Yungchen Lhamo

Yungchen Lhamo
Yungchen Lhamo singing at the Colours of Ostrava festival in the Czech Republic, 2007
Background information
Also known as	Goddess of Melody = translation of her birth name
Born	1960s
Origin	Lhasa, Tibet, China
Genres	New-age, Traditional, World
Years active	1990–present
Labels	Realworld Records
Website	[1]
Notable instruments
Vocal

Yungchen Lhamo is a Tibetan singer-songwriter living in exile in New York City. She won an Australian Record Industry Association award (ARIA) for best Folk/World/Traditional album, and was then signed by Peter Gabriel's Realworld Record label.

She has performed with Billy Corgan (Smashing Pumpkins) and has sung duets with Natalie Merchant on Ophelia. She collaborated with Annie Lennox on her album Ama. Lhamo's recordings have been used in Seven Years in Tibet and many Tibetan documentaries.

Lhamo has toured extensively throughout the world, singing unaccompanied, a combination of songs of her own composition and traditional Buddhist chant and mantras. She has performed with artists including Natalie Merchant, Annie Lennox, Billy Corgan, Peter Gabriel, Bono, Sheryl Crow and Michael Stipe. She has performed in the Lilith Fair Festival and toured widely as a part of the WOMAD World music festivals.

Lhamo's name means "Goddess of Song" – a name given to her by a lama soon after she was born near Lhasa. Yungchen fled Tibet in 1989. She has made pilgrimage to Dharamsala, to receive the blessings of the Dalai Lama (where he heads the Tibetan Government in Exile). She was inspired to reach out to the world through her music; to share her culture and spread understanding about the situation in Tibet. She moved to Australia in 1993, then to New York City in 2000.