Nepali Music

The rhythm, beats, bounce of Nepali traditional folk and classical music is spiritual enough to sooth you and entertaining enough to cheer you. Music is associated with every event in Nepal, then be it birth, marriage, festivals or National events.

Various songs, musical instruments and dances are connected with various religious, social and cultural lives of the Nepalese. Music is the heartbeat of Nepal. Music is associated to every event of life, then be it festivals, feasts, marriage, birth ceremonies or funeral processions. The main genres of Nepali music are pop, rock, folk, and classical. There are a number of other genres that are yet to be cataloged.

The following music genres have their roots in Nepal and are therefore considered to be indigenous. This includes: -

Newar Music
The Newars are well known for their Newar music. It mainly consists of percussion instruments, some wind instruments and no string instruments. All the castes have their musical tunes and bands. People of all walks of life cherish music. There are tunes of certain festivals and seasons and even of certain times of day. The God of artists called Nâsadya is found in all the Newar localities. The presence of a Newar musical band in a guthi is considered as a sign of opulence.

Khas Music
Khas music belongs to the Khas society where castes like Damai used to play a number of instruments on occasions such as marriages, birth and other feasts. This tradition is now on decline owing to the growing popularity of television, radio and other means of mass communication. The minstrels used to play instruments like Sarangi but even the Gaine are declining in number.

Nepali Rock
The rock music strata of Nepal got birth due to the arrival of Hippies in the Kathmandu valley. The epicenter of Rock and Rock-n-Roll during those days used to be Freak Street. The street was notorious for its marijuana, grass, hash and ganja that attracted many psychedelic rockers. The first recorded Rock and Roll song of Nepal is "diunlaa" by Kumar Basnet. With the advent of time, the rock scene in Nepal changed from the early rock to Punk and Metal. However, most of the bands that performed during metal era didn't produce many originals. Most of them were either blatant copy of western rock or slightly improvised cover version of the same. The present scene music of Nepal includes several popular rock and roll bands, including Nepathya, Robin N Looza, Mukti and Revival, and the long-running Cobweb.