Brisbane-based singer and songwriter Tenzin Choegyal recalls his earliest childhood memories in Tibet through nomadic style melodies that his mother would sing while carrying out household chores. He attributes much of his passion for this genre to her early influence on him, but he says that he had never even dreamt of bagging a Grammy nomination one day.
The 63rd Grammy Awards nominations took Choegyal by surprise as he, along with his two collaborators Laurie Anderson and Jesse Paris Smith, has been nominated for the Best New Age Album for their album 'Songs from The Bardo*'.
“When I first heard that I was nominated for the prestigious Grammy Awards, I was super excited and extremely happy,” he told SBS Tibetan.
Choegyal says Songs from The Bardo holds a very special place in his heart as it talks about accepting the inevitability of death – something he has had to come to terms with after his mother's death.
The album is inspired from The Bardo Thodol, widely known as The Tibetan Book of the Dead – a guide for practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism to embrace death and transition the consciousness to another life through rebirth.
The initial idea of this album came after his mother’s death. Choegyal says he wasn’t able to follow the Tibetan Buddhist rituals to send his mother off. So, he sought advice from a Buddhist teacher to deal with his sense of loss.
Tibetan Australian musician Tenzin Choegyal's album Songs from the Bardo has been nominated for Grammy. Source: Supplied
“The advice was that I should recite The Bardo Thodol while thinking of the departed but, I couldn’t read more than a page because I simply couldn’t keep myself focused. It was then that I wondered 'what if I add some melody and music to the script'," says Choegyal.
And eventually, the album was born as a result of collaboration.
He hopes that the “album becomes a source of joy and inspiration, guiding listeners to accept death not as a terrifying event, but as an inevitable part of life” and “a source of healing and vigour for life”.
He often draws on his Tibetan roots to incorporate his cultural lineage and the struggles of Tibetan people in his music. Born in a nomadic family that escaped to India in the 1970s, Choegyal grew up in the Tibetan refugee community in Dharamsala, in north India. This is where he first began to explore his musical talent.
For over 30 years, he has been trying to tell Tibetan stories and highlight Tibetan culture on the world stage through music.
He moved to Australian in 1997, and in 2008, he founded the Festival of Tibet – an annual event held in Brisbane – to showcase Tibetan culture through various art forms. He has also performed at several prestigious events and venues, such as WOMAD, concerts for Tibet House at Carnegie Hall in New York and at the Sydney Opera House.
The 63rd Grammy Awards will be held on 31st January 2021. However, the format of the event hasn’t been announced yet. The Award ceremony is expected to be a bit “different” to ensure the safety of everyone involved.
*Bardo (a Tibetan word) is the transitional state of existence between death and rebirth.
