In Tune

Jamming with nomadic Nepali performers, Justin Goldman discovers the common ancestry of folk music around the globe

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I’M ON A BRICK PATIO at Northfield, a popular café in Katmandu, strumming “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” on my guitar alongside Les Thompson, a founding member of the pioneering SoCal folk and bluegrass act the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. I’ve spent more than a decade going to bluegrass festivals, buying bluegrass records, and learning to flat-pick much of the American bluegrass canon; playing with Thompson anywhere would be a dream. But this is extremely special. We are surrounded by more than 20 Nepali Gandarbhas, who follow us on fiddle-like sarangis, bamboo bansuri flutes, and madal drums. Gandarbhas are a nomadic musician caste who for centuries have wandered the hills here, playing songs to earn a living. After the last note, our Nepali friends launch into their folk anthem “Resham Firiri.” Thompson points out that, if you lose the percussion, it sounds like American Appalachian music.

We’re in Nepal with Music Arts Adventures, a tour company that offers an unconventional approach to discovering the country known for Everest by introducing visitors to Nepali artisans. It’s the brainchild of Tara Linhardt, a musician I met years ago during a jam session at Brooklyn’s legendary Sunny’s Bar, which she now runs with her husband, Ian Poole. A Virginia native, Linhardt studied here in college and fell in love with the culture. Since then, she has returned repeatedly and eventually made a documentary film and an album, both called The Mountain Music Project, in which she and another musician, Danny Knicely, illustrate the commonalities between Appalachian and Himalayan folk music. Old-time bluegrass players and Gandarbhas—who are thought to have migrated to the Himalayas from Rajasthan and likely share ancestry with the Romani people—are both traditionally poor people from the mountains who scratch out a living with their instruments.