John, Don't be so hard on Nepali singers and musicians.Not everyone is so bad and out of style.We have Ani Chchiring and Sur Sudha too.

John bro,

la thik chha. kura munasib lagyo. Aaja friday ho bhanne pakka bho.

Tisa,

Thanks for visiting, i treasure replies like yours in artless thread like such. I am sincerely honored, but yes, glance through this line i have failed to highlight.

“Most” (mind you, not all) lyrics hover around the repetitive terms like आँखा, नयन, चौतारी, देउराली, जोबन्, मुटु, बैस, कान्छी, enough to put off listeners"

I am well aware of the musical groups you have mentioned before, but here I am dileneating the majority of other groups and our proclivity towards listening to them.

Thanks for visiting Deep,

but my Friday's are busier than the rest of the week if that is what you wanted to mention.

John,
Very nice and accurate piece, I should say. You know, the problem I think lies within our society's lack of individualism. We tend to copy everything from others, and while doing so, we not only take it out of context, we completely put it out of style.
It is always ridiculous to see Nepalese dressed thuggishly, taking pictures with their hand gestures and fingers tangled up, god knows meaning what.

John,

Nice read as always.

Few things I would like to say.

Nepathya were nowhere before their "Chhekyo chhekyo" visual hit the television. Now they are one of the biggest musical band in Nepal.

Sabin Rai had his first album and nobody even noticed it. His Second album 'Sataha' made him an established artist.

Amitabh Bachchan had about 15-16 flops before he gave a hit and now he is "The Man" in bollywood.

Even Ravi Shankar might have tasted few failures.

Let these musicians/singers try little bit. Who knows after 3rd Album they might be our favourite. Let's not discourage them. And those,who don't succeed, will surely seek other ways of living. It is not necessary that every attempt on goal post should be a goal.

hmmmm...

John Bro,
Enjoyed your piece.
:)

I thought the same as John did and finally concluded the conversation in one of our chiya gaf " गित त यसको नै सुन्न लायक छ तर खै के के गरेछ जेलपो गयो "

John bro, nice read.

I also agree to lots of sentiments u have poured here regarding "modern'Nepali music. This one was well said :

“Give em’ a guitar to practice for a few weeks, a camcorder, one hundred thousand rupees, and uh….a Bhusan Dahal, you would find a new artist in the making.”

True indeed.

Perhaps more emphasis should be given towards learning the essense of Shadja (Tonal) Rishav Gandhar Madhyam Pancham (5th) (sa re ga ma) rather than striking some major or minor "chords" in a guitar using some fancy hand-formation.

You have not mentioned anything about covers though. How many times do we see bands (be it in KTm or Pokhara) performing songs from GNR or whaterver? So -called live bands. And one practise that needs to be abolished totally is act of doing covers. Perhaps it would encourage them to learn music and be original. Even in U-tube, I have seen bands doing covers. What is the point? Does reciting a nice poem from Shakespeare make me a shakespeare? Enough ranting now.....

Again, a nice read as usual

Thanks for visiting hurray,
You are right, we are running out of our individualism in the couse of imitation. Indians imitate westerners and we imitate both. But casual imitation never leads to perfection, hence lot of flaws.

camoflaged,
Thanks for taking sometime to reply to this gibberish, it is a thought after all. I am not talking about success here, and I am not talking about 100% Nepalese bands, few are extremely good. But the yardstick is the quality of music and the cognitive level of people actually enjoying it. Nepathya is a great band, certainly do not fall in the categories i have put forth, but then there are plenty of budding actors everyday who soar high on the platform of their ostentatious music videos.
A good performer is born once in a while, not twice a day in a small country like ours.

Cerine,
huh?

Dada,
I have seen you after a long time, been missing all your humorous replies. Thanks for reading.

Naplean,
True....Prakash ojha was a talented artist if we leave aside the sex scandal. Many people might raise brows, but he was a budding image of one of the greatest folk artist who people detest now. I admire for his originality and individualism.

Mahisasur,
That statement made was so true i will remember it for the rest of my life. And yes thanks for mentioning rishav gandhar, most people do not know it for fact, but every good singer and musicians practice it. What we lack is originality in "most" of our recent music, fueled by the aspiration of becoming hip hop and few metal bands, we are making a quality of music fall into pieces. Thanks for reading.

John i have to tell you that you are awesomely gifted. Trust me i hate writing but when i read your pieces I am amazed by it. Next time when i am in your city, lunch is on me. What do you say?
:-)

John,

Full marks...i am not an invigilator though..hehe. when it comes to presenting and narrating stories, views and expressions, there are very few people around, that fall into your coterie. please accept a sincere compliment from this newbie :).

being an overtly opinionated and optimistic person, i could not restrain myself from not seeing the brighter aspects of things around. call it my hyper positive doctrine if you want and please excuse my optimism, if it dares to hurt the feeling of a genius writer...

we are still in a conception stage when it comes to singing and glamor, be it modeling or acting. the target audience and/or spectator happens to be plain nepali with a very low literacy rate, let alone the intelligence level.

nepali music and glamor field cannot afford to be choosy and selective at the moment when it comes to quality because we there are audience apleny in numbers who fall into various groups if literacy and intelligence scale are considered as measures.

it took days to master the art of archery for great Arjun; let's imagine how long it will take for an enthusiast who has abundant passion but lags behind big time in the skill and talent departments. but passion is what keeps him alive-pushes him to participate.

since participation yields more quantity of involvement, it increments the probability of quality. please spare some mercy on these newbies--singers and models. our society is very stringent when it comes to exposing oneself to glamor. i mean how many daughters from affluent nepalese family dare to enter in glamor fields in nepal today? where is the sense of pride and respect for work?

So albeit we are lagging behind in terms of delivering quality stuffs, i see a bright ring around dark clouds just with a thought that perhaps the competition which the amount of participation is invoking right now in nepali music and art field, may give birth to quality stars and products some day some way. I have my fingers crossed though. :)

Loote

John:
As always big fan of your writings.Superb piece again!!

I like the way you comment , with style, which music n models in Nepal cannot attain it .hehehehe

JG, I am also tired of these so called kanchhis in gunyow/cholo who seem bit nervous infront of cameras. Like you said, neither they look comfortable enough in 4" skirt nor can they show some kind of freshness wearing typical nepali dress.

nice read.

John,

It's the ease of presentation, technology has offered. Anyone with some extra pocket money can pop up in your TV screen and blow his horn. Anyway, they ofcourse have to pass through scrutiny of million sets of eyes and ears. Those whom we would like to see or hear can afford to come back. Lately, TV has been distasteful for me. My palate should be accustomed to match the par. Otherwise, outcast has no right to complain.

Galt,
Your views on so called "modern Nepali music" absolutely resonate with mine. My lack of excitement, of curiosity, of surprise, of any sort of pronounced interest in Nepali pop music and videos (most of them) used to annoy some of my contemporaries during my school days and it still does to some that classify themselves as progressive.

I would rather serenade myself with classical music of Pundit Jasraj, Ravi shankar, Jakir hussein. I would spend hours listening to symphonies of Bethoven and Mozart.

You are not alone Monsieur! I was called passe' several times.

John,
You are no doubt one of the best writers in sajha, probably even the best.
I however disagree a little bit with your take on nepali music. I know everbody
and anybody wants to be a singer, but then the public will spend thier money
and time watching only those that they like and discard the rest. so why worry?

ANd while I agree with you that the almost naked models on cyber nepal are disgusting.
ANd neither them nor the 'kanchi' smile, I have seen that not even the naked models on
catalogue of victoria's secret smile. I heard that it takes from the product they
are promoting if attention is diverted to the smiling face.

ANd i also noticed that often i judge the nepali models more harshly than i do the western
ones. SOmehow, I am more comfortable watching totally naked western models than almost
naked nepali ones. whether the latter is very bad as compared to the former comes later.

sorry dude your clock got stuck on 60's. there are good music too but you will never see them. hell you never got past narayan gopal or deepak kharel or bhaktaraj achrya. nothing... NOTHING delivered by "Generation Y" is acceptable for you. talking about kurtha suruwal and daura suruwal, how many times do you walk around wearing a daura suruwal? why you want everyone else to be a traditional nepali if you can't be one? get life bro.

Plymouth,
Thanks for your kind words, although a little undeserved. Alike everything else, practice makes one close to perfection, I am still half way there, but yes, I have improved writing over the years. Also, on the contrary, I would buy you a lunch if you ever visit here, there is this new mexican down the block.

Loote,
My my, I never thought my piece would make you engrossed to such an extent. I agree with you, I certainly do, perhaps there are some other facts I have failed to collect. But then, a little discord lies when we talk about the literacy level of the people. As you see, most people are from the valley who are supposedly educated yet they fail to recognize the authenticity of the subject matter. Narayan Gopal was a successful singer, so now is ani and sur sudha like someone mentioned earlier. All I am trying to say is despite increasing technology and number of audience, we still do not have a classy music. Same goes with modelling too.

Imi,
Thanks for visiting, I am still improving.

Sunnydev,
Thanks for agreeing...that was the whole point of the story which you have beautifully put forth in few beautiful words. Maybe Nepal needs a Nepal-idol alike show as long as they do not put binod chaudhary, sujata koirala and rishi dhamala as judges.

Vantage point,
You stole my words girl, I went under the same trauma of not having friends to comply when it actually came to these conversations. The result- I used to go to movie theater alone. Wish people still listened to beethoven.

nepalonmymind,
let me have immense pleasure in thanking you for the compliment, but then you might not be aware of the other better writers who have been on an eternal absence. I agree that these music sell without question. Their increasing popularity bolsters it, but don't you agree that the music would still sell as much had their been in depth lyrics, beautiful voices, and conventionally scaled rhythm? I have to apologize for narrowing down the concept of modelling into mere smile, I should have expatiated a little more. But the true key to fashion modelling is confidence, which they fail to exhibit.

Hyaa ( my apologies, I always read it as chyaaa)
Replying you in detail would leave me in disgrace and you in fury. So let me save both of us from this misery. I never encouraged anyone to wear daura suruwal, go read it again. You were so busy reading between the lines that you missed out a real one.
I belong to generation X or even earlier, and I have had more life you might have ever imagined. A last thought, if you do not know what Bach and Mozart are, you are visiting a wrong thread.

don't take my words literally john... the whole world does not need to agree with you. mozart who? i seriously don't know, i apologize for my ignorance, but this thread is not about mozart or is it?

i had a professor back in old days... when i pointed out her mistake she was like... "i have a phd on blah blah... 25 years of international experience... i worked in jungles out in indonesia... desert in africa" bottom line what do you know you poor sob? i never said she didn't have a phd, never pointed a finger on her international exposure... all i said was 2 + 2 aint 5. i was probably wrong.