1001 Albums
en
Create account

45 albums · 1986–2025

Music of Nepal, from Narayan Gopal and Radio Nepal to Nepathya, 1974 AD and today

· 1 min read · by 1001 Albums

A panche baja band in Dhading, two men beating damaha and tyamko drums at the front, curved narsinga trumpets raised behind them and a village crowd around
Amrit Gurung of Nepathya singing on an open-air festival stage, four dancers in red and green beside himKiran Nepali holding a carved sarangi against a blue wall, a synthesizer on a plinth behind him
A panche baja band plays in Dhading, 2008. Photo: Everhard van Eimeren, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. · Amrit Gurung of Nepathya at the World Village festival in Helsinki, 2006. Photo: Mikael Korpela, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. · Kiran Nepali, sarangi player of Kutumba, 2023. Photo: Tabletop123, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Nepal's popular music grew up around Radio Nepal and the cassettes of Music Nepal, with Narayan Gopal's Blue Notes and the adhunik song of Aruna Lama, Amber Gurung, Nati Kaji and Bhakta Raj Acharya, Kumar Basnet's lok geet, then the pop and rock of the nineties and 2000s, 1974 AD, Nepathya's folk rock from Pokhara, Cobweb, Mukti and Revival's blues, Nabin K Bhattarai and Sugam Pokharel, Kutumba's sarangi and madal, Ani Choying Drolma's chants, Yama Buddha and VTEN for hip hop, and Bartika Eam Rai, Sajjan Raj Vaidya, Phosphenes and Underside today. The list has 45 records from 1986 to 2025, one or two by each of the names above and only a small part of what they made; the folk traditions of the hills and the Terai, the classical and devotional music, the panche baja of the weddings and the many records of Radio Nepal's years that never reached streaming would each need a list of their own, and Dharma Raj Thapa, Laure, Uniq Poet and Swoopna Suman are missing because their songs are on Deezer only as singles. About 32 hours of music, 4 days of a few records each.

By genre

Rock 21%Pop 14%Folk & Country 7%Other 58%
  • Rock 21%
  • Pop 14%
  • Folk & Country 7%
  • Other 58%

The genres named most: nepali, pop, rock, adhunik, alternative, singer-songwriter.

The colours of the covers

A stripe for each cover, in the colour Tidal picks from it, sorted by hue; the greys at the end.

Where the music comes from

Music from 1 country: Nepal 45. The deeper the colour, the more albums: one, two to four, five to nine, ten and more.

The 1980s

The 1990s

The 2000s

The 2010s

The 2020s

More lists

Lists of Countries first, then others; all of them on the blog. The blog.