The Sherpa Song Project

January 24, 2023

2022 Wall Scholars, Pasang Yangjee Sherpa and Michele Koppes have received Catalyst Collaboration Funding to support a number of activities in the Khumbu region of Nepal.

In May 2023, Pasang Yangee Sherpa and Michelle Koppes along with 2 graduate research assistants will trek to the Khumbu region in Nepal to support a Sherpa Elder-led endangered song project by recording Sherpa songs with, and for the community. This will be complemented with acoustic field recordings of the landscape to capture the places the songs are situated in. The group will also set up consultation meetings with the community along the valley to identify research needs, concerns and collaboration possibilities to address the climate and nature emergency.

Learnings will be shared with the academic community as well as the Sherpa and other Indigenous communities here in BC as part of building long-term, meaningful, relational research practices. Potential outputs of the project will be in multimedia format (Storymap, podcast, performance) in addition to scholarly publications.