Culture Brothers is one person, Karma Lama; musician, singer, songwriter, composer, record producer and proud Tibetan, who lives in Anchorage, Alaska and in Europe.
BIOGRAPHY
Karma Lama was born in Kathmandu, Nepal, in 1973. His parents had been forced to flee Tibet after the brutal Chinese occupation, which began in 1959. While Karma was still a small child, His Holiness The 16th Karmapa gave advice to the family to let him join, at the age of 7, the Swayambhunath Tibetan Buddhist monastery, the famous Monkey Temple, in Kathmandu, and so he did. He was a monk for 9 years, studying Buddhism with great teachers, an education that focused on compassion and music. From an early age he was assigned the duty of playing the Tibetan drum during the daily ceremonies (generally 3 hours a day, some times the whole day, every day of the year). Later he began playing the Tibetan dung-chen, a 15-foot long horn/trumpet type of instrument, which is played in pairs.
He left the monastery as a young man, but continued to live on Monkey Temple hill, where he developed a close link to the Newari Nepalese and Indian cultures and learned their music. As Karma says, “music in Nepal is everywhere”.
In 1996 he moved again, making his home in the mountains of Alaska.
Over the years he has also spent a lot of time at Kalalau beach and along the Na Pali coast, in Kaua’i, Hawaii, living in the jungle and creating music with a strong connection to mother earth, such as “Deep in the jungle”.
