Dadon Dawa Dolma
DaDon Dawa Dolma (b. 1968) has been a leading singer and composer of popular music in Tibet. 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.
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. 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, and performed on the East Coast and for several large Tibet benefit concerts in New York City. The group performed at the Tibetan Festival at ICR during the Auspicious Signs exhibit.
"...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."
