Beyond the Sky and the Earth_ A Journey Into Bhutan - Jamie Zeppa [79]
“Well, we’ll think about it on your behalf,” Lorna says, and the others agree enthusiastically.
The cultural competition begins with a traditional Bhutanese dance. The men and women move slowly in a circle, raising and lowering their hands in front of them in simple, lulling gestures as they sing. The beauty is in the measured, synchronized movements; this is not a dance about performance but participation. There is no instrumental accompaniment, only the voices rising and falling in the melancholic, pentatonic scale, and lingering over microtones that no tempered instrument could ever match. The style is called zhungdra, the oldest form of music in Bhutan, and the melody climbs and climbs and then falls suddenly, rhythm changing unpredictably, evoking perhaps the soaring sinking Bhutanese landscape itself, mountaintops plunging into deep valleys and rising steeply again.
A Nepali dance follows. Two women in gorgeous red-and-gold silk saris twirl and kick and throw up their arms to loud taped music overfull with instruments and competing melodies and rhythms. I am sitting between Leon and Margaret, a pen and clipboard on my lap, preparing to judge the English selections, the first of which is a “Break-Dance,” according to the MC. The lights go off, pulsating disco music starts and stops and starts again, and two lithe young men appear on stage in tight pants and tee shirts. The dance is a combination of some genuine break-dancing and a lot of straightforward calisthenics.
“Where am I?” Leon mutters. I know exactly what he means. In spite of its closed-door policy and ban on TV, Bhutan is not hermetically sealed. Fashion trends and music cassettes find their way in, but it still seems utterly bizarre that I should be sitting in a concrete auditorium in the Himalayas watching Bhutanese students break-dance to American disco. The music ends and I have no idea how to judge the first English item. On what basis? In comparison to what? In the end, I give it a very mediocre mark. The other English selections include CCR’s “Proud Mary” accompanied by an electric guitar and an amplifier that thinks it’s an instrument in its own right, and a remarkably good version of Elvis’s “Love Me Tender” by the well-built young man in the black trench coat. Elvis wins the English competition.
There are more songs in Dzongkha, Nepali and Sharchhop, and dances from Tibet, Assam and the nomadic yak-herding communities along Bhutan’s northern border. The instruments are remarkable: the six-stringed, dragon-headed mandolin called a drumnyen; the many-stringed yangchen laid flat on a table and played with thin bamboo sticks; a gleaming new harmonium; a tabla played with deft fingers. Although the official government line might speak of one identity, there are many voices here, many dances and many songs, and perhaps it is my Canadian upbringing, being raised on the strengths of the multicultural mosaic over the American melting pot, but I am glad of the plenitude.
Back at my house, we lay mattresses, mats, kiras and quilts in a row on the bedroom floor. There is much wriggling and giggling and negotiation for space, and when I finally fall asleep, I dream that I am dreaming of break-dancers. You’re just dreaming, I tell myself in the dream. There is no break-dancing in Bhutan.
So Lucky to Be Here
My dreams change and change again. Gone are the airport dreams and drugstore dreams and the dreams of in-between places, not really Canada, not really Bhutan, all dreams of longing for home. Now my dreams of Canada are grievous. I dream that I get on the Comet and it turns a corner and turns into a Greyhound bus with plush seats and a sign ordering passengers to not stand forward of the white line, and we are driving over a bridge, passing out of Bhutan onto a Canadian highway. It is the beginning or the end of winter, dirty crusts of snow, dull sky, a flat paved road leading into a sad,