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From top left: Irina, Tenzing, Rina, Yankee, Ashra

Music has always been a means to raise one’s voice and express dis­satisfaction. Women, once confined to their homes, are also starting to break social chains. Now they rock. Here are the thoughts and experiences of five women of different ages and backgrounds who have done so and made a name for them­selves as professional live musicians.

Rina Giri, 22, performs with the band Melody.

Tenzing H/yolmo, 26, is pas­sionately active in the field of music.

Irina Giri, 23, goes by the stage name Flekke and plays electronic music.

Ashra Kunwar, 23, is the front-woman of the all-girls band JOTs, and is also the win­ner of “Miss Heritage Interna­tional Nepal.”

Yankey Ongmu Lepcha,29, whose band April Rush won the Hits FM Awards for its debut single Tyo Hawa in the ‘new artist’ category, has 15 years of experience in music.

The beginning

Rina: I used to perform in school and college events, and one thing lead to another. I met a band member of Mel­ody while I was in grade 12 and from there I began my live-singing career.

Tenzing: I never thought of being a singer and I have never received official training in music. But I used to record songs as a chorus singer. I consider myself lucky that I started singing with the pop­ular band ‘The Electrix’. The opportunity presented itself and I grabbed it.

Irina: I started with the help of my friend Pranav Manand­har. I was casually asked to play at an event my sister organized. I used to perform in school and even during my stay at Norway. When I was in Vancouver, I attended a live music show, which opened up new avenues for me.

Ashra: It began with the school choir, eventually leading to a performance in the ‘Women in Concert’ in 2014. I was the only art­ist without a record­ing whose audition was selected. The experience encour­aged me, and it kicked off a series of concerts. In 2017 I joined the JOTs band.

Y a n k e y : Coming from a Christian family, I had a strong church and choir background. I also went to a Scottish missionary school where music and singing were an important part of the cur­riculum. I was in grade 10 when I performed in my first stage show.

Inspiration

Rina: Ram and Laxman Dangol, whom I consider my brothers. They encouraged me to perform on stage.

Tenzing: I really don’t know. As I said, I never thought of being a singer and I haven’t thought of what inspired me.

Irina: My family, especially my brother and sisters. They were interested in music, and when I was young they used to buy cassettes and play music, which I also listened to. And movies. I watch a lot of them, and the soundtracks inspire me.

Ashra: From my childhood, I used to listen to the gothic band ‘Evanescence’, whose singer Amy Lee I really liked.

Yankey: All my fellow musicians. I don’t follow or idolize anyone. Every­body is different good in their own ways.

Besides music

Rina: I’m pursuing a bachelor’s degree at the Lalit Kala Campus.

Tenzing: It’s mostly music for me.

Irina: I am a freelancer. I like writing, making music and creating videos.

Ashra: I am pursuing a mas­ter’s degree in Environmental Science. I’m also a founder and project director at an organization that works on women empowerment.

Yankey: I work at a travel and trekking company.

Acceptance

Rina: It’s obviously difficult for a girl to work late nights and expect her family to support her. The first day I remember I came home at 10 pm, my mom got scared and told me to never go out again. I argued with her, and my band members convinced her that they’ll be responsible for my safety.

Tenzing: It was difficult in the beginning—late nights and Thamel. But my parents knew about my passion for music, and when my relatives visited Thamel and heard me sing live, they proudly shared it with my parents.

Irina: My mother will always be worried when I’m not home by a certain time. But I’m also lucky that my family is liberal and under­standing.

Ashra: The difficulty fades away with time. It was a dif­ferent story when I was in school, but now that I’m doing my master’s, my family under­stands and supports me. Usu­ally, my father picks me up after my gigs.

Yankey: It has never been difficult for me to convince my family as they all appreci­ate music and everyone sings and plays an instrument. Plus I started performing and touring from an early age; I didn’t leave them with too many options. Now I’m not only a performer and musi­cian but also the mother of a five-year-old daughter, so I have to consider her mood as well.

Future plans

Rina: I want to focus on non-commercial songs and organize and perform in char­ity shows. I also want to start an all-girls band.

Tenzing: I don’t have any specific plans as such. I will go with the flow and grab any opportunity that comes my way. But music will always be there in my life.

Irina: I don’t have any spe­cific plans either. I will keep pursuing my interests like writing, making music and creating videos.

Ashra: Our band is plan­ning to release an original soon. I’ll be working part-time at ICIMOD. I want to combine my passion for my studies and music to organize a ‘Climate Reality Concert’ every year.

Yankey: Who knows what the future holds? I’ll continue singing as long as my vocal chords support me

The film fes­tival started eight years ago, and Kath­mandu has hosted five of them. The theme this year is ‘Women Empowerment’. “December 10 marks the 70th anniversary of the UN Uni­versal Declaration on Human Rights,” said Renaud Meyer, UNDP country director for Nepal. “This film festival is the beginning of the celebrations which will be held through­out the year to mark the anni­versary,” he added. UNDP has been asso­ciated with NHRIFF for the past two years. Also, this year, the orga­nizers plan to take the festival to other provinces.

The center believes films are the most influential tool to advance human rights, jus­tice and peace. Films offer an effortless way to reach people. They appeal to the emotion of the audience, say the organiz­ers, and can spur marginal­ized people into action.

“I still recollect a movie I watched 65 years ago but can barely recall a book I read recently,” said Anup Raj Sharma, the NHRC chair­man, who was also the chief guest at the inaugu­ration program. “The visuals leaves a lasting mark on peo­ple’s minds,” he added.

The film festival provides a stage for filmmakers and rights activists to come together and exchange ideas. It also helps put Nepal on the radar of the international community.

Moreover, the festival, according the film center, offers an occasion for Nepali filmmakers learn about the work of internationals filmmakers. At the festival, the best and the second-best films will bag a cash prize of Rs 50,000 while the third-best film will get Rs 40,000. The judges will be Tsering Rhitar Sherpa (Nepal), Andrea Morghen (Italy), Zohreh Zamani (Iran), Noriko Yuasa ( Japan) and Angeli Bayani (Philippines).

Sometimes life turns out to be a fairy tale and dreams become reality. Stories with dramatic scenes and twists may elicit rapturous applause within the walls of a movie theatre but not beyond, as such stories are not realis­tic enough. But such tales do exist, the journey of “Of Quiet Echoes” being one of them.Of Quiet Echoes is a five member ‘progressive metal­core’ band which was formed just two months before the KCM Inter College Music Competition (KMC ICMC) held last week. Initially, all that the band members had was a passion for music and a drum set, but no other musi­cal equipment whatsoever to fulfill their long-time desire to participate in the competi­tion. With rented equipment and once-a-week rehearsals, the band, representing Little Angels College, beat all odds against them, and won the prestigious Judges’ Favorite Award at the 14th ICMC.

“We were quite nervous in the beginning, but once we were on stage, we gave the musicians in us free rein and performed our best,” says Manish Shrestha, the band’s vocalist. “The experience was surreal. The crowd appreci­ated our music and to add to our thrill, we became the judges’ favorite.”

The band was formed with the initiative of Shrestha and guitarist Aaron Raigai who draw inspiration from the international band Linkin Park. The duo was initially part of a punk rock band but later realized that the partic­ular genre of music no longer excited them and they wanted something more extreme. The search for like-minded mem­bers followed, and together with friends they previously played with and contacts they met online, Of Quiet Echoes was formed.

After going through several line-up changes, the crew now comprises guitarists Aaron and Aneesh Raigai, bass guitarist Pranesh Singh, drummer Archan Tamang and vocalist Manish Shrestha, with Anish Bahadur Thapa Magar handling responsibility as the band manager. Magar builds contacts, gets the band some stage time, and clears up misunderstandings among band members.

“Metal music is still stig­matized in our society, which considers this genre of music ‘satanic’,” says Aaron Raigai. But he is determined not to let such stigmatization dampen their passion. He believes the band has plenty to offer for Nepali music lovers. ‘Of Quiet Echoes’ not only plays hardcore metal music, but also sprinkles some aesthetic atmospheric harmonies in between, which makes it differ from the rest. “There’s a lot of effort to construct our music, but, for an outsider, it seems all about screaming and shouting,” Raigai added.

The 15-year-old guitarist Pranesh, who started playing guitar at the age of two, laugh­ingly adds, “My mother tells me not to headbang, as she fears it might break my neck.” His comment generated laugh­ter in the room. Pranesh states his family supports him, since his family has a thick back­ground in music, but it is not the same in Manish’s family. The vocalist says that he is regularly advised to quit Metal and involve himself in another genre of music.

The band had been per­forming various shows previ­ously, only to fulfil their pas­sion and meet the requests of friends. Their first earning of Rs 25,000 came from the KMC ICMC. The band is slated to perform in Purple Haze soon and is also working on releas­ing a Long Playing album in the near future.

With no musical equipment (apart from the drum set) and little time to practice, the band accomplished something incredible when the opportu­nity knocked.

Apart from the judges’ favor­ite, individual awards were also given out to the band members—Archan Tamang (Best Drummer) and Manish Shrestha (Best Vocal). The rec­ognition they received at the KMC ICMC was a major boost that has fired their zeal

YouTube, which started as an online video-sharing platform in early 2005, soon grew into a behemoth: today, almost 30 million peo­ple watch five billion videos on the site every single day. Alexa ranks YouTube the sec­ond most popular website in the world, after Google. The site has come a long way, as it today functions not just as a vehicle for con­tent-creators to showcase their creations, but increas­ingly also as a money-making platform. Various YouTube stars now dedicate all their working time to it.

Feliz Kjellberg’s ‘PewDiePie,’ with more than 60 million subscribers, is the most subscribed channel on the website, allowing its Swed­ish creator to earn around US $12 million annually. There are other artists who are also mak­ing good money on YouTube.

“Even in Nepal the notion of someone building a career out of YouTube isn’t farfetched,” says Adeel Manandhar, Man­aging Director of ‘SongsNe­pal,’ a YouTube channel.

Mockery and money

Akash Sedai, better known as prankster Akash, started making prank videos and posting it on YouTube five years ago. Today, his chan­nel ‘Nepali Pranksters’ has over 170,000 subscribers. His success, in crossing 100,000 subscribers, has been recog­nized by YouTube with a silver play-button, making ‘Nepali Pranksters’ among the most viewed channels in Nepal.

Every 100,000 views on YouTube bring Sedai around Rs 8,000-10,000. On average, he earns Rs 70,000-80,000 a month. Sedai has earned as much as Rs 300,000 from a single video, ‘Nepali Boomb Prank,’ which was viewed over two million times. He has also signed various sponsorship deals to boost his already healthy earnings.

“I am satisfied with my income from YouTube,” says Sedai.

YouTube is the most popu­lar website in Nepal. But even though people like Akash earn handsomely from it, what they get is puny compared with what other YouTube artists make abroad. YouTube earn­ings depend on ad revenues. As digital marketing is still in its infancy in Nepal, there is not a lot of money to be made.

Bright future

“As of today, a Nepali You­Tuber cannot fully sustain himself just by uploading vid­eos,” says Girish Khatiwada, a music artist and YouTube vlogger. “Production cost is high and returns low.”

Khatiwada is a popular Nepali rapper who has been able to gain a sizable online following, with over 130,000 subscribers to his ‘Girish Kha­tiwada’ channel.

“Ideally, YouTube should be used as a platform where you build your online presence and which you can leverage to pursue a career in showbiz,” Khatiwada advises.

According to the Nepal Telecommunications Author­ity (NTA), every day, 6,581 new internet users are being added in Nepal, and pres­ently one in two Nepalis use the internet. Nepal is digi­tizing. As it does so, online marketing revenues will also increase, further boosting the earnings of online content creators.

“The day when Nepalis can aspire to be full-time YouTu­bers may not be far off,” Khati­wada says.  

No visitor to Kathmandu’s Thamel or Pokhara’s Lakeside this past tourist season (from September to November) could have failed to notice unusually big crowds of foreign visitors compared to the same time in previous years. The year 2017 was indeed a high-water mark for Nepali tourism as a record number of foreign tour­ists came calling. The Department of Immigration data shows a total of 940,693 tourists visited Nepal in 2017, easily surpassing the previous record of 803,092 in 2012. If we fac­tor in tourist arrivals by various land routes, the 2017 figure will easily cross one million, according to the Nepal Tourism Board (NTB).

There has in fact been a steady uptick in the number of foreign tour­ists since the low of 2015, when, due to the earthquakes and the border blockade, just 538,970 of them vis­ited Nepal.

The top-five tourist-contribut­ing countries in 2017 were: India (160,832), China (104,664), the US (79,146), the UK (51,058) and Sri Lanka (45,361).

The tourism board deserves some credit. It has in recent times made a concerted effort to promote Nepal abroad. In April 2017 it signed up to promotion schemes with the BBC, Trip Advisor and Reuters. The board also initiated online and TV promo­tional campaigns in different parts of the world. Nepal, for instance, participated in the 21st East Med­iterranean International Tourism and Travel Exhibition (EMITT) in Istanbul, allowing the country to showcase its tourist attractions in the Middle East for the first time.

Another successful promotional campaign was the first-of-its-kind ‘International Photography Compe­tition on Nepal’ held in the Chinese city of Chengdu in December, 2017. At least 600,000 Chinese and for­eign tourists visited the exhibit of photos related to tourism, art and culture of Nepal.

“We have been rigorous in pro­moting Nepal abroad following the 2015 earthquakes,” says Sunil Shar­ma, officiating director, PR and pub­licist branch of the NTB. “Not just the NTB, tourism entrepreneurs, other responsible government bod­ies, our industries, each became an unofficial brand ambassador for the country”. Brand Nepal also got a fillip when the country was voted the second ‘Best Travel Destination’ in ‘Adventure Travel’ category of the 2017 National Geographic Travelers Award.

Nepal relies heavily on tourism. According to the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC), in 2017 tourism accounted for 7.5 percent of Nepal’s GDP, and the country was ranked 37th, among the 185 coun­tries surveyed on tourism’s direct contribution to GDP. In 2017 tourism supported 427,000 jobs in Nepal.

The mood among hoteliers is upbeat. “We had 81 percent room occupancy in 2016,” said Phurba Sherpa, Director, sales and market­ing for Hotel Shangri-la. “In 2017, occupancy went up to 87 percent and in the first quarter of 2018 we are already expecting 91 percent of occupancy.”

Yet there are skeptics who argue that new tourist numbers should be put into perspective. For instance, according to the Hotel Associa­tion of Nepal, overall hotel room occupancy in 2017 was just 60 per­cent, the same as in 2016. This is because more and more hotels are being opened, says Binayak Shah, the association’s general secretary. “We currently have the capacity to accommodate 1.6 million tourists but only around 1 million came at the peak of 2017. The supply far outstrips demand.”

On the other hand, says Tek Mahat, the CEO of Trekking Agen­cies’ Association of Nepal, hotel occupancy gives only partial picture of tourist interest, as it does not fac­tor in the tremendous growth in vil­lage tourism and home-stay option. “We have for instance been trying to connect tourists with people of Annapurna and Everest regions. Tourists value this opportunity to get to know Nepalis and their habits up close,” says Mahat.

Nepal has the potential to wel­come even more tourists. After all, “a tourist who comes to trek in Nepal won’t get the same experience anywhere else in the world,” says Sharma of NTB.

With its ‘Tourism Vision 2020’ Nepal plans to bring two million tourists by 2020. But delays in con­struction of vital tourism-supporting infrastructures like the second inter­national airport in Nijgadh, Bara and the regional international airport in Pokhara make the task difficult. Nepal’s only international airport is crowded and mismanaged. The condition of the roads and highways is no better. Nepal has a lot going for it, say tourism entrepreneurs, but it would be dangerous to relax, as the competition for foreign tourists in South Asia is stiff.