Drepung Loseling Monks

Shamanism, ceremony and religion provide the foundation for the Drepung Loseling Monastery Monks, a group of multi-phonic singers who trace their origins to a monastery established near Lhasa, Tibet in 1416. Reaching out to an audience beyond the monastery walls, since 1990, the group has captured the world's attention. Their debut album, Tibetan Sacred Temple Music, reached the top twenty-five slot on the New Age charts in the United States and became a chart-topping hit in Canada. Their vocals, accompanied by twelve-foot horns, trumpets, drums, cymbals and bells, were heard on the soundtrack of the Golden Globe-nominated film, Seven Years In Tibet, and during Philip Glass's concert premier of his Academy Award-nominated score for Martin Scorsese's film, Kundun. Once the site of one of Tibet's largest monastic universities, the original monastery housed and schooled between ten and fifteen thousand monks/students, at its peak. It served as the residence for the second Dalai Lama in 1464. Thriving for more than five hundred years, the monastery became a victim of the Chinese Communist invasion of Tibet in 1959. When more than six thousand Tibetan monasteries were closed and destroyed, two hundred and fifty monks escaped and recreated the Drepung Loseling Monastery in the South Indian State of Karnataka. Introduced to most western listeners during a Sacred Music Sacred Dance world tour, in the late-1980s, the Drepung Loseling Monastery Monks have continued to share their singing with the world. ~ Craig Harris