Tahnani Dapha Khalah is a traditional music group from the ancient city of Kirtipur in Nepal. Most of its current members, 35 men between the ages of 40 to 80, are from the Maharjan caste group of Newar farmers and small business owners. They convene regularly to play music, sing and produce public performances. These performances are a tradition in the communal music practice of Dapha, a vernacular music genre that is closely associated with the earlier agriculture-based life of the indigenous Newars. The Dapha Khalah, a traditional community-based music group, provides an important space for socialization within Newar communities. It is an institution that supports the transfer of Indigenous knowledge and practice across generations.

In 2018, The Tahnani Dapha Khalah revived the sacred tradition of Devi Pyakha, which had previously been obsolete. Devi Pyakha is an annual processional dance form that takes masked dancers of three, protecting idols of gods and goddesses, to the doors of the common people. The sacred activity of invoking god and goddesses is considered a medium to gather religious merits. The procession is accompanied by Dapha’s traditional songs and drumming. Dapha’s songs were written by poets from as far back as the thirteenth century. These orally transmitted songs serve the needs of the community by creating strong communal bonds. The revival has paved the way for further investigation of this oral tradition dating back approximately a hundred and fifty years.

In 2020, the Tahnani Dapha Khalah came into partnership with Ethnomusicology students from the music department of Kathmandu University. This partnership was supported by the institute, Satori Center for the Arts. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, research activities have been continued under the program Folk Lok. 
As a result, marking the Global Entrepreneurship Week (November 16-22), the Dapha Khalah was able to co-organize an international online panel discussion series led by Satori Center for the Arts, titled, 'Dāphā Calling: Revitalizing our music heritage'. The four-part online discussion series highlighted traditional modes of Dapha pedagogy, explored the challenges faced by Dapha as well as the different aspects to consider while taking the sacred tradition onto commercial stages. State and non-state agencies with whom the tradition bearers could form possible partnerships were also discussed.

The panel series brought awareness in relation to Dapha tradition and its importance within the Tahnani Dapha Khalah. With the inspiration from the discourses, in 2021, the Dapha Khalah hopes to expand its membership by organizing a three-month-long apprenticeship, emphasizing female participation in Dapha practice, which has traditionally been an exclusively male space. The Folk Lok program looks forward to supporting the community outreach efforts of the Dapha Khalah, Folk Lok is working closely to augment their apprenticeship program, which is happening for the first time in 25 years. The primary motive of the partnership is decolonizing the traditional pedagogy and practice through the inclusion of women within the Dapha Khalah, and through audio-visual documentation of the existing knowledge, the transcription of which had been prohibited in the past. 

The paper is intended to be a brief on the ongoing collaborative effort between Dapha Khalah and Satori Center for the Arts in the Folk Lok program. The paper informs about the history of the Dapha tradition and its function in the community, sheds light on the present situation of the vernacular Dapha tradition, and the agency that the local music community has built-in recruiting apprentices, making its spaces inclusive, and forming new partnerships beyond localized boundaries.

In the month of July 2021, Pushpa Palanchoke (Project Manager) under the guidance of Satori Center for the Arts’ directors, Pranab Man Singh and Suvani Singh, represented the Folk Lok program at a virtual conference hosted by Music, Spirituality and Wellbeing International Network, Boston University, Massachusetts. The conference titled “Music Spirituality and Wellbeing (MSW) Conference, Fostering Wellbeing in Times of Global Crisis” was held between July 5th-7th. Among the 25 conference papers, Pushpa’s paper was titled “Understanding Dapha: A sacred music tradition in Nepal”. It was presented under the conference's theme of “decolonizing pedagogies and practices” among others and revolved around Tahnani Dapha Khalah’s efforts to revitalize its tradition. Below is the abstract of the paper.