MetaphoreWorld-renowned, award-winning Tibetan singer-songwriter Yungchen Lhamo, whose seventh album, ‘One Drop of Kindness’, was released in September 2023 by Peter Gabriel’s Real World Records, and she has been performing on her 2024 ‘Monkey Mind’ concert tour with 12 very successful concerts in the USA and Canada in January and February..
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Yungchen’s name, given her by a lama when she was born in Lhasa, Tibet, translates as ‘Goddess of Melody’, but she always wanted to be a nun, not a singer. In 1989 she made the dangerous, month-long 1,200-mile journey, on foot across the Himalayas, to Dharamsala in India to pursue her Buddhist practice. There, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama encouraged her to use her unique voice to promote Tibetan culture around the world. She then moved to Australia, where her first album, ‘Tibetan Prayer’, led to her being invited to sing at WOMADelaide in 1995. Later that year the album won Australia’s equivalent of a Grammy, the ARIA Award for Best World Music Album.
After being signed by Peter Gabriel’s Real World Records label, she released three more albums: ‘Tibet, Tibet’ (1996), produced by Richard Evans; ‘Coming Home’ (1998), produced by Hector Zazou; and ‘Ama’ (2006), produced by Jamshied Sharifi and featuring Annie Lennox on ‘Fade Away’ and Joy Askew on ‘Tara’.
Concert Venues, Soundtracks and Artists
Yungchen has toured more than 80 countries on all five continents, including such prestigious venues as Carnegie Hall, New York; Royal Festival Hall and Royal Albert Hall, London; National Concert Hall, Dublin; The Louvre, Paris; Philharmonic Hall, Berlin; International Performing Arts Centre, Moscow; The Vatican, Rome; Sori Arts Centre, Jeonju; Shinjuku Culture Centre, Tokyo; and Opera House, Sydney. Others include the Lilith Fair festival, many WOMAD festivals, the Foerde Festival in Norway, rock and country music festivals, and celebratory events.
She has also contributed to ten film soundtracks, including the 1997 film ‘Seven Years in Tibet’, starring Brad Pitt and directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud; two documentaries released in 2021: ‘Mission: Joy – Finding Happiness in Modern Times’, featuring His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and directed by Louie Psihoyos and Peggy Callahan, and ‘Better Living Through Chemistry’, Connie Littlefield’s film about psychedelic pioneers Sasha and Ann Shulgin; and the 2022 film ‘Above and Below: The Art of Tsherin Sherpa’ directed by Sheri Brenner.
Yungchen has performed or shared a stage with numerous artists, including Philip Glass, Michael Stipe, Billy Corgan, Beastie Boys, Peter Gabriel, Natalie Merchant, Sarah McLachlan, Sheryl Crow, Jewel, Bill T Jones, Laurie Anderson, Sir Paul McCartney, Annie Lennox, Lou Reed, U2, Paul Brady, Sinead O’Connor, Peter Rowan, and – for her fifth album ‘Tayatha’ (2013), released by Cantaloupe Music – with Russian classical pianist Anton Batagov.
Her Unique Voice Wins Awards
Yungchen’s unique, innovative voice promotes sound healing and spiritual awakening, and includes the ability to sing long-sustained pure notes. Among countless laudatory reviews, one stated: “Lhamo’s voice is not only beautiful, but strong. Her phrasing, control and depth of emotion are unsurpassed. This, combined with her purity and poignancy, will enchant and impress any listener.”
A typical performance combines a cappella, audience participation, and songs accompanied by her band to offer a unique event that nurtures the body, speech and mind of audience members.
In addition to winning the ARIA Award in Australia, Yungchen was named by the UK’s Marie Claire magazine in its ‘Women Who Change Our World’ series. Yungchen has also received two awards in Italy, being presented with the Funtana Elighe journalism award by the city of Silanus and recognized by the province of Genoa as a ‘Messenger of Peace’ and given the title of ‘Ambassador of Culture’.
One Drop of Kindness Foundation
In 2004, Yungchen established a charitable foundation to help Tibetans in need in Tibet, with the conviction that all human beings are beautiful and that, while we need material resources, doctors and medicine to heal our physical bodies, what we need most is unconditional love and compassion to help heal our inner selves.
Over the years, the Foundation has assisted communities in need in by donating food, clothing, shoes, educational supplies and building materials, while infrastructure projects have included the provision of clear drinking water and the rebuilding of monasteries. Today the One Drop of Kindness Foundation also supports projects in the USA, Nepal, India, and Liberia.
After visiting a home for the elderly and another for those with dementia in Dublin, Ireland, Yungchen has devoted much of her time over the past ten years befriending the homeless and mentally ill in Upstate New York, for whom she wrote the song ‘You Are Beautiful’, as well as a co-titled drama that residents of a homeless shelter have twice performed in public. This involved singing and role-playing therapies about family, drugs and alcohol abuse, and was reviewed by Newsweek magazine in July 2015 and by Voice of America’s Mandarin Service, with a potential reach of over one billion viewers.
Yungchen says: “I truly believe that voice has a vibrational energy to connect, empower, heal and transform all human beings. I would like to expand the ‘You Are Beautiful’ program to include students in K-12 classes, for the sick in hospitals, for the dying, and for those in prisons.”
Two New Albums
In 2022, Yungchen released, through Six Degrees Records, her long-awaited sixth album, ‘Awakening’, on which she explored the relevance of spirituality based on compassion to our busy, modern-day interdependent lives. The album was produced in Spain by Julio García and Carmen Ros and featured flamenco legend singer Carmen Linares as guest artist on the track ‘Loving Kindness’. ‘Awakening’ was voted #27 among the 100 Best Albums of 2021-2022 on the Transglobal World Music Chart, as ranked by its global network of world music critics.
Her latest and seventh album, ‘One Drop of Kindness’, was co-produced by Yungchen with John Alevizakis at Little Buddha Studio in Nevada City, California, USA, and is available in digital, CD, and vinyl at: https://lnk.to/RW252
Photos are by Dayong Zhao
Websites: www.yungchenlhamo.com
Newsweek article on Yungchen’s work with the homeless:
www.newsweek.com/2015/07/10/tibetan-singer-helps-mentally-ill-347760.html
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