Ethnomusicology / Anthropology, Buddhist Liturgical Music, Popular Music, Tibetan and Himalayan Studies, Anthropology of Religion, Ethnographic Research Methods & Ethics
In the 1979 special Tibet Issue of Asian Music, a unique article featured a traditional master... more In the 1979 special Tibet Issue of Asian Music, a unique article featured a traditional master's written commentary on the symbolic elements and attributes of a drum that is almost exclusively associated with the Tibetan gCod ritual musical-meditation practice. Thirty years later, I pay homage to Rinjing Dorje and Ter Ellingson's original work, expanding upon it following a multisite ethnographic study. I show how practitioners link the gCod ḍamaru's "outer" musical performance with its "inner" meditational performance through symbolic meaning, and how practitioners' meditative experiences and insights about symbolism are shared dynamically within an interpretive community.
A book review essay is presented for Reed Criddle, ed., Chanting the Medicine Buddha Sutra: A Mus... more A book review essay is presented for Reed Criddle, ed., Chanting the Medicine Buddha Sutra: A Musical Transcription and English Translation of the Medicine Buddha Service of the Liberation Rite of Water and Land at Fo Guang Shan Monastery. Recent Researches in the Oral Traditions of Music 13. Philip V. Bohlman, general editor. Middleton, WI: A-R Editions, 2020. 77 pages.
In 1993, Sara Cohen issued a challenge to popular music scholars, asserting that the ethnography ... more In 1993, Sara Cohen issued a challenge to popular music scholars, asserting that the ethnography of local amateur bands could be as theoretically fruitful as studying celebrities. This article suggests a third angle and related challenge, problematizing the inclusion of testimonies by musicians who play an important role in the collaborative constellation around celebrities, but are placed decidedly in the margins of dominant narratives of popular music history. George Harrison’s sitar studies led to his creating a new hybridic musico-spiritual sound that was heard on Beatles’ albums, infusing the sixties’ psychedelic soundscape with ‘raga-rock’. According to my interviews with Shambhu Das, Ravi Shankar’s disciple appointed initially to assist Harrison with sitar fingerings, Das played a much more significant role than previous historical accounts have admitted. This raises important questions about the theoretical approach and methodological application of a polyvocal texture where contradictions and ambiguities are revealed that challenge heretofore unquestioned narratives.
A book review essay is presented for Reed Criddle, ed., Chanting the Medicine Buddha Sutra: A Mus... more A book review essay is presented for Reed Criddle, ed., Chanting the Medicine Buddha Sutra: A Musical Transcription and English Translation of the Medicine Buddha Service of the Liberation Rite of Water and Land at Fo Guang Shan Monastery. Recent Researches in the Oral Traditions of Music 13. Philip V. Bohlman, general editor. Middleton, WI: A-R Editions, 2020. 77 pages.
In 1993, Sara Cohen issued a challenge to popular music scholars, asserting that the ethnography ... more In 1993, Sara Cohen issued a challenge to popular music scholars, asserting that the ethnography of local amateur bands could be as theoretically fruitful as studying celebrities. This article suggests a third angle and related challenge, problematizing the inclusion of testimonies by musicians who play an important role in the collaborative constellation around celebrities, but are placed decidedly in the margins of dominant narratives of popular music history. George Harrison’s sitar studies led to his creating a new hybridic musico-spiritual sound that was heard on Beatles’ albums, infusing the sixties’ psychedelic soundscape with ‘raga-rock’. According to my interviews with Shambhu Das, Ravi Shankar’s disciple appointed initially to assist Harrison with sitar fingerings, Das played a much more significant role than previous historical accounts have admitted. This raises important questions about the theoretical approach and methodological application of a polyvocal texture where contradictions and ambiguities are revealed that challenge heretofore unquestioned narratives.
In the 1979 special Tibet Issue of Asian Music, a unique article featured a traditional master... more In the 1979 special Tibet Issue of Asian Music, a unique article featured a traditional master's written commentary on the symbolic elements and attributes of a drum that is almost exclusively associated with the Tibetan gCod ritual musical-meditation practice. Thirty years later, I pay homage to Rinjing Dorje and Ter Ellingson's original work, expanding upon it following a multisite ethnographic study. I show how practitioners link the gCod ḍamaru's "outer" musical performance with its "inner" meditational performance through symbolic meaning, and how practitioners' meditative experiences and insights about symbolism are shared dynamically within an interpretive community.
Paper available for download at the online open source journal, Yale Journal of Music & Religion ... more Paper available for download at the online open source journal, Yale Journal of Music & Religion (Published: February 5, 2015). Abstract: The eleventh-century Tibetan female ascetic, Machik Labdrön (1055-1153), developed a Vajrayāna (Tantric) Buddhist meditation method called Chöd (Tib. gCod, Eng. “to cut”) and associated ritual practices as a means of eliminating “self-grasping,” which is defined as the mistaken instinct of regarding one’s “self” and all phenomena as intrinsically, or independently, existent. Her musical-meditation method became renowned across Central Asia during her lifetime, and Chödritual practices and liturgies have been transmitted from teacher to disciple in unbroken lineages until today. The ritual is now well known globally, with Tibetan Lamas, nuns, and empowered exponents teaching widely, across a transnational Diaspora, to Tibetan Buddhists engaging in the practice. The Chöd meditation practice requires operationalizing the heightened emotions roused from the experience of fear in order to elicit the seemingly self-existent “I,” and “cut” (gCod) the instinctual grasping to the “self.” The ritual that effects this transformation is liturgically based upon song-poetry drawn from the Tibetan mgur tradition, which is itself drawn from the Indian dohā tradition of meditative poetry. The ritualized meditation experience is inhabited musically by several mgur-styled song-poem melodies that are performed in accordance with a liturgy over an underlying and potentially trance-inducing, rhythmic theme. In this paper, I show what I have found to be correspondences between the “internal” performance of meditative visualizations and the “external” performance of the liturgical song-poetry and musical gestures within the Chöd rituals. Indeed, the musical parameters themselves carry meanings that not only enhance or reinforce the effect of the liturgical song-poetry but also directly assist in the meditative journey and spiritual catharsis of the Chöd practitioner. When a melody has been composed to symbolically represent a visualized scene in a subritual section of this religious rite, it illustrates an instance of what I call, “sonic iconography”—at once, a melody serves to embody a meditative complement to the sung text, enliven the psychophysical drama, and provide an atmosphere, or mood, akin to an Indian rasa. According to the Tibetan oral tradition, the melody composed by Machik Labdrön for the subritual section at the height of the dramaturgical narrative of one Chöd liturgy is designed to conjure an image depicting the “sound of vultures’ wings as they arrive at a sky burial.” By exploring the purposeful use of melody--as an aid in meditative visualization--at this climactic moment in a Chöd ritual, it provides a unique window into the interwoven aspects of music and religion in this important Himalayan tradition.
In the 1979 special Tibet Issue of Asian Music, a unique article featured a traditional master’s ... more In the 1979 special Tibet Issue of Asian Music, a unique article featured a traditional master’s written commentary on the symbolic elements and attributes of a drum that is almost exclusively associated with the Tibetan gCod ritual musical-meditation practice. Thirty years later, I pay homage to Rinjing Dorje and Ter Ellingson’s original work, expanding upon it following a multisite ethnographic study. I show how practitioners link the gCod ḍamaru’s “outer” musical performance with its “inner” meditational performance through symbolic meaning, and how practitioners’ meditative experiences and insights about symbolism are shared dynamically within an interpretive community.
Sara Cohen issued a challenge to popular music scholars, asserting that the ethnography of local ... more Sara Cohen issued a challenge to popular music scholars, asserting that the ethnography of local amateur bands could be as theoretically fruitful as studying celebrities. This article suggests a third angle and related challenge, problematizing the inclusion of testimonies by musicians who play an important role in the collaborative constellation around celebrities, but are placed decidedly in the margins of dominant narratives of popular music history. George Harrison’s sitar studies led to his creating a new hybridic musico-spiritual sound that was heard on Beatles’ albums, infusing the sixties’ psychedelic soundscape with ‘raga-rock’. According to my interviews with Shambhu Das, Ravi Shankar’s disciple appointed initially to assist Harrison with sitar fingerings, Das played a much more significant role than previous historical accounts have admitted. This raises important questions about the theoretical approach and methodological application of a polyvocal texture where contradictions and ambiguities are revealed that challenge heretofore unquestioned narratives.
Anthropologists working on representations of Asian religions in the 1920s recognize two literary... more Anthropologists working on representations of Asian religions in the 1920s recognize two literary genres of ethnographic travel writing: the travel account and scientific ethnography. In both, experiential knowledge of normative cultural processes may be variously expressed as subjective insights or objective/scientific data. How does Alexandra David-Neel, the first Western woman to gain an audience with the Dalai Lama and live for extended periods inside Tibet, establish her authorial voice and represent subjectivity in her influential ethnographic couplet: a travel account, My Journey to Lhasa (1927) and scientific ethnography, Magic and Mystery in Tibet (1929)? Each ethnographic inscription relies upon a tradition in colonialist travel writing of employing language devices to cue the historical imagination while establishing multivalent meanings about the author, subject, and knowledge itself. Questions about the nature of knowledge acquired through ethnographic experience are set into relief in this investigation into these seminal texts.
The first “annual” 46664 Campaign megaconcert event took place in Cape Town, South Africa, on Nov... more The first “annual” 46664 Campaign megaconcert event took place in Cape Town, South Africa, on November 29, 2003, launching Nelson Mandela’s campaign to fight HIV/AIDS. It was broadcast to over two billion people and hosted “A-list” artists and celebrities Mandela had invited to the event. The event exhibited a diverse program both musically and thematically, reflecting the campaign goals in several ways, In this paper I examine the strategic use of the mass-mediated, multi-artist and multi-music genre, megaconcert event organized around the launch of the 46664 Campaign, and the new songs composed for the specific occasion. To address the sociopolitical, cultural and musical importance of the inaugural 46664 Cape Town concert, this paper first places it in historical context with globally televised megaconcerts in Nelson Mandela’s name that preceded it; second, it shows the ways in which the concert exhibits strong thematic and musical continuity in connection with moral, religious and spiritual values, and follows a dramaturgical narrative precisely related with the message of the 46664 Campaign; and third, it looks at how the event champions Mandela’s legacy and his ideals which, in turn, impacts the concert narrative and campaign strategies.
In the 1979 special Tibet Issue of Asian Music, a unique article featured a traditional master... more In the 1979 special Tibet Issue of Asian Music, a unique article featured a traditional master's written commentary on the symbolic elements and attributes of a drum that is almost exclusively associated with the Tibetan gCod ritual musical-meditation practice. Thirty years later, I pay homage to Rinjing Dorje and Ter Ellingson's original work, expanding upon it following a multisite ethnographic study. I show how practitioners link the gCod ḍamaru's "outer" musical performance with its "inner" meditational performance through symbolic meaning, and how practitioners' meditative experiences and insights about symbolism are shared dynamically within an interpretive community.
A book review essay is presented for Reed Criddle, ed., Chanting the Medicine Buddha Sutra: A Mus... more A book review essay is presented for Reed Criddle, ed., Chanting the Medicine Buddha Sutra: A Musical Transcription and English Translation of the Medicine Buddha Service of the Liberation Rite of Water and Land at Fo Guang Shan Monastery. Recent Researches in the Oral Traditions of Music 13. Philip V. Bohlman, general editor. Middleton, WI: A-R Editions, 2020. 77 pages.
In 1993, Sara Cohen issued a challenge to popular music scholars, asserting that the ethnography ... more In 1993, Sara Cohen issued a challenge to popular music scholars, asserting that the ethnography of local amateur bands could be as theoretically fruitful as studying celebrities. This article suggests a third angle and related challenge, problematizing the inclusion of testimonies by musicians who play an important role in the collaborative constellation around celebrities, but are placed decidedly in the margins of dominant narratives of popular music history. George Harrison’s sitar studies led to his creating a new hybridic musico-spiritual sound that was heard on Beatles’ albums, infusing the sixties’ psychedelic soundscape with ‘raga-rock’. According to my interviews with Shambhu Das, Ravi Shankar’s disciple appointed initially to assist Harrison with sitar fingerings, Das played a much more significant role than previous historical accounts have admitted. This raises important questions about the theoretical approach and methodological application of a polyvocal texture where contradictions and ambiguities are revealed that challenge heretofore unquestioned narratives.
A book review essay is presented for Reed Criddle, ed., Chanting the Medicine Buddha Sutra: A Mus... more A book review essay is presented for Reed Criddle, ed., Chanting the Medicine Buddha Sutra: A Musical Transcription and English Translation of the Medicine Buddha Service of the Liberation Rite of Water and Land at Fo Guang Shan Monastery. Recent Researches in the Oral Traditions of Music 13. Philip V. Bohlman, general editor. Middleton, WI: A-R Editions, 2020. 77 pages.
In 1993, Sara Cohen issued a challenge to popular music scholars, asserting that the ethnography ... more In 1993, Sara Cohen issued a challenge to popular music scholars, asserting that the ethnography of local amateur bands could be as theoretically fruitful as studying celebrities. This article suggests a third angle and related challenge, problematizing the inclusion of testimonies by musicians who play an important role in the collaborative constellation around celebrities, but are placed decidedly in the margins of dominant narratives of popular music history. George Harrison’s sitar studies led to his creating a new hybridic musico-spiritual sound that was heard on Beatles’ albums, infusing the sixties’ psychedelic soundscape with ‘raga-rock’. According to my interviews with Shambhu Das, Ravi Shankar’s disciple appointed initially to assist Harrison with sitar fingerings, Das played a much more significant role than previous historical accounts have admitted. This raises important questions about the theoretical approach and methodological application of a polyvocal texture where contradictions and ambiguities are revealed that challenge heretofore unquestioned narratives.
In the 1979 special Tibet Issue of Asian Music, a unique article featured a traditional master... more In the 1979 special Tibet Issue of Asian Music, a unique article featured a traditional master's written commentary on the symbolic elements and attributes of a drum that is almost exclusively associated with the Tibetan gCod ritual musical-meditation practice. Thirty years later, I pay homage to Rinjing Dorje and Ter Ellingson's original work, expanding upon it following a multisite ethnographic study. I show how practitioners link the gCod ḍamaru's "outer" musical performance with its "inner" meditational performance through symbolic meaning, and how practitioners' meditative experiences and insights about symbolism are shared dynamically within an interpretive community.
Paper available for download at the online open source journal, Yale Journal of Music & Religion ... more Paper available for download at the online open source journal, Yale Journal of Music & Religion (Published: February 5, 2015). Abstract: The eleventh-century Tibetan female ascetic, Machik Labdrön (1055-1153), developed a Vajrayāna (Tantric) Buddhist meditation method called Chöd (Tib. gCod, Eng. “to cut”) and associated ritual practices as a means of eliminating “self-grasping,” which is defined as the mistaken instinct of regarding one’s “self” and all phenomena as intrinsically, or independently, existent. Her musical-meditation method became renowned across Central Asia during her lifetime, and Chödritual practices and liturgies have been transmitted from teacher to disciple in unbroken lineages until today. The ritual is now well known globally, with Tibetan Lamas, nuns, and empowered exponents teaching widely, across a transnational Diaspora, to Tibetan Buddhists engaging in the practice. The Chöd meditation practice requires operationalizing the heightened emotions roused from the experience of fear in order to elicit the seemingly self-existent “I,” and “cut” (gCod) the instinctual grasping to the “self.” The ritual that effects this transformation is liturgically based upon song-poetry drawn from the Tibetan mgur tradition, which is itself drawn from the Indian dohā tradition of meditative poetry. The ritualized meditation experience is inhabited musically by several mgur-styled song-poem melodies that are performed in accordance with a liturgy over an underlying and potentially trance-inducing, rhythmic theme. In this paper, I show what I have found to be correspondences between the “internal” performance of meditative visualizations and the “external” performance of the liturgical song-poetry and musical gestures within the Chöd rituals. Indeed, the musical parameters themselves carry meanings that not only enhance or reinforce the effect of the liturgical song-poetry but also directly assist in the meditative journey and spiritual catharsis of the Chöd practitioner. When a melody has been composed to symbolically represent a visualized scene in a subritual section of this religious rite, it illustrates an instance of what I call, “sonic iconography”—at once, a melody serves to embody a meditative complement to the sung text, enliven the psychophysical drama, and provide an atmosphere, or mood, akin to an Indian rasa. According to the Tibetan oral tradition, the melody composed by Machik Labdrön for the subritual section at the height of the dramaturgical narrative of one Chöd liturgy is designed to conjure an image depicting the “sound of vultures’ wings as they arrive at a sky burial.” By exploring the purposeful use of melody--as an aid in meditative visualization--at this climactic moment in a Chöd ritual, it provides a unique window into the interwoven aspects of music and religion in this important Himalayan tradition.
In the 1979 special Tibet Issue of Asian Music, a unique article featured a traditional master’s ... more In the 1979 special Tibet Issue of Asian Music, a unique article featured a traditional master’s written commentary on the symbolic elements and attributes of a drum that is almost exclusively associated with the Tibetan gCod ritual musical-meditation practice. Thirty years later, I pay homage to Rinjing Dorje and Ter Ellingson’s original work, expanding upon it following a multisite ethnographic study. I show how practitioners link the gCod ḍamaru’s “outer” musical performance with its “inner” meditational performance through symbolic meaning, and how practitioners’ meditative experiences and insights about symbolism are shared dynamically within an interpretive community.
Sara Cohen issued a challenge to popular music scholars, asserting that the ethnography of local ... more Sara Cohen issued a challenge to popular music scholars, asserting that the ethnography of local amateur bands could be as theoretically fruitful as studying celebrities. This article suggests a third angle and related challenge, problematizing the inclusion of testimonies by musicians who play an important role in the collaborative constellation around celebrities, but are placed decidedly in the margins of dominant narratives of popular music history. George Harrison’s sitar studies led to his creating a new hybridic musico-spiritual sound that was heard on Beatles’ albums, infusing the sixties’ psychedelic soundscape with ‘raga-rock’. According to my interviews with Shambhu Das, Ravi Shankar’s disciple appointed initially to assist Harrison with sitar fingerings, Das played a much more significant role than previous historical accounts have admitted. This raises important questions about the theoretical approach and methodological application of a polyvocal texture where contradictions and ambiguities are revealed that challenge heretofore unquestioned narratives.
Anthropologists working on representations of Asian religions in the 1920s recognize two literary... more Anthropologists working on representations of Asian religions in the 1920s recognize two literary genres of ethnographic travel writing: the travel account and scientific ethnography. In both, experiential knowledge of normative cultural processes may be variously expressed as subjective insights or objective/scientific data. How does Alexandra David-Neel, the first Western woman to gain an audience with the Dalai Lama and live for extended periods inside Tibet, establish her authorial voice and represent subjectivity in her influential ethnographic couplet: a travel account, My Journey to Lhasa (1927) and scientific ethnography, Magic and Mystery in Tibet (1929)? Each ethnographic inscription relies upon a tradition in colonialist travel writing of employing language devices to cue the historical imagination while establishing multivalent meanings about the author, subject, and knowledge itself. Questions about the nature of knowledge acquired through ethnographic experience are set into relief in this investigation into these seminal texts.
The first “annual” 46664 Campaign megaconcert event took place in Cape Town, South Africa, on Nov... more The first “annual” 46664 Campaign megaconcert event took place in Cape Town, South Africa, on November 29, 2003, launching Nelson Mandela’s campaign to fight HIV/AIDS. It was broadcast to over two billion people and hosted “A-list” artists and celebrities Mandela had invited to the event. The event exhibited a diverse program both musically and thematically, reflecting the campaign goals in several ways, In this paper I examine the strategic use of the mass-mediated, multi-artist and multi-music genre, megaconcert event organized around the launch of the 46664 Campaign, and the new songs composed for the specific occasion. To address the sociopolitical, cultural and musical importance of the inaugural 46664 Cape Town concert, this paper first places it in historical context with globally televised megaconcerts in Nelson Mandela’s name that preceded it; second, it shows the ways in which the concert exhibits strong thematic and musical continuity in connection with moral, religious and spiritual values, and follows a dramaturgical narrative precisely related with the message of the 46664 Campaign; and third, it looks at how the event champions Mandela’s legacy and his ideals which, in turn, impacts the concert narrative and campaign strategies.
A book review is presented for Reed Criddle, ed., Chanting the Medicine Buddha Sutra: A Musical T... more A book review is presented for Reed Criddle, ed., Chanting the Medicine Buddha Sutra: A Musical Transcription and English Translation of the Medicine Buddha Service of the Liberation Rite of Water and Land at Fo Guang Shan Monastery. Recent Researches in the Oral Traditions of Music 13. Philip V. Bohlman, general editor. Middleton, WI: A-R Editions, 2020. 77 pages.
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The eleventh-century Tibetan female ascetic, Machik Labdrön (1055-1153), developed a Vajrayāna (Tantric) Buddhist meditation method called Chöd (Tib. gCod, Eng. “to cut”) and associated ritual practices as a means of eliminating “self-grasping,” which is defined as the mistaken instinct of regarding one’s “self” and all phenomena as intrinsically, or independently, existent. Her musical-meditation method became renowned across Central Asia during her lifetime, and Chödritual practices and liturgies have been transmitted from teacher to disciple in unbroken lineages until today. The ritual is now well known globally, with Tibetan Lamas, nuns, and empowered exponents teaching widely, across a transnational Diaspora, to Tibetan Buddhists engaging in the practice.
The Chöd meditation practice requires operationalizing the heightened emotions roused from the experience of fear in order to elicit the seemingly self-existent “I,” and “cut” (gCod) the instinctual grasping to the “self.” The ritual that effects this transformation is liturgically based upon song-poetry drawn from the Tibetan mgur tradition, which is itself drawn from the Indian dohā tradition of meditative poetry. The ritualized meditation experience is inhabited musically by several mgur-styled song-poem melodies that are performed in accordance with a liturgy over an underlying and potentially trance-inducing, rhythmic theme.
In this paper, I show what I have found to be correspondences between the “internal” performance of meditative visualizations and the “external” performance of the liturgical song-poetry and musical gestures within the Chöd rituals. Indeed, the musical parameters themselves carry meanings that not only enhance or reinforce the effect of the liturgical song-poetry but also directly assist in the meditative journey and spiritual catharsis of the Chöd practitioner. When a melody has been composed to symbolically represent a visualized scene in a subritual section of this religious rite, it illustrates an instance of what I call, “sonic iconography”—at once, a melody serves to embody a meditative complement to the sung text, enliven the psychophysical drama, and provide an atmosphere, or mood, akin to an Indian rasa. According to the Tibetan oral tradition, the melody composed by Machik Labdrön for the subritual section at the height of the dramaturgical narrative of one Chöd liturgy is designed to conjure an image depicting the “sound of vultures’ wings as they arrive at a sky burial.” By exploring the purposeful use of melody--as an aid in meditative visualization--at this climactic moment in a Chöd ritual, it provides a unique window into the interwoven aspects of music and religion in this important Himalayan tradition.
Abstract:
The eleventh-century Tibetan female ascetic, Machik Labdrön (1055-1153), developed a Vajrayāna (Tantric) Buddhist meditation method called Chöd (Tib. gCod, Eng. “to cut”) and associated ritual practices as a means of eliminating “self-grasping,” which is defined as the mistaken instinct of regarding one’s “self” and all phenomena as intrinsically, or independently, existent. Her musical-meditation method became renowned across Central Asia during her lifetime, and Chödritual practices and liturgies have been transmitted from teacher to disciple in unbroken lineages until today. The ritual is now well known globally, with Tibetan Lamas, nuns, and empowered exponents teaching widely, across a transnational Diaspora, to Tibetan Buddhists engaging in the practice.
The Chöd meditation practice requires operationalizing the heightened emotions roused from the experience of fear in order to elicit the seemingly self-existent “I,” and “cut” (gCod) the instinctual grasping to the “self.” The ritual that effects this transformation is liturgically based upon song-poetry drawn from the Tibetan mgur tradition, which is itself drawn from the Indian dohā tradition of meditative poetry. The ritualized meditation experience is inhabited musically by several mgur-styled song-poem melodies that are performed in accordance with a liturgy over an underlying and potentially trance-inducing, rhythmic theme.
In this paper, I show what I have found to be correspondences between the “internal” performance of meditative visualizations and the “external” performance of the liturgical song-poetry and musical gestures within the Chöd rituals. Indeed, the musical parameters themselves carry meanings that not only enhance or reinforce the effect of the liturgical song-poetry but also directly assist in the meditative journey and spiritual catharsis of the Chöd practitioner. When a melody has been composed to symbolically represent a visualized scene in a subritual section of this religious rite, it illustrates an instance of what I call, “sonic iconography”—at once, a melody serves to embody a meditative complement to the sung text, enliven the psychophysical drama, and provide an atmosphere, or mood, akin to an Indian rasa. According to the Tibetan oral tradition, the melody composed by Machik Labdrön for the subritual section at the height of the dramaturgical narrative of one Chöd liturgy is designed to conjure an image depicting the “sound of vultures’ wings as they arrive at a sky burial.” By exploring the purposeful use of melody--as an aid in meditative visualization--at this climactic moment in a Chöd ritual, it provides a unique window into the interwoven aspects of music and religion in this important Himalayan tradition.