New Publication
Shépa: The Tibetan Oral Tradition in Choné.
Bendi Tso, Marnyi Gyatso, Naljor Tsering, Mark Turin, and Members of the Choné Tibetan Community.
Shépa: ‘explanation’ or ‘elucidation’ in Tibetan. A form of oral poetry sung antiphonally in a question-and-answer style. This book contains a unique collection of Tibetan oral narrations and songs known as Shépa, as these have been performed, recorded and shared between generations of Choné Tibetans from Amdo living in the eastern Tibetan Plateau. Presented in trilingual format — in Tibetan, Chinese and English — the book reflects a sustained collaboration with and between members of the local community, including narrators, monks, and scholars, calling attention to the diversity inherent in all oral traditions, and the mutability of Shépa in particular.
Received Grants
“The Collaborative Documentation and Preservation of an Endangered Tibetan Oral Tradition in Tébo of Cultural Tibet,” is funded by the Program for Oral Literature of the Firebird Foundation and the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies in 2023.
Our project, “Digital Archives and Visualization,” is sponsored by International Association of Cultural and Creative Industry Research in 2023.
“Shépa: The Documentation of Endangered Tibetan Oral Literature in Choné,” is funded by the Program for Oral Literature of the Firebird Foundation in 2018.