¹ For more on the idea of multiaccentual space and acoustemology, see Eisenberg, Andrew, “Islam, Sound, and Space: Acoustemology and Muslim Citizenship on the Kenyan Coast”, in Music, Sound, and Space: Transformations of Public and Private Experience, (ed.) Born, Georgina (Cambridge, 2014), pp. 186–202.Google Scholar

² Feld, Steven, “Waterfalls of Song: An Acoustemology of Place Resounding in Bosavi, Papua New Guinea”, in Senses of Place, (eds.) Feld, Steven and Basso, Keith (Santa Fe, NM, 1996), pp. 91–136.Google Scholar

³ Marx, Karl, Grundrisse, translated bu Nicolaus, Martin (London and New York, 1973).Google Scholar

⁴ Leigh Pigg, Stacy, “Inventing Social Categories through Place: Social Presentation and Development in Nepal.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 34 (1992), pp. 491–513 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Saubhagya Shah, “Throes of a Fledgling Nation.” Himal 6 (1993), pp. 7-10.

⁵ Bhattarai, Baburam, Politico-Economic Rationale of People's War, 2nd edition (Kathmandu, 2006)Google Scholar.

⁶ Kolff, Dirk, Naukar, Rajput, and Sepoy: The Ethno-history of the Military Labour Market in Hindustan, 1450-1850 (New York, 2002)Google Scholar.

⁷ The Indian army uses the spelling “Gorkha” for their regiments of Nepali soldiers, which remained in India after 1947. Nepali speakers across the northern subcontinent often refer to themselves as Gorkhali, and this term has also been used for the language; “Gorkha” as an ethnonym for Nepali speakers living in India is a twentieth-century development.

⁸ Orsini, Francesca, Love in South Asia (Cambridge, 2006)Google Scholar.

⁹ Kolff, Naukar, Rajput, and Sepoy; Michael Hutt, Devkota's Muna-Madan: Translation and Analysis (Kathmandu, 1996)Google Scholar.

¹⁰ March, Kathryn, “Two Houses and the Pain of Separation in Tamang Narratives from Highland Nepal”, in Songs, Stories, Lives: Gendered Dialogues and Cultural Critique, (ed.) Raheja, Gloria (New Delhi, 2003)Google Scholar; Narayan, Kirin, “Singing from Separation: Women's Voices in and about Kangra Folksongs”, Oral Tradition 12 (1997), pp. 25–53 Google Scholar; Narayan, Kirin, “Birds on a Branch: Girlfriends and Wedding Songs in Kangra”, Ethos 14 (1987), pp. 47–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹¹ Smith, Visaladevarasa, p. 57, cited in Kolff, Naukar, Rajput, and Sepoy, p. 76.

¹² Alter, Joseph S., Moral Materialism: Sex and Masculinity in Modern India (Delhi, 2011)Google Scholar. Kolff, Naukar, Rajput, and Sepoy.

¹³ Stirr, Anna, Singing Across Divides: Music and Intimate Politics in Nepal (Oxford and New York, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁴ I am grateful to Santanu Das for bringing this song to my attention, and to Ram Kumar Singh for helping with transcription.

¹⁵ Das, Santanu, ‘The Indian Sepoy in the First World War’, British Library (London, 2014)Google Scholar http://www.bl.uk/world-war-one/articles/the-indian-sepoy-in-the-first-world-war (accessed 24 February 2017).

¹⁶ Note on transcription: I give priority to the sound of what was sung and to visually representing poetic meter in the Nepali, so some spellings are nonstandard. And I follow colloquial Nepali Romanisation conventions and use ch and chh, instead of c and ch as in Sanskrit conventions.

¹⁷ Perhaps the name of a river, as I have translated it, or perhaps he means “susāī”, “whistling”, a term commonly used to describe the sound of flowing streams.

¹⁸ Jyān literally means “life” but also “body” – something like “incarnation” in the material sense, the material manifestation of life, different from juni, which is the time-span of “this life” as opposed to past and future lives. He uses this word to refer to himself and to other people, as well as sometimes to his body. This is common in songs and some rural, colloquial speech today as well. I have translated it differently in different verses according to the context. Since it appears so much throughout the song, it could also be treated as a ṭhego – a word used not for its meaning but to fill out the syllables of the meter. I have translated as a meaningful word and not a ṭhego, but either way it does not change the meaning much. Jiu is another word for body that he also uses, which connotes only the material body.

¹⁹ Charī (“birdie”) is often used to refer to a girl in folk songs.

²⁰ While the song is quite clear here, I do not understand what a leaf-bowl from Delhi is supposed to signify in this context. It is still possible that I am mishearing /t/ as /d/, in which case “tilli pāt” would refer to leaves that were shining rather than coming from Delhi.

²¹ Here he is changing the last phrase to rhyme with the next half of the couplet. So torīko phul phulchha (mustard flowers bloom) is the phrase that he is throwing out.

²² The two lines of this couplet refer to funerary rituals – washing the body, making a cremation fire with straw as tinder.

²³ Tolā is a measure of weight. One tolā equals 12 grams. As to why he uses this particular number, tīn tolā is a common phrase in songs, often referring to gold. I think the phrase is tīn tolā and not, for example, chār tolā, because people find the alliteration pleasing.

²⁴ Bikram (Subi), Surendra Shah, Nepali Lokgitko Jhalak (Kathmandu, 2006)Google Scholar.

²⁵ Chalmers, Rhoderick, “Pandits and Pulp Fiction: Popular Publishing and the Birth of Print Capitalism in Banaras”, Studies in Nepali History and Society 7 (2002), pp. 35–97 Google Scholar; Chalmers, Rhoderick, “When Folk Culture Met Print Culture: Some Thoughts On The Commercialisation, Transformation and Propagation of Traditional Genres in Nepali”, Contributions to Nepalese Studies 31 (2004), pp. 243–56Google Scholar; Stirr, Anna, “Sounding and Writing a Nepali Public Sphere: The Music and Language of Jhyaure”, Asian Music 46, 1 (2015), pp. 3–38 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁶ However, this melody is not in the Asare raga of the hills of central and western Nepal, which has further associations with rice planting and thus even greater associations with love. As shown in Figure 2, the melody of Jasbahdur's song is in what could be identified as a major scale, yet without the characteristic patterns of any particular raga, classical or otherwise, as far as I am aware. This type of Nepali folk song is not usually attributed to any particular raga.

²⁷ Chalmers, “Pandits and Pulp Fiction”; Orsini, Francesca, The Hindi Public Sphere (New Delhi, 2009)Google Scholar; Onta, Pratyoush, “Creating a Brave Nepali Nation in British India: The Rhetoric of Jati Improvement, the Rediscovery of Bhanubhakta, and the Writing of Bir History”, Studies in Nepali History and Society 1 (1996), pp. 37–76.Google Scholar

²⁸ Chalmers, “When Folk Culture Met Print Culture”; Chalmers, “Pandits and Pulp Fiction”.

²⁹ Also see Onta, “Creating a Brave Nepali Nation in British India”.

³⁰ Chalmers, “Pandits and Pulp Fiction”.

³¹ Stirr, Singing Across Divides.

³² Onta, “Creating a Brave Nepali Nation in British India”.

³³ Stirr, “Sounding and Writing a Nepali Public Sphere”.

³⁴ Hutt, Devkota's Muna-Madan.

³⁵ Ibid ., p. 7.

³⁶ Dhrubesh Chandra Regmi, “Music in Nepal During the Rana Period” (unpublished PhD dissertation, Delhi University, 2005).

³⁷ Grandin, Ingemar, “The Soundscape of the Radio: Engineering Modern Songs and Superculture in Nepal”, in Wired for Sound, (eds.) Porcello, Thomas and Greene, Paul (Middletown, CT, 2005)Google Scholar.

³⁸ Henderson, David, “‘Who Needs ‘The Folk’?’ A Nepali Remodeling Project”, Asian Music 34 (2002), p. 19 Google Scholar.

³⁹ Fiol, Stefan, “From Folk to Popular and Back: Musical Feedback Between Studio Recordings and Festival Dance-Songs in Uttarakhand, North India”, Asian Music 42 (2011), pp. 24–53.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Mani Dixit, Kanak, “The Liberation of Dohori Geet”, Himal South Asian 15 (2002)Google Scholar, p. 60. This is a reference to Lomax's, Alan “An Appeal for Cultural Equity”, World of Music 14, 2 (1972)Google Scholar.

⁴¹ Das, “The Indian Sepoy in the First World War”; Das, Santanu, “Indian Sepoy Experience in Europe, 1914-18: Archive, Language, and Feeling”, Twentieth Century British History 25, 3 (2014), pp. 391–417.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴² Kshetri, Yam, Pariyar, Raju and Majhi, Bishnu, Siri Siri Hawa Bahunjel (Kathmandu, 2007)Google Scholar.

⁴³ Ellen Andors, ‘The Rodi: Female Associations Among the Gurungs of Nepal’ (unpublished PhD

dissertation, Columbia University, 1976); Messerschmidt, Donald, The Gurungs of Nepal: Conflict and Change in a Village Society (Delhi, 1976)Google Scholar; Macfarlane, Alan, Resources and Population: A Study of the Gurungs of Nepal, 2nd edition (Kathmandu, 2003)Google Scholar; Pignede, Bernard, The Gurungs, translated by Macfarlane, Alan (Kathmandu, 1966)Google Scholar; Moisala, Pirkko, “Gurung Music and Culture”, Kailash 15 (1989), pp. 207–222 Google Scholar; Devendra Neupane, ‘Mother's Groups among the Gurung of Bhujung Village of Lamjung District’ (Tribhuvan University, Patan Multiple Campus, 2011).

⁴⁴ Ring, Laura, Zenana: Everyday Peace in a Karachi Apartment Building (Bloomington, IN, 2006)Google Scholar.

⁴⁵ Interview with Khem Jung Gurung, August 2010.

⁴⁶ Interview with Ganja Singh Gurung, 5 December 2006.