Phurpa are a group of Russian artists brought together in the mid 1990’s by Alexi Tegin and based at Fabrique of Cardinal Art in Moscow. The concentration of their work is on traditional ritual music and more specifically on the Father Tantra of Bon and Buddhist liturgies. Phurpa is named after one of the fiver tutelary deities in the Bon tradition. The ritual Tibetan instruments as used by the ensemble include the following: dunchen, gyaling, silnyen, bub, damaru, kanling, nga, shang.The ensemble adheres to the rgyud-skad tradition of Tantric overtone chanting. That is fairy much a potted version of their release material and to consider doing justice in critiquing such activity requires a great devotion to both traditional devotional music as well as to Buddhist sensibility of which is a rarefied skill set in itself. It also traces the roots of the music to pre-Buddhist shamanistic rites and suggests a continuum between through cultural practice of the core metaphysical and philosophical systems of these cultures.
It is hard from the perspective of contemporary western culture to see this work as other than that of academic and artistic conservation and recreation. If the works themselves contain the essence of the traditions and the traditions are the core to maintaining and holding together the culture then such works are key to the survival of the culture. If the culture and philosophy are dynamic then the necessity for the continuance of specific practices are less than certain as essential to transmit culture, but rather created a frame of the continuance of a singular traditional form. One can consider it from technical aspects, of the combination of polyphonic voices in the chants in the lower keys and the use of ritual instrumentation in much the same way as the choral is maintained in western christian traditions. However many may baulk at the notion of the metaphysical at all in contemporary times and the question whether there is content here besides the artistry of the chants is one you will have to answer for yourself.
The album was curated and given art direction by the prolific Stephen O’Malley, who amongst other projects is a founding member of Sunn O))). The entire performance of this album can be viewed on Dragontape.
Innerversitysound.
