Connecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program collections, 2015.196.609c, Connecticut Historical S ...

WNPR Connecticut Radio Series: You'll Know Us By Our Songs

PerformerPerformed by Virgilio Cruz (Puerto Rican)

PerformerPerformed by Thupten Tenzin (Tibetan)

PerformerPerformed by Lakedhen Shingsur (Tibetan, born 1962)

PerformerPerformed by Dadon Dawa Dolma (Tibetan, born 1968)

PerformerPerformed by Rosaire LeHoux (Canadian, 1920 - 2013)

PerformerPerformed by Josephine McNamara (Irish)

InterviewerInterviewed by John Dankosky (American)

IntervieweeInterview with Ruth Glasser (American)

IntervieweeInterview with Lynne Williamson

IntervieweeInterview with Winifred Lambrecht (American)

Date1996

Mediumreformatted digital files from audio cassette tape - MP3

DimensionsDuration (side 1): 24 Minutes, 58 Seconds Duration (side 2): 24 Minutes, 3 Seconds Duration (total runtime): 49 Minutes, 6 Seconds

ClassificationsInformation Artifacts

Credit LineConnecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program collections

CopyrightIn Copyright

Object number2015.196.609a-d

DescriptionCassette tape of a set of radio broadcast programs recorded with John Dankosky at WNPR Connecticut. The program was titled, "You'll Know Us By Our Songs." Performers and interviewees include Virgilio Cruz of Canto Isleño; Thupten Tenzin, Lakedhen Shingsur, and Dadon Dawadolma; Rosaire Lehoux and Les Copains; Ilias Kementzides; and Josephine McNamara. Supporting information shared by Ruth Glasser, Lynne Williamson, and Winifred Lambrecht. This tape also includes the radio broadcast of a program produced by Latino USA featuring Canto Isleño.

NotesSubject Note: "You'll Know Us By Our Songs - Connecticut Traditional Musicians and Their Communities," a 5-part radio series on Connecticut ethnic communities and their musicians, was produced by CCHAP in collaboration with John Dankosky of Connecticut Public Radio and first broadcast from March to September 1996. WNPR repeated the broadcasts throughout 1996 and 1997. Musicians were interviewed and some music recorded in the WNPR studios, then five feature programs on the musicians and their community were produced by John Dankosky. Artists featured in the radio series were Canto Isleño, a Puerto Rican música jibara group; Dadon Dawadolma, Thupten Tenzin, and Lakedhen Shingsur, Tibetan musicians living in Connecticut; Irish singer Josephine McNamara; Greek lyra player and National Heritage Fellow Ilias Kementzides; and Franco American fiddler Rosaire Lehoux and his group Les Joyeux Copains from Windham. For many of the artists, these recordings represented the only documentation of their music at the time.

The radio features examined the ways in which musical traditions both strengthen and draw from deep cultural roots. In selecting musicians for the series CCHAP and WNPR looked for those who were closely involved in their communities, artists whose personal stories reflected the history, character and the values of their cultural group and who showed deep commitment to serving that group. How these musicians dealt with moving to America from a beloved homeland, sometimes in forced exile, is expressed in their music. They have persisted in passing on traditions and language when so many pressures in contemporary society argue against this. Clearly there is intensive cultural preservation going on among ethnic groups in Connecticut and that brings both joy in the music and a sense of hope for a stronger society.

In 1998 CCHAP and WNPR developed the studio recordings into a CD called “Sounds Like Home: Connecticut Traditional Musicians,” a world music journey through Connecticut neighborhoods, that included recordings from the 1996 studio sessions. Artists featured on the CD include Canto Isleño, a Puerto Rican cuatro group; Lakedhen Shingsur, Tibetan musicians living in Connecticut; Irish singer Josephine McNamara; Greek lyra player and National Heritage Fellow Ilias Kementzides; Franco American fiddler Rosaire LeHoux and his group Les Joyeux Copains from Windham; a Cambodian mohory music ensemble led by Somaly and Khandarith Hay; and the Second Baptist Male Chorus, a traditional gospel group based in New Britain CT. Music from the CD can be heard on the Connecticut Historical Society YouTube channel. “Sounds Like Home” was produced by the Institute for Community Research and Connecticut Public Radio under grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Connecticut Humanities Council, with additional support from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts. Producers: John Dankosky and Lynne Williamson; 1998.

From the CD booklet notes written by Lynne Williamson: “For an old Yankee state, Connecticut has a surprising diversity in its cities, rural areas, and neighborhoods - 102 languages other than English are spoken in the home by Connecticut residents, according to the 1990 Census Bureau report. To highlight the importance and richness of Connecticut's quilted character, this recording presents a selection of the state's best traditional musicians from a wide variety of communities."

Biographical Note: Born in Gangtok, Sikkim in 1962, Lakedhen Shingsur is a natural musician who taught himself to play flute while at the Indo-Tibet Buddhist Cultural Institute school in West Bengal. He became a versatile musician also able to accompany on damyen. He formed an amateur dance and drama club which still exists to present Tibetan song and dance, learning songs from Tibetan elders living in Sikkim. For ten years he was a member of the Sikkim National Performing Arts Troupe, touring in India, Canada, the Middle East, and visiting the U.S. for the Festival of India in 1982. He has lived in Old Saybrook and Clinton, Connecticut since arriving in 1992.

Lakedhen's primary instrument is the transverse flute. Usually made of bamboo with six finger holes, these are played throughout the Himalayan region. As a working musician Lakedhen's repertoire included modern Indian film scores as well as the folk music of Tibet, Sikkim, and Nepal. He learned many songs from the director and other members of the song and drama troupe, representing a number of ethnic groups from the region. Love songs, traditional welcomes for guests, Buddhist spiritual lessons, historical events, dance songs, and odes to the beauty of Sikkim are some common folk song subjects.

Lakedhen has led a folk music and dance group from the Tibetan community in southeastern Connecticut, teaching students and performing at many community events. He was featured in the CD "Sounds Like Home - Connecticut Traditional Musicians".

"One of our songs is Dhana-Hain Roupaun: Sikkim the valley of rice, its smiling faces, its peace, prosperity and contentment, its imposing grandeur are all a part of its heritage. Another song is called Gha-To-Ki-To: An age old tradition of welcome. Guests are served chang, a millet brew, or soicha, butter tea, as a welcome in all Sikkimese homes."

Biographical Note: Thupten Tenzin's parents fled from the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1959, traveling on foot for about ninety days over the Himalayan mountains when he was three years old. The family settled in Ladakh, India, near the border with Tibet. At age 19, Thupten went to the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts in Dharmsala, India to train as a music and dance teacher. He was sponsored by Tibetan Children's Village (TCV), an organization dedicated to educating the children of nearly 100,000 Tibetan refugees living in India. Prime Minister Nehru said that Tibetans could send their children to any of the schools in India, but Dalai Lama said we need special schools for us, so we can keep alive our culture for Tibetan children. After an intensive three-year special course in both music and dance, TCV sent him back to Ladakh to teach in one of the five new Tibetan schools. He later moved to the TCV school in Patli-khul, developing a program in music and dance from the three principal regions of Tibet, organizing a performing troupe, and teaching Tibetan language.

Thupten's teacher at the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts was an old master musician named Lhutse who had trained with a folk opera group in Lhasa. Because he was learning many different instruments, songs, and dances, Thupten's instruction and practice lasted from early morning until evening. He became proficient in five instruments important in secular Tibetan music: damyen, a six-stringed lute which is often depicted in Buddhist teachings and paintings as a symbol of the harmony of existence, also appearing as a magical instrument in folk tales; gyumang, a type of zither played with a small hammer; piwang, a two-stringed fiddle in both large and small sizes, and bamboo flute.

These instruments often provide solo or ensemble accompaniment for folk dances which differ from region to region in Tibet. Thupten's repertoire included a secular, quite rigorous classical music which he can also compose. After moving to Norwalk in 1993, he formed a folk dance group with other Connecticut Tibetans, performing around New England for two years. Thupten's two daughters joined him from India in 1996. He passed away in the late 1990s.

Biographical Note: Dadon Dawa Dolma has been a leading singer and composer of popular music in Tibet and later in the U.S. Sales of her six solo albums, sung in Tibetan, have reached millions in Tibet, China, India, Taiwan, Bhutan, and Japan as well as Europe since she began recording in 1989. Her music is modern and powerful, combining traditional and contemporary Tibetan melodies and instruments. The words of Dadon's songs are written by her and other Tibetans such as a monk working for the Dalai Lama in Dharmasala, India.

Like most Tibetans in exile, Dadon has been fervently committed to informing the world about Tibet's loss of freedom and culture under Chinese domination. Courageously using her popularity to express strong feelings about the liberation of Tibet became too dangerous, so in 1992, Dadon and her then-husband Phumba walked over the Himalayas to refuge in Nepal and later India. They immigrated to Connecticut in 1993, where their second son Tenzin Tashi was born, settling in Middletown.

Dadon learned traditional Tibetan songs from her mother, a renowned singer, later studying violin and piano at the Beijing University of Nationalities. She played in the Tibetan National Orchestra, then studied voice at the Chinese Musical College. Often in the West, Tibetan culture is thought to be homogeneous. In fact, Dadon's song style features elements from many kinds of Tibetan music and dance forms including secular traditional and modern, religious, and classical. Like musician Thupten Tenzin, she knows and loves all of these styles, believing that Tibetan culture will survive and strengthen through both preservation and innovation. Also an actress in theatre and films, Dadon has performed at community events and at several large benefits for Tibet, including at Carnegie Hall. She formed a performing group with musicians based at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut in the 1990s, performing widely with this group and solo around the East Coast and for several large Tibet benefit concerts in New York City including the Tibetan Freedom Concert in 1997 along with Michael Stipe and other well-known stars. Dadon and her group performed at the Tibetan Festival at ICR during the Auspicious Signs exhibit in 1996.

"...I'm going to sing more for freedom, because in Tibet after the Chinese came they've broken lots of monasteries and they want Tibetan culture to disappear. They try to bring Tibetan kids to China to teach in the Chinese language and teach a very Chinese way. We worry about later, when the Tibetan language will be gone. Tibetan young people and others like to listen to my music, so I want to use this road to tell them how important our culture is, how important independence is...they have been learning the wrong way! They don't even know the truth, their story, our story! If I can sing songs about our true culture and what's really happened for us, they will know."

Biographical Note: Canto Isleño was formed by senior members of La Primera Orquesta de Cuatros, led by poet and cuatrista Virgilio Cruz, to fill a void in the cultural life of Hartford's largest ethnic group and to expand appreciation for traditional Puerto Rican music and poetry. Canto Isleño performed Puerto Rican música jíbara, the songs and poetry of the island's mountain farmers. Their repertoire included folk forms such as Puerto Rican seises and aguinaldos, along with joropas, marumbas, and semi-classical mazurcas, valses criollas and danzas. Canto Isleño performed at Charter Oak Cultural Center during the first traditional arts performers series organized by CCHAP in 1995-1996, and was selected for the Connecticut Commission on the Arts Touring Roster. Virgilio and Canto Isleño were interviewed and recorded for the WNPR broadcast series "You'll Know Us By Our Songs" in 1996 and are featured on the 1998 CCHAP/WNPR-produced CD "Sounds Like Home." In 1998, Virgilio moved back to Puerto Rico, a long-time dream of his. He is producing a book of décimas based on the vernacular speech of Puerto Rican campesinos.

Biographical Note: Rosaire Lehoux, born in Quebec in 1920 and raised on a small farm in Giroux, held a large repertoire of Quebecois fiddle tunes and spent his life playing fiddle at countless community events and dances in eastern Connecticut and Rhode Island. Rosaire was known for his “crooked tunes” and his unique way of holding the bow. Despite his age, he often jumped up to do a step dance at soirees, and he always kept the rhythm with his feet while playing fiddle. Rosaire served as a mentor to several apprentices in the program, including Colette Fournier and Nancy Lemme from Rhode Island and Daniel Boucher from Connecticut. Rosaire passed away in 2013.

Biographical Note: Josephine MacNamara sings pure unaccompanied ballads in the “Old Style” (sean nos) which she learned from her family, especially her father, and other singers in both Ireland and America. Through everyday songs she heard around the house and those she picked up at local ceilidhs Josephine has built up a large repertoire of sean nos songs in English. In 1958, 1959, and 1961 she won the prestigious All-Ireland championship contest for singing. She left the family farm in County Leitrim to move to the United States in 1963, returning to singing and set dancing after raising her family. Her recordings include Leitrim’s Hidden Treasure: The McNamara Family, and Sounds Like Home: Connecticut Traditional Musicians, a CCHAP co-production with WNPR. Apprentice Sheila Hogg studied with sean nos singer Bridget Fitzgerald and also with Josephine, and learned some of Josephine's repertoire and her particular ornamentation in the apprenticeship. (Source: https://www.itma.ie/michaelmcnamara/explore/alll-performers/josephine-mcnamara; http://www.irisharts.org.uk/project_lf.html)

Additional audio, video, and/or photographic materials exist in the archive relating to these artists.

Cataloging Note: This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services MA-245929-OMS-20.

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