12 Day Bhutan Traditional Music and Cultural Arts Tour: Zhungdra, Dramnyen and Masked Dance

Music is everywhere in Bhutan. Monks chant and play long horns, drums and cymbals in the dzongs every day. Villagers sing as they plant rice and build houses, and archery teams sing to tease their rivals. At every tshechu, masked dancers move to the sound of monastery orchestras, and in the evenings people dance in circles, singing songs that may be centuries old. Alongside this, young Bhutanese listen to rigsar, a modern pop style, and to the music of Bhutanese films.

This tour introduces you to Bhutan’s main musical traditions. Zhungdra is the classical folk song, said to date from the 17th century, sung slowly with long ornamented notes. Boedra is a lighter style with roots in the court music of Tibet. The main instruments are the dramnyen, a long-necked lute, the piwang, a two-stringed fiddle, the lingm, a bamboo flute, and the yangchen, a hammered dulcimer. Masked dances, or cham, are religious performances taught in monasteries and dzongs. One of them, the Drametse Ngacham, the dance of the drums from Drametse, was added to UNESCO’s list of intangible cultural heritage in 2008.

In Thimphu you visit the Royal Academy of Performing Arts, founded in 1954 on the initiative of the Third King and formally established in 1967, which trains dancers and musicians and preserves Bhutan’s songs and masked dances. You meet an instrument maker, take a short lesson on the dramnyen or in zhungdra singing, and hear monastery music. In Bumthang you learn about the dances revealed by the saint Pema Lingpa, whose traditions are still performed today. The 10 day version stays in the west, and the 17 day version continues east to Mongar and Drametse.