Written by: Aashwot Acharya - 2022021, Grade XI
Posted on: 08 March, 2021
Our Country is full of amazing things ranging from beautiful and diverse people, their cultures, customs, breathtaking mountains, birds, floras, and faunas. Out of these amazing things, Music and folk instruments are a masterpiece of our country. Music plays a lot of parts in our history, culture, customs, arts, lifestyle. It defines the way our country is around the world. The respect we have shown to our music has also made it more valuable.
When I say the word folk instrument we mostly tend to think about Madal, Bansuri, etc and these are indeed true and probably the most common folk instrument that we use and see all of the time. But there are more super amazing instruments in our country. The best music or musical instruments are in fact hidden deep into the Himalayas. Have you heard of the instrument Tungna or also called Nepalese lute? Most haven't, and that not a problem even I did not know it existed. But it is a type of stringed instrument that sounds almost like a koto. (koto: Japanese traditional instrument) . But you might be like 'o-okay so why are you bringing this up?', my answer to that would be simple Nepalese traditional instruments don't get the proper recognition that it is supposed to get. If we take for example Japan how widespread its art is, how widespread its music is then it's simply amazing. And I am saying this because even Nepali culture, Arts, Music is simply amazing but people here don't want to take a classical instrument to the stage and play. There are people who say that these instruments don't fit with modern music. They have various questions like; What happened to its improvisation, adaptation, and overcome? Where does it lead someone? One stupid reason that loss of artifacts has to go through. If you now wonder how did Japanese overcome this problem, well it didn't even exist. People who play classical instruments have a lot of respect there compared to what people get there. There are schools dedicated to these teachings there and a lot of them but here in Nepal, we can only find a few of them. So that is one main reason that our traditional music is on the brink of extinction.
In order to solve this problem, we need to create an environment for which musicians who play traditional instruments can grow. Proper respect to those who play these instruments. And if you play classical music/instruments, I recommend that you step up and show your skills. This is the only way we can get our music and instrument enough recognition.
