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Hello, dear listeners, followers and people who've just stumbled across this
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podcast.
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I'm Alex Wilding, this is Series 3, Episode 3 of the Double Dorje Podcast.
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Please like and subscribe.
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And today it's all about kanglings, the thighbone trumpet.
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At the end of this episode, or somewhere near that, I'm going to talk a bit
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about the modifications you can make to your kangling,
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in the traditional way, to make it sound good.
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The idea of looking at this subject quickly came out of a request that I
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received on Reddit.
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I get very few requests to talk about anything on this podcast, so it was
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a special day.
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And I thought, well, I should take it up.
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The conversation started because there were complaints from people, reported
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second-hand, who thought that some of the cheap kanglings being sold were no
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good and didn't even have any sound.
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And there is a suspicion that they did not know that you don't just blow into a
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kangling and get a sound.
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Now, there are indeed musical instruments that you do just blow into and get a
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sound.
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The tin whistle.
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You just blow.
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Or, some of us may have suffered at school from having to learn the recorder.
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Again, you just blow.
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Irish children tend to have to suffer from learning this, and I know a very
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Well-known
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flute player from the Irish tradition who has the complaint that nearly every
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child in Ireland can play the whistle badly.
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They can be beautiful, they can be terrible.
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It depends on the player.
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Now, having mentioned flutes, that's particularly where a bit of expertise of
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mine comes in.
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Because for many years I did try to play -
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I say try, in the end I wasn't successful -
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the traditional Irish flute.
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The traditional Irish flute actually is modelled on the flutes being made in
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England in the heyday of the popularity of the flute in the middle of the 19th
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century.
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Before the thing that most people think of these days as a flute, the metal
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one, the Boehm system, came in and became popular because it had huge
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advantages.
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The kind of thing I'm talking about here is made of wood.
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Now, people have all sorts of opinions about what makes a flute sound good and
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what makes it not sound so good.
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And many people go on and on about what wood it's made of.
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Yet, there has been quite a lot of serious theoretical and practical
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experimental work done on these flutes.
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And it is quite clear that as far as the sound is concerned, the actual wood of
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which it's made has almost no effect at all.
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Allegedly, there was an experiment where people heard flute sounds, one of
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which was a conventional flute and one of which was made of concrete, and they
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couldn't tell the difference.
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I have a suspicion that story may be a myth.
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But the point is, it has virtually no effect.
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The wood is, in fact, important.
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This flute is probably close to 170 years old, give or take two or three years.
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It was made from a very fine-grained, slow-growing, hard wood, as these things
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normally are, and should be.
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That makes a big difference to how it can be worked, how the bore inside can be
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drilled out, what sort of shapes you get, what sort of finish you get
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on the tube inside. Things matter like how thick the wood is.
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The fact that it's made of a very suitable, high-quality wood means that these
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bits of metalwork, you see the silver keys there, their mountings, their pins,
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their little pillars, that can all be done effectively and cleanly.
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The wood can be machined very effectively.
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That makes a difference.
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But the actual difference in sound comes from the shape.
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It comes from the little chimneys that are created by the holes, because the
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wood has a significant thickness.
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It comes from the placement and size of the holes, the undercutting of the
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mouthpiece.
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This particular one has a silver lip plate, because some people are allergic to
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this kind of wood.
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All of those things do make a difference.
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The player, of course, makes an enormous difference.
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That's why I never got on with this flute, because although I have heard it
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played by a good player, who makes it sound fabulous and driving and strong, I
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just couldn't ever get there.
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In the end, I found that on a good day, when I was at my best, on that
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good day, I was just about passable.
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But at the time I didn't reach that.
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So, I went over now to playing the whistle.
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Anyway, the point about kanglings is that the shape matters, but the material
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doesn't.
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We can be pretty confident of that.
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So, what exactly is a kangling?
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Traditionally, it is made from a human femur, a thigh bone.
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I have to admit, you may have noticed this, that Tibetan Buddhism does have a
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certain fascination with death.
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Now, as these thigh bones go, the best sort is supposed to be one from the guy
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who died when two young guys got into a fight and one got killed.
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The next best, or perhaps up there with that, is what's called the Bodhicitta
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kangling, or the compassion one, which comes from a woman who died in
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childbirth.
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Both of these, in very different ways, are of course highly emotional and very
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sad stories involved with a lot of suffering.
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That's actually partly the point.
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Now, it is difficult these days to get real ones.
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There are all sorts of regulations that people are bringing in.
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In most cases, it's a question of if you can get one at all, then you have to
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be happy with that, whether it's traditionally one of the best sorts, or from a
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more ordinary source, is something we just haven't got the option of worrying
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about now.
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The same applies actually to skull cups, which feature quite a lot in Tibetan
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Buddhist ritual.
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So, as a result, these things very often now are made as imitations.
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I give you this one, which is made of resin, painted up a little bit, with the
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red to represent the leather cover that you find on a real one, which is there
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because the joint end here does tend to go soft.
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The point being that you can easily transport this without any friction across
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borders from one country to another, because what you have to remember is that
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even if you have something like that, that is perfectly legal, what matters more
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than that is whether the person sitting across you at the desk at customs
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thinks that it's legal or not.
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There is a good story here I heard from my teacher, Lama Kama Lhundup, about
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one of his teachers in retreat, who was a guy known as Yeshe Dorje, quite well
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known because there is a biography of him called Rainmaker.
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He acted as the Dalai Lama's Rainmaker for quite some time.
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He had been carrying his kangling backwards and forwards between Nepal and
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India quite a number of times, but one time he was coming into India and the
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officials said that this was something he was not allowed to have and not
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allowed to bring into country, and they wanted to confiscate it.
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Yeshe Dorje said something like, ? Oh well, if you must, but please can I have
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one more minute with it??
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He blew it fiercely in all four directions and then handed it to them and said,
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? Now you may confiscate it, but if anything bad happens, it's not my
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responsibility!?
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Now you probably wouldn't get away with that trying to bring it into the UK,
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but the Indian guards were sufficiently disturbed.
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They said, ? Oh no, take it, take it, take it, take it away.?
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So a lama who travels abroad to give teachings these days is perfectly likely
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to have a travelling kangling, even though he or she has a bone kangling at
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home.
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The same applies to skull cups.
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Looks a bit like a skull, right size, right shape, white on the outside, red on
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the inside.
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But as is quite popular amongst Tibetans these days, it is made of fibreglass.
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Painted, I think with something like polyurethane paint, on the inside, because
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even now there's a bit of a smell and if you want to use it, it would probably
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be better to put a glass or cup, porcelain container in there with the drink,
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whatever you have, rather than directly in the cup.
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So the kangling, traditionally a femur, traditionally with the end covered in a
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jacket of human skin.
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Traditionally, that skin comes from a scrotum.
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So I am told.
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And it's used in rites such as the famous Chod, in which the practitioner offers
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their own body to the Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, and to all the people who they
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have wronged in the past, as a kind of feast.
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Now I should say that any and every practise that I have heard of that involves
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the use of a kangling is something that requires empowerment, instruction,
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transmission, and the oversight of a teacher, an authorised teacher.
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To try and do these kind of things on your own, just because it seems like fun,
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is somewhere on the spectrum between silly and dangerous.
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I wouldn't like to say where, it would depend on you, but it's not a good idea.
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My own teacher, Karma Lhundup, has a wooden travelling kangling made in Bhutan,
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and he has said that the carved wooden kanglings from Bhutan can be of
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extremely good quality.
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And I have to say that when he plays his wooden one, it is extraordinarily
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fierce in sound, you might even say frightening, and very, very loud.
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He's probably rather good at it, and I don't rise to his standard in quite a
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number of matters.
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The main reason I wanted to talk about this is because of the question of the
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mouthpiece.
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This is one of the things which people don't always understand, and which could
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well do with a bit of explanation.
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I have here possibly the worst imitation kangling ever made.
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I made it.
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It's made from a piece of black plastic plumbing pipe. As it is here now,
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apart from the fact that it's been painted up to a bone-like colour and a red
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leather-like colour, it's just a pipe, and you can play it.
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Not a great sound, but it does actually work, because you go ? phphphph? into it.
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Not ? hhhhh? , but...
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I was starting to experiment with it, and I have to say I'm keeping this, awful
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as it is, because it was actually blessed by my teacher in the official way,
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and he took that occasion as an opportunity to give quite a long talk to us
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about kangling things, some of which I'm repeating to you here now.
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I had started to experiment with it, and I was using a cork insert, which I
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shall now try to put in, and see what happens.
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Better.
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Still awful.
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The first sound, actually, was said by my teacher to sound like a bull's fart.
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Now, that's of course an old Tibetan saying.
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Young Tibetans might say something different these days.
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But it doesn't sound great.
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However, you can tell there is a bit of a difference there, and I will show a
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photograph of a real one that I saw in Sydney, which actually shows what I'm
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about to talk about very clearly.
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The point is, look at the end there, if it will come into focus, which it
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probably won't.
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That's not just an open hole, which this resin kangling originally was.
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It has been filled with beeswax.
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I will show you some beeswax.
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Here we are.
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Beeswax.
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Rather a lot of it.
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It was the smallest amount I could buy, because I live in a rural area where
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bees are kept, and transported around for their pollination powers.
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So the beekeepers often have this beeswax just left over as a by-product.
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Because it's the natural one, it's rather dirty-looking, because various bits
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of crap from the bees get mixed up with it, and it sinks to the bottom when
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it's all melted down.
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If you buy some from a conventional shop in the West, you'll probably pay a lot
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more for it, and it won't have the crap in.
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But this amount cost me a princely sum of 10.
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But I think that was just because of the trouble that they'd gone to to break
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some bits off and bring it to me.
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This one has been filled with beeswax, and modelled, and moulded, with an awful
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lot of trial and error.
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And if you're going to do a good job of this, you can expect to have to attempt
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to do this many times before it comes right.
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I will attempt to get a good sound out of it now.
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Important is, have a good look, and I think you'll see this on the photograph
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I'm going to show as well.
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The end has been shaped into a depression or a bowl, and that has to be
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moderately deep.
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I would say this was probably 3mm deep.
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The size of the little hole in the bottom, which you make as a second step, is
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critical.
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This one is about right, but again you'll just have to try, trial and error.
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What you do is you fill the thing solid with beeswax, and then you use
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something like a hot rod, or I've used a hot wooden dowel, and make this hole.
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Trial and error again is the key.
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If you have a gas stove, that's the easiest place to work this.
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The beeswax has a melting point which is above human blood temperature, but not
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that far, so it doesn't need to be very hot before it goes soft.
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Just sort of somewhat warm.
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And in the process, you're almost certainly going to have drips.
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My tip is to clean them up thoroughly at the end of this session, even if
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you're going to do another session on another day, or even later the same day,
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because it's a bit of a mess.
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Clearing it up soon makes life easier in the long run.
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So to those of you who are not in a position to be doing any practises that
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involve a kangling, I hope this is nevertheless a little bit interesting, and
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may give you a bit of a clue if in future you get the appropriate empowerments
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and teachings to practise something like Choed.
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That's not the only place these are used, but it's the best known one.
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And then I hope you find your feet with this instrument a little bit easier.
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Until the next episode, at whatever time it comes out, be happy, be kind, try
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to be wise!
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Bye.
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Hello, dear listeners, followers and people who've just stumbled across this
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podcast.
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I'm Alex Wilding, this is Series 3, Episode 3 of the Double Dorje Podcast.
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Please like and subscribe.
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And today it's all about kanglings, the thighbone trumpet.
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At the end of this episode, or somewhere near that, I'm going to talk a bit
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about the modifications you can make to your kangling,
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in the traditional way, to make it sound good.
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The idea of looking at this subject quickly came out of a request that I
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received on Reddit.
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I get very few requests to talk about anything on this podcast, so it was
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a special day.
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And I thought, well, I should take it up.
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The conversation started because there were complaints from people, reported
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second-hand, who thought that some of the cheap kanglings being sold were no
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good and didn't even have any sound.
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And there is a suspicion that they did not know that you don't just blow into a
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kangling and get a sound.
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Now, there are indeed musical instruments that you do just blow into and get a
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sound.
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The tin whistle.
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You just blow.
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Or, some of us may have suffered at school from having to learn the recorder.
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Again, you just blow.
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Irish children tend to have to suffer from learning this, and I know a very
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Well-known
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flute player from the Irish tradition who has the complaint that nearly every
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child in Ireland can play the whistle badly.
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They can be beautiful, they can be terrible.
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It depends on the player.
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Now, having mentioned flutes, that's particularly where a bit of expertise of
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mine comes in.
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Because for many years I did try to play -
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I say try, in the end I wasn't successful -
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the traditional Irish flute.
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The traditional Irish flute actually is modelled on the flutes being made in
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England in the heyday of the popularity of the flute in the middle of the 19th
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century.
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Before the thing that most people think of these days as a flute, the metal
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one, the Boehm system, came in and became popular because it had huge
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advantages.
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The kind of thing I'm talking about here is made of wood.
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Now, people have all sorts of opinions about what makes a flute sound good and
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what makes it not sound so good.
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And many people go on and on about what wood it's made of.
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Yet, there has been quite a lot of serious theoretical and practical
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experimental work done on these flutes.
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And it is quite clear that as far as the sound is concerned, the actual wood of
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which it's made has almost no effect at all.
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Allegedly, there was an experiment where people heard flute sounds, one of
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which was a conventional flute and one of which was made of concrete, and they
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couldn't tell the difference.
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I have a suspicion that story may be a myth.
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But the point is, it has virtually no effect.
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The wood is, in fact, important.
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This flute is probably close to 170 years old, give or take two or three years.
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It was made from a very fine-grained, slow-growing, hard wood, as these things
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normally are, and should be.
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That makes a big difference to how it can be worked, how the bore inside can be
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drilled out, what sort of shapes you get, what sort of finish you get
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on the tube inside. Things matter like how thick the wood is.
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The fact that it's made of a very suitable, high-quality wood means that these
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bits of metalwork, you see the silver keys there, their mountings, their pins,
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their little pillars, that can all be done effectively and cleanly.
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The wood can be machined very effectively.
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That makes a difference.
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But the actual difference in sound comes from the shape.
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It comes from the little chimneys that are created by the holes, because the
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wood has a significant thickness.
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It comes from the placement and size of the holes, the undercutting of the
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mouthpiece.
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This particular one has a silver lip plate, because some people are allergic to
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this kind of wood.
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All of those things do make a difference.
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The player, of course, makes an enormous difference.
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That's why I never got on with this flute, because although I have heard it
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played by a good player, who makes it sound fabulous and driving and strong, I
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just couldn't ever get there.
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In the end, I found that on a good day, when I was at my best, on that
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good day, I was just about passable.
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But at the time I didn't reach that.
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So, I went over now to playing the whistle.
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Anyway, the point about kanglings is that the shape matters, but the material
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doesn't.
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We can be pretty confident of that.
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So, what exactly is a kangling?
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Traditionally, it is made from a human femur, a thigh bone.
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I have to admit, you may have noticed this, that Tibetan Buddhism does have a
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certain fascination with death.
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Now, as these thigh bones go, the best sort is supposed to be one from the guy
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who died when two young guys got into a fight and one got killed.
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The next best, or perhaps up there with that, is what's called the Bodhicitta
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kangling, or the compassion one, which comes from a woman who died in
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childbirth.
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Both of these, in very different ways, are of course highly emotional and very
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sad stories involved with a lot of suffering.
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That's actually partly the point.
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Now, it is difficult these days to get real ones.
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There are all sorts of regulations that people are bringing in.
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In most cases, it's a question of if you can get one at all, then you have to
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be happy with that, whether it's traditionally one of the best sorts, or from a
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more ordinary source, is something we just haven't got the option of worrying
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about now.
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The same applies actually to skull cups, which feature quite a lot in Tibetan
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Buddhist ritual.
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So, as a result, these things very often now are made as imitations.
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I give you this one, which is made of resin, painted up a little bit, with the
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red to represent the leather cover that you find on a real one, which is there
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because the joint end here does tend to go soft.
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The point being that you can easily transport this without any friction across
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borders from one country to another, because what you have to remember is that
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even if you have something like that, that is perfectly legal, what matters more
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than that is whether the person sitting across you at the desk at customs
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thinks that it's legal or not.
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There is a good story here I heard from my teacher, Lama Kama Lhundup, about
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one of his teachers in retreat, who was a guy known as Yeshe Dorje, quite well
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known because there is a biography of him called Rainmaker.
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He acted as the Dalai Lama's Rainmaker for quite some time.
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He had been carrying his kangling backwards and forwards between Nepal and
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India quite a number of times, but one time he was coming into India and the
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officials said that this was something he was not allowed to have and not
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allowed to bring into country, and they wanted to confiscate it.
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Yeshe Dorje said something like, ? Oh well, if you must, but please can I have
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one more minute with it??
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He blew it fiercely in all four directions and then handed it to them and said,
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? Now you may confiscate it, but if anything bad happens, it's not my
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responsibility!?
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Now you probably wouldn't get away with that trying to bring it into the UK,
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but the Indian guards were sufficiently disturbed.
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They said, ? Oh no, take it, take it, take it, take it away.?
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So a lama who travels abroad to give teachings these days is perfectly likely
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to have a travelling kangling, even though he or she has a bone kangling at
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home.
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The same applies to skull cups.
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Looks a bit like a skull, right size, right shape, white on the outside, red on
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the inside.
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But as is quite popular amongst Tibetans these days, it is made of fibreglass.
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Painted, I think with something like polyurethane paint, on the inside, because
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even now there's a bit of a smell and if you want to use it, it would probably
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be better to put a glass or cup, porcelain container in there with the drink,
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whatever you have, rather than directly in the cup.
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So the kangling, traditionally a femur, traditionally with the end covered in a
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jacket of human skin.
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Traditionally, that skin comes from a scrotum.
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So I am told.
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And it's used in rites such as the famous Chod, in which the practitioner offers
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their own body to the Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, and to all the people who they
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have wronged in the past, as a kind of feast.
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Now I should say that any and every practise that I have heard of that involves
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the use of a kangling is something that requires empowerment, instruction,
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transmission, and the oversight of a teacher, an authorised teacher.
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To try and do these kind of things on your own, just because it seems like fun,
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is somewhere on the spectrum between silly and dangerous.
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I wouldn't like to say where, it would depend on you, but it's not a good idea.
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My own teacher, Karma Lhundup, has a wooden travelling kangling made in Bhutan,
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and he has said that the carved wooden kanglings from Bhutan can be of
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extremely good quality.
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And I have to say that when he plays his wooden one, it is extraordinarily
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fierce in sound, you might even say frightening, and very, very loud.
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He's probably rather good at it, and I don't rise to his standard in quite a
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number of matters.
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The main reason I wanted to talk about this is because of the question of the
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mouthpiece.
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This is one of the things which people don't always understand, and which could
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well do with a bit of explanation.
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I have here possibly the worst imitation kangling ever made.
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I made it.
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It's made from a piece of black plastic plumbing pipe. As it is here now,
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apart from the fact that it's been painted up to a bone-like colour and a red
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leather-like colour, it's just a pipe, and you can play it.
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Not a great sound, but it does actually work, because you go ? phphphph? into it.
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Not ? hhhhh? , but...
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I was starting to experiment with it, and I have to say I'm keeping this, awful
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as it is, because it was actually blessed by my teacher in the official way,
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and he took that occasion as an opportunity to give quite a long talk to us
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about kangling things, some of which I'm repeating to you here now.
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I had started to experiment with it, and I was using a cork insert, which I
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shall now try to put in, and see what happens.
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Better.
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Still awful.
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The first sound, actually, was said by my teacher to sound like a bull's fart.
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Now, that's of course an old Tibetan saying.
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Young Tibetans might say something different these days.
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But it doesn't sound great.
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However, you can tell there is a bit of a difference there, and I will show a
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photograph of a real one that I saw in Sydney, which actually shows what I'm
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about to talk about very clearly.
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The point is, look at the end there, if it will come into focus, which it
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probably won't.
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That's not just an open hole, which this resin kangling originally was.
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It has been filled with beeswax.
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I will show you some beeswax.
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Here we are.
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Beeswax.
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Rather a lot of it.
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It was the smallest amount I could buy, because I live in a rural area where
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bees are kept, and transported around for their pollination powers.
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So the beekeepers often have this beeswax just left over as a by-product.
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Because it's the natural one, it's rather dirty-looking, because various bits
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of crap from the bees get mixed up with it, and it sinks to the bottom when
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it's all melted down.
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If you buy some from a conventional shop in the West, you'll probably pay a lot
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more for it, and it won't have the crap in.
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But this amount cost me a princely sum of 10.
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But I think that was just because of the trouble that they'd gone to to break
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some bits off and bring it to me.
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This one has been filled with beeswax, and modelled, and moulded, with an awful
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lot of trial and error.
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And if you're going to do a good job of this, you can expect to have to attempt
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to do this many times before it comes right.
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I will attempt to get a good sound out of it now.
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Important is, have a good look, and I think you'll see this on the photograph
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I'm going to show as well.
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The end has been shaped into a depression or a bowl, and that has to be
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moderately deep.
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I would say this was probably 3mm deep.
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The size of the little hole in the bottom, which you make as a second step, is
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critical.
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This one is about right, but again you'll just have to try, trial and error.
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What you do is you fill the thing solid with beeswax, and then you use
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something like a hot rod, or I've used a hot wooden dowel, and make this hole.
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Trial and error again is the key.
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If you have a gas stove, that's the easiest place to work this.
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The beeswax has a melting point which is above human blood temperature, but not
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that far, so it doesn't need to be very hot before it goes soft.
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Just sort of somewhat warm.
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And in the process, you're almost certainly going to have drips.
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My tip is to clean them up thoroughly at the end of this session, even if
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you're going to do another session on another day, or even later the same day,
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because it's a bit of a mess.
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Clearing it up soon makes life easier in the long run.
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So to those of you who are not in a position to be doing any practises that
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involve a kangling, I hope this is nevertheless a little bit interesting, and
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may give you a bit of a clue if in future you get the appropriate empowerments
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and teachings to practise something like Choed.
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That's not the only place these are used, but it's the best known one.
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And then I hope you find your feet with this instrument a little bit easier.
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Until the next episode, at whatever time it comes out, be happy, be kind, try
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to be wise!
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Bye.
