We had no Songs

 

(Image above is ‘Kanchenjunga’ by Nicholas Roerich)

“If all the old songs are lost, then we don’t remember who we are.”  (Aboriginal Tiwi elder, Lenie Tipiloura)

We had no songs. That’s what it fizzled down to in the end. We really had no songs to offer. There we were- six of us western Canadians sitting around a fire in the Himalayan foothills of northern India looking awkwardly at one another while a ring of happy brown faces and expectant smiles awaited our contribution to the evening festivities. 

The porters, guide and cook all looking at us, urging,  “Yes, yes! Please sing some songs where you are from!”

It was our last evening together as we were  headed off to Darjeeling in the morning. We had just completed the Yuksom to Dzongri trek in Sikkim. It had not been a long trek but each day had taken us somewhere we had never been before so there was that added depth and breadth to our time there. This was a foray into an exotic place of red pandas, snow leopards, wild orchids, hundreds of butterfly species and hills covered with wild rhododendrun trees. 

One morning, we had got up very early and zig-zagged our way up a steep path to the high ridge above our camp. The ridge top was festooned with long strings of Buddhist prayer flags which were fluttering in the wind- sending out their blessings to all sentient beings. There was the scent of burning juniper offerings in the crystalline air as we awaited the sunrise in our down jackets and fleece pants.

The veils of the night mist slowly parted and a towering white cloud mass high above began picking up the morning light and becoming luminous- as if lit from within. But it wasn't a cloud mass. Some fifteen thousand feet above us were the upper reaches and pure white summit of Mt. Kangchenjunga, the third highest peak in the world and one sacred to millions of people. It was a vision from another realm.

A morning I'll never forget and now here we were back in the village with the people who had made it possible for us to have had that experience.

We had been really enjoying being an appreciative and enchanted audience as the porters took turns  singing the traditional songs from the valleys and villages where they were from. Their work for us was done. Everyone had been well paid and now it was a time to celebrate together. It was the kind of experience that makes travel to such distant places and such different cultures so worth the journey.

But now this sudden and completely unexpected role reversal. Now they were the audience and we were to be the singers.

Because this is what they had been doing. Singing the songs that they had grown up with that they had learned as children. They were singing the songs their parents, aunts, uncles, neighbouring families and grandparents had grown up with.

Even the shyest among them sang in such a natural, open and unselfconscious way. A way that I found amazing- given how things are for most of us in our culture. I doubt that it ever occurred to any of them at any time in their lives that they couldn’t sing. They would have grown up with singing as being as natural as talking or laughing.

I’ll never forget that feeling of awkwardness, or how we all looked at one another. Weak jokes of maybe singing ‘Oh Canada’ or ‘Frere Jacques’ or maybe ‘Row Row Row your Boat,’ or some popular rock song we all knew. But that was not what was being asked of us there in that place. All the while I was just squirming inside- like I had suddenly realized I was at a potluck dinner and now everyone wanted to know and taste what I had brought to share. And I had brought nothing.

Our ideas soon fizzled out into an uncomfortable fidgeting silence as it dawned on us that we had no songs, we had nothing to offer. Fortunately, our kindly hosts soon rescued us and started off on another of their own songs and we six could all breathe a sigh of relief and once again simply watch, listen marvel and enjoy.

But I have never forgotten that feeling of what it felt like to be a traveler  in a faraway place who had no songs in a place where everyone else did. It felt like a kind of poverty. It revealed a place of emptiness, a place that must have held songs at one time. I'm still thinking about that.

I also think that if we lose the traditional songs of a people and a place in the world then we also lose the delicate nuances, the sensations and species of feeling that such encounters there grant us. No matter how far we are from that place, when these things begin to dissappear from the world we all are losing something.

That was in the fall of 2005, and I really hope that the people of Yuksom and the surrounding villages are still singing their songs in that enchanted Himalayan valley. It would be a great loss, it would be a deep and sad silence if the songs of those wonderful people could no longer be heard.

(And according to Wade Davis, I have reason to be concerned…

“If diversity is a source of wonder, its opposite – the ubiquitous condensation to some blandly amorphous and singularly generic modern culture that takes for granted an impoverished environment – is a source of dismay. There is, indeed, a fire burning over the earth, taking with it plants and animals, cultures, languages, ancient skills and visionary wisdom. Quelling this flame, and re-inventing the poetry of diversity is perhaps the most important challenge of our times.”
― Wade Davis, The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World)

Paul Kendrick