This Month’s Film: Travellers and Magicians
Cuisine: Bhutanese

On the 8th of January, I received an e-mail from David Hykes , a musical performer and composer extraordinaire whose music is featured in this month’s film ‘Travellers and Magicians’. It goes without saying that I was both stunned and honored that David took time out of his busy schedule to contact me. David lives in France, in Pommereau, on a pastoral estate about 90 minutes outside Paris, and throughout the course of a day for him and a night for me, we got acquainted.

Since then, ‘Travellers and Magicians’ arrived from NetFlix and I have had the exquisite pleasure of watching the film. And now I am faced with the challenge of finding the words in my inadequate vocabulary to describe its depth and beauty, which was ethereally enhanced by the music of David Hykes.

In a follow-up e-mail, I had the opportunity to ask David a few questions about his compositions, especially about the composition, performance, and the instruments used in the creation of the music.

Regarding the instruments, David replied, “The selections are trio compositions of mine. In addition to composing and singing, I play a special keyboard I designed which translates chords into rhythms. The second musician, Peter Biffin, is playing fretless dobro, sometimes with an “E-bow,” a little hand-held device held over the strings, so that the string is excited continuously, as with a violin bow, rather than plucked. The percussionist on “Special Times Three” is Bruno Caillat; there is a tabla player on Times to the True.

When asked about the vocal elements of his music, David replied, “I’ve developed a global sacred music which I call Harmonic Chant; it’s a comprehensive musical system that includes some elements of what is sometimes called “throat singing,” where I sing several notes at the same time, the main notes but also harmonic overtones.”

‘Travellers and Magicians’ is a work of duality, in which Dondup, a Bhutanese civil servant in pursuit of his dream to emigrate to the U.S., is met with a Buddhist monk traveling along the same road. To fill the endless hours of waiting to hitch their next ride, the monk tells the tale of Tashi, a reluctant student of magic who falls in love with Deki, the beautiful young wife of a reclusive shaman.

The film toggles back and forth between the road and the monk’s tale, and the music of David Hykes provides the mystical backdrop for the dark forest fantasy. And I can say without hesitation that his music is the soul and the pulse of those scenes.

Thank you David, for your generosity in taking the time to contact this very grateful blogger on the other side of the planet, and for enriching my experience of ‘Travellers and Magicians’ in such a personal way.

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