Jigme Drukpa

Jigme Drukpa (born 1969 in Wongchelo, Pema Gatshel) is a Bhutanese musician, singer and ethnomusicologist. He is best known for his recordings of zhungdra — the slow, melismatic court-style songs of central Bhutan — and for his work as a player of the drangyen (the Bhutanese six-stringed lute, also written dramnyen or dramyin), the bamboo flute and the leaf whistle. He was the first Bhutanese to undertake formal academic training in ethnomusicology, and is widely cited as the leading contemporary interpreter of Bhutanese folk music abroad.^[1]

Drukpa graduated from Sherubtse College in Kanglung in 1993 and went on to postgraduate study in Norway, taking a folk-music course at the Rauland Academy and a degree in ethnomusicology at the Grieg Academy of the University of Bergen. He returned to Bhutan in 1999 as the country's first trained ethnomusicologist, and later completed a master's degree in music therapy in Norway in 2017.^[2]

Since 1993 he has performed in more than 200 cities across over thirty countries, including festival appearances and academic lectures in Europe, North America and Asia. In 2013 he was named Loden Entrepreneur of the Year by the Loden Foundation for his work on the Ayang Music School.^[2]

Recordings

Drukpa produced what he describes as the country's first commercially distributed Bhutanese music recording in 1989, hand-copying around 100 cassettes on a Sony Walkman dual-deck before commercial cassette duplication services existed in Bhutan. In 1998 he became the first Bhutanese to digitally record music, working in Norway with Norwegian ethnomusicologists. He has since produced a series of CDs and digital releases of zhungdra and boedra material, often paired with explanatory liner notes that document the regional provenance of each song.^[1]

His best-known international release is Endless Songs from Bhutan, recorded in Bergen in the late 1990s, which introduced Bhutanese folk music to many European listeners through public-radio broadcasts and festival circulation. He has also contributed to compilation albums of Himalayan music issued by European world-music labels and has lectured on Bhutanese musical genres at universities including SOAS in London and the Grieg Academy.^[3]

Film and Stage

Drukpa appeared as a singer-musician in two feature films directed by Khyentse Norbu (Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche): Travellers and Magicians (2003), the first feature film shot entirely in Bhutan, and Hema Hema: Sing Me a Song While I Wait (2016). He also features in the documentary BLØF in Bhutan, made by the Dutch rock band BLØF, which paired the band's musicians with Bhutanese folk performers. He has performed at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival and at festivals in Norway, Germany and Austria.^[1]

Ayang Music School and Teaching

Drukpa founded the Ayang Music School in Thimphu as a private institution to teach Bhutanese folk and instrumental music. The school has worked alongside the Royal Academy of Performing Arts, the principal state body for traditional performing-arts training, and has trained both children and adult learners in drangyen, zhungdra singing and Bhutanese percussion. He has also taught and consulted for the Department of Culture and Dzongkha Development, contributing to the curriculum used in school music programmes.^[4]

His written and recorded work is one of the principal contemporary sources for the academic study of Bhutanese music alongside the publications of the German ethnomusicologist Mona Schrempf and the cultural-policy work of Karma Phuntsho. Drukpa's career has helped position zhungdra and boedra as living traditions undergoing documented adaptation rather than as static folk forms, and is regularly cited in discussions of how Bhutanese cultural policy responds to the popular rigsar genre.^[2]

References

1. Jigme Drukpa — Wikipedia
2. Jigme Drukpa — Loden Foundation
3. Music — Jigme Drukpa, Bhutan Homestay
4. Traditional Performing Arts and Music Division — Department of Culture and Dzongkha Development
5. Jigme Drukpa — Wikidata