- Sep 3, 2023
- 6 min read

YUNGCHEN LHAMO: ONE DROP OF KINDNESS

Imagine a life based on unconditional love. A life filled with compassion, lived in service to others. A life of prayers, offerings, and songs. Now imagine a voice so unique and beautiful, so utterly irresistible, that it makes the birds perch in the trees and the wild animals stop dead in their tracks and listen. A voice as pure as a Tibetan singing bowl. A voice with a range that astonishes and a strength, a vibration, that uplifts and restores. For welcome - welcome - to the wonder that is Yungchen Lhamo.

By Jane Cornwell

YUNGCHEN LHAMO with His Holiness The DALAI LAMA

"I sing to help transform people's minds and make them better human beings," says the globally renowned Tibetan singer. "We are living in difficult times. But together, bit by bit, we can change the world." - YUNGCHEN LHAMO

Lhamo's seventh album, One Drop of Kindness, is a glorious reminder, a golden encouragement, for us to do just that. Co-produced with John Alevizakis at Little Buddha Studio in the forested slopes of Sierra Nevada, California, the recording is a new version of an ancient practice, a work whose seven songs - or better yet, seven offerings - are spiced by musicians playing everything from piano, flute, drums and electric guitar to didgeridoo, Indian fiddle, Turkish cümbüs-oud and Armenian duduk-oboe. This is music as it was originally conceived: as a tool to heal, to build communities, to provide a universal language. To open hearts, to share influences, to unite cultures. "Musically I wanted to do something different, more instinctive and rhythmic," says New York-based Lhamo, who has toured more than 80 countries since releasing her award-winning debut Tibetan Prayer in 1995 and the seminal Tibet Tibet Tibet on Real World Records the following year.

"John has enough instruments in his studio for a small orchestra. We picked a few and started creating." The main instrument on One Drop of Kindness is - what else? - the voice. Warm, bright, rich in emotion. It mesmerises with its melisma. It fills with blessings with its vibrato. It flows seamlessly from low throaty throat singing to long sustained high notes, with an otherworldly beauty and the kind of perfectly smooth sound waves that make studio engineers shake their heads in disbelief. A voice that offers potential for spiritual awakening. "The older I get, the better I understand how to convey the healing of sound to people, regardless of their religion, belief or non-belief," says Lhamo, whose name, given to her by a lama at birth in Lhasa, Tibet, means "Goddess of Melody". That in 1989 she left Tibet, making the month-long journey on foot across the Himalayas to Dharamsala, India, to follow her spiritual practice. In 1993 he moved to Australia and in 2000 to New York. She now lives in Kingston, upstate New York, a city with historic churches and a thriving arts community, not far from the Catskill Mountains.

Famous for being the first Tibetan singer to be signed to a major label, Lhamo has collaborated with the likes of Bono, Billy Corgan, and Annie Lennox, and has graced the stages of such illustrious venues as Carnegie Hall, the Royal Albert Hall, and the Sydney Opera House, standing still in the spotlight to sing a cappella, with a quivering voice and a costume the colour of pearls.

All this, she says, is secondary to her purpose: to encourage compassion for all beings. To encourage acts of kindness. After setting up the One Drop of Kindness Foundation in 2004 with the aim of helping those in need in Tibet (since then, the charity has supported projects in the US, Nepal, and India), in 2013 Lhamo decided to move away from acting internationally and focus on working with the homeless and mentally ill in designated centres in Kingston. "Many people in the West live in fear. They feel isolated and unloved. I tell them that they are beautiful, that every human life is beautiful," she continues. "When the people I work with are sick or dying, I stay with them. I wash them. I cook for them. I sing to them. These are my offerings. Just as the pandemic hit, Lhamo had finished recording her sixth album, the meditative Awakening, which was released last year and underlined the importance of introducing compassion-based spirituality into our self-centred narratives. One Drop of Kindness was probably meant to be. In California, as part of a fundraising tour for theOne Drop of Kindness Foundation, Lhamohappened to come across - or was energetically directed to - Alevizakisand his fortuitously titled Little Buddha studio. "When I opened the door and saw the unusual instruments and felt JonJon [Alevizakis]'s good energy, I knew I would make a record there," she says. Alevizakis' passion for the transformative potential of trance music, for dance and music as medicine, matched Lhamo's chanted prayers. Over two days, with Lhamo on vocals, mantras, and energy in spades ("I have all the words in my head") and Alevizakis on keyboards, banyo, oud, cümbüs and guitars, they improvised, created from scratch. Musicians passed by or were added later. Seven songs. Titled in English, sung in Tibetan. Sent - with loving kindness - to the world. The first song, 'Sound Healing', weaves the haunting drone of the didgeridoo, that earth-frequency instrument of Australia's First Nations, into a mantra designed to repair and restore, as Lhamo's voice - always majestic, sometimes with multiple celestial cues - sets out to pave the way to enlightenment. A testament to feminine healing energy, "Awakening Through Sounds" brings delicate piano chords and soulful duduk passages to a mantra designed to calm the restless monkey mind, to bring balance, relief, and presence. The dramatic, slow-building, deftly paced "Overcoming Obstacles" is a string-driven homage to Guru Rinpoche, who brought India's spiritual teachings to Tibet in the 8th century. The song's title - and its sentiments of freedom and possibility - could well apply to Lhamo herself. "It is true that I have overcome many obstacles," she says. "I am a woman. I didn't speak English. I only sang in Tibetan. I had no band. I travelled alone. But I had a voice, and I carried it with me." Augmented with bells, shakers and found sounds of village life, "Perfect Compassion" honours Om Mani Padme Hum, the well-known Mani mantra of compassion, whose six syllables each have a colour, a visual form and, when chanted, a demonstrated vibrational power to transform negative into positive. "I have this Mani mantra on my prayer wheel, always spinning," says Lhamo, on most of whose albums an image of the Mani mantra appears, and whose lips continually move in prayer. "Being Courageous" fuses Lhamo's gorgeous harmonics with North African and Middle Eastern trance sounds in a life-affirming and rhythmically thrilling way. The cinematic "Dedication To My Teacher" is a tender and vivid ode to those who are determined to live their lives with sincerity, without ego. Dream Song" reminds us of our potential to do good in every waking moment, and the life-enhancing lessons that come to us in our sleep. One Drop of Kindness. An album of love, compassion, offerings, and song. A reminder that together we can make a difference. "Kindness is recognised as a virtue in many cultures and religions," says Yungchen Lhamo. "A single act of kindness, however big or small, can change a life and remind us that we are connected. That we all inhale and exhale. That we all share the same earth and the same sky." She pauses and smiles, "It's really very simple," she says. "One drop of kindness can make an ocean of difference.