so much fashioning a culturally unified Nepal as did Log Geet, instead a new multifaceted, trans-local Nepal, a nation characterized by ‘diversity’.

Thus, this paper attempted to show that Nepali mix pop music, though influenced by the western music, is not completely westernized one. Rather, it is the combination of both global and local. And this glocalization of Nepali music has affected the whole process of national imagining.

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[1] In his essay “Disjuncture and Difference” Appadurai argues that globalization of 2oth century is characterized by different flows which he terms as scapes—ethnoscapes, technoscapes, financescapes, ideoscapes and mediascapes. By mediascapes, he means the flow of sounds, music and others from one part of the world to another.

 

[2]  This paper discusses about rap music later on.

[3] Madal-two headed barrel drum- is a typical Nepali musical instrument. Made in the local community with the use of locally available raw materials like wood, animal skin and khari, madal has been  a Nepalese possession and Nepali identity. Apart from Madal, other traditional Nepali instruments commonly used even in mix pop music include flute, sarangi fiddle and violin.

[4] Benedict Anderson in his book Imagined Communities (1983) defines nation as “imagined political communities.” And according to him, in this imagining process, print-culture played vital role. Regarding audio-visual media that developed after late 19^th century Anderson surmises in a little noticed footnote on page 54,: “Invented in only 1895, radio made it possible to bypass print and summon into being an aural representation of the imagined community where the printed page scarcely penetrated.” 

 [5] Darmaraj Thapa is one of the pioneers of Nepali folk music. This song “Hariyo danda mathi…” taken to be one of the immortal Nepali folk songs, has been remixed now. The remix version of this song too has became very popular.