Do not be daunted by the seven-hundred-plus pages of this book. Though its size undoubtedly gives some sense of the hours and years of dedicated work by many to make it happen, this book will carry you through its pages with swift ease, like on the great wings of Khyung.
This volume offers from the onset reverence, honor, and a sense of shared authorship to the tradition-bearers of Shépa. The acknowledgements state that this work is made possible by “individual intellectual input and collective cultural commitments [of the Choné community]” (ix). The book is front-loaded with historical, cultural, and analytical insights to help frame the following passages of lyrical transcription. Before fully understanding what Shépa is, the reader gets to know the many individuals and collaborative initiatives necessary in making a study like this one possible. Here, the authors thoroughly explain the approach, experience, and reasoning behind their fieldwork methods and translation choices.
The preface opens with a vignette exemplifying the complex cultural context of contemporary Shépa performance—the tension between older and younger generational interests and the forces of modernity, marginality, and institutionalized cultural heritage preservation that push and pull them. I would have appreciated many more vignettes like the one in the preface, as it evokes a vivid sense of lived experience, but the rest of the book proceeds with a more formal, analytical tone. The introduction dives into an overview of the historical, geographic, religious, and sociocultural elements that co-constitute the Choné people and their Shépa performance style. The authors aptly acknowledge the challenges of trying to define the mutable, shifting thing that is oral performance, and include both local perceptions and broader conventions of Shépa. At its most basic, Shépa means explanation or elucidation in Tibetan and is an “encyclopedic collection of antiphonal songs practiced by a Tibetan subgroup known as Choné people residing in Kenlho Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Gansu Provence in Northwest China” (1).
The introduction moves on to consider the positive and negative impacts of formalizing Shépa performance through its enlistment as an item of Intangible Cultural Heritage by the local government. Wedding conventions are highlighted as a quintessential event in which Shépa takes place within Choné. Throughout the book, the authors show how “Choné marriage customs provide a lens through which we can directly observe how Shépa has bridged [these] abstract notions and cultural objects, and how its performative tradition brought local customs to life” (27). Finally, the form and content of Shépa are held up for comparison to other Tibetan oral performance styles and literary texts.
The remaining sections of the book are titled after and comprised of transcriptions of the seven primary Shépa in Choné: Khyung, Rübel, Jikten Chakluk, Chémar, Da, Lönpo Garchen, and Zhanglu and Tsalu, in that order. I am curious why the authors chose to order the book in this way, as they make it quite clear that Chémar is always first in performance order. Each section begins with a short introduction to the specific topic and a summary of the text’s content and meaning. Then, the Shépa performance is transcribed into Tibetan and translated into English and Mandarin. Footnotes give alternative Tibetan phrasing for various stanzas, and the authors have made clear that the primary text they present is a compilation of multiple accounts by different performers in order to compose the “most complete” rendition of each performance for the book. Therefore, they note, many Shépa are performed in part or as shorter versions of what is offered in the book.
One of the most exciting interventions in this book is its navigation as a trilingual work. By presenting the entire text in Tibetan, English, and Mandarin, Shépa becomes a unique offering that sets it apart from other works in Tibetan cultural studies and leaves it well positioned to intrigue a variety of audiences. This book is uniquely valuable not only as an object of research for scholars of Tibetan oral tradition and culture, but also as a resource for the Choné people and particularly Shépa tradition bearers. It serves as a delightful opportunity for any English, Tibetan, or Mandarin language student, and it exemplifies many of the best practices in contemporary folkloric research methods. As a native English speaker and a student of Tibetan language and culture, I was delighted to practice my reading skills in both Tibetan prose and poetry. While the English translation successfully replicates tempo, it predictably loses much of the cadence of the Tibetan poetic form. Whatever insights I gained through my limited proficiency in the Tibetan language also highlighted the nuances I must have missed due to my inability to engage with the Chinese text.
There are no closing remarks to the book; it simply moves from the last section of Shépa to illustrations and references. I deeply wish there were more photographs, either at the end or throughout the book. The book’s few photographs come with only sparse captions and no commentary. While the endnotes of each section provide greater detail on the Shépa text and context, there are many topics introduced throughout the book that beg to be explored further. Inquiries into the use of Shépa motifs outside of the performative context, the role of gender and social hierarchies within performance and among the communities, the way Shépa texts address international relationships over time, and many more directions for research remain open. This work is both a great accomplishment and a launching point for continued study.
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[Review length: 907 words • Review posted on January 29, 2025]