Straddling a Himalayan gorge that is the passageway between Tibet and the domain of the Ganges, cleft from stone between the Annapurna and the even higher Dhaulagiri, is the land of Mustang, the old Kingdom of Lo. It is a land of flapping prayer flags, creaking gates, bells, stupas and chanted blessings, an ancient crossroads for traders and pilgrims. This vertical landscape carves wind like glaciers carve rock. In 2016, Soundwalk Collective travelled to Mustang to find the world’s highest-elevation temples, and they captured field recordings of the air as it whipped and crackled through the valley. Khandroma is composed from these takings, a study of the transmutations of the wind. Patti Smith adds her windpipe to that of the high mountain canyons in a series of haunting vocalizations that layer onto this musique concrète of the wind.
The khandroma, wisdom dākinīs of Tibet, are emanations of the Buddhist deity Vajrayoginī and represent the ultimate feminine principle, a totalizing openness. The term — meaning “sky dancer” — gestures towards a practitioner’s ability to merge with that principle by attaining inner flight. Today a soothing breeze and tomorrow a stampeding storm, the shape-shifting khandroma is said to erupt into the lives of those needing spiritual direction as she draws invisible forms through the atmosphere. The Tantric enigma of khandroma can only be resolved by initiation, but can perhaps be intimated through the sounds of this recording.
Khandroma has undergone a custom spatialization process by MONOM to adapt it to the omnidirectional sound space of Reethaus, giving listeners the opportunity not so much to hear the music as to be temporarily displaced to a high-altitude situation. With this Open Haus, we continue the drone explorations that we presented in last month’s Winter Solstice Concert by Phill Niblock, to be continued in February with another excursion into the Tibetan Tantric Choir recordings.