Ama

Ama

The wait was long and her fans impatient, but “Ama” has fulfilled all the hopes and promises invested in this gracious and slight vocalist. Her fourth release is a delicately crafted album that reflects a coming of age for Yungchen Lhamo. It is more sparse and delicate than her last CD, the highly-orchetrated “Coming Home”, released in 1998. Yet it is less arid and traditional than her second release “Tibet, Tibet”, which Real World brought out in 1996. Yungchen has invested a transcultural vision of her musical word in ten complementary and harmonious tracks. They all retain her breath-defying Tibetan chants, yet each is carefully adapted to rhythms and instruments that come from just about everywhere in the world. What unifies them is the calm and firm texture of the singer’s voice.

« Ama” translates from Tibetan as « mother », and this album is Lhamo’s homage to a woman who braved death and humiliation in labour camps to bring up her daughter in dignity. Thirty years of reflection and meditation later, and Yungchen writes calmly on themes of peace, forgiveness, struggle and bereavement. “Ama” is the first album where she inks in all the songs, and her ethereal voice transforms her words into contemplative prayers. The opening track, “Ranzen” urges Tibetans to fight on and preserve their millennium culture. The closing track “Lhasa” is dedicated to her father and it describes the capital as “jewel in the heart of Tibet”. In between, highlights include a moving improvisation to the survivors of 9/11, and “Tara”, the name of one of the most eminent female deities in Tibetan Buddhism. The songs feature, respectively, the welcome accompaniment of Joy Askew and legendary Scottish singer Annie Lennox.

The songs have been arranged and produced by Iranian American Jamshied Sharifi. The Kansas-based musician has infused Lhamo’s traditional vocals with violins, cellos, a National Steel guitar, flutes, a trumpet, lutes, the West African kora, as well as Tibet’s piwang, danyen and bamboo flutes. The marriage is achingly beautiful and goes beyond the lush instrumentation of “Coming Home”. For, despite the presence of a plethora of outstanding instrumentalists, Sharifi manages to provide a respectful and sparing instrumental backdrop to accompany the gymnastics Lhamo performs with her unique voice. This is an outstanding album that will, in all likelihood, see a new posse of fans follow Tibet’s most distinguished female voice.

May 2006

Daniel Brown