Paper short abstract:

This paper reveals a multi-modal music video filming experiment in imagining a "Free Tibet" through a geo-lyrical lens together with Loten Namling, a Tibetan opera singer and composer living in exile.

Paper long abstract:

Namling, a renowned Tibetan opera singer and composer , infuses Tibetan classics with Sufi ballads and rock music. Representing the second generation of Tibetans living in exile, Namling was born in India and has never seen Tibet. In his own words; Namling “lives Tibet” in his imagination.Being engaged in long hours of political conversations with Namling, the author reveals the processes of making the video clips “Tibetan Nomads” and “Tibetan Warriors” as they reflect on Namling’s life long struggle and world view on the “Issue of Tibet” through a geo-lyrical lens. The stages and processes of making the video clips are analysed and mediated in dialogue with the historical evolvement of the Tibetan Freedom Campaign “Free Tibet” (formed in 1987) that is elaborated alongside the visual anthropology debate on “disappearing worlds”. The Tibetan Warriors video is based on an experimental archival montage of the past and present faces of Tibet in temporality, where traditional clothing and transcendental dancing are staged as a form of resistance to the occupation. Tibetan Nomads video starts with Namling (aka the nomad) being lost in the busy and luxurious streets of Zurich to find himself among the humble yak herders of Andermatt in Switzerland. The meeting and instant connection to the Yaks and the Swiss Alps resembling the Himalayas; the Tibetan games, stamp and momo (dumpling) making alongside to chanting traditional rhymes are looked in relation to how “being Tibetan” is lost and then found, performed and manifested. The music videos have gone viral over social media (FB and Instagram, shared by various authors) and created wider debates among the Tibetan transnational political circuits and diaspora in imagining and visioning for a free Tibet.

Tibetan Nomads: https://youtu.be/ML5HKwIjbZ4

Tibetan Warriors: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kgj86fkSRUY&t=71s