1974 AD - Sambodhan

This week I’m listening to 1974 AD’s 2001 album “Satabdi”, and wow, this album brings back so many memories. This was an album I revisited often as a kid, and a lot more in my teens once I learned how to play the guitar. I did not imagine that I would ever be in the same room as 1974 AD ko dai haru someday bhanera.

Meeting them and being in their presence while pursuing music in Kathmandu, always filled me with so much positivity and encouragement that I cannot find the words to describe the immense love and respect I have for them. Being greeted by Nirakar dai’s beautiful smile and hugs whenever I'm at KJC makes my day. KJC, Moksh and KatJazz studios were always environments that gave such positive vibes #unconditionalloveandsupport.

Beautiful memories of meeting Phiroj Dai at the Hard Rock Cafe during my tour in Boston back in 2011 will forever be a milestone memory that I will cherish for life.

Track 7 on the album, ‘Sambodhan’ also brings back some very vivid and grim memories of the immense pain we all felt as a generation when we lost our beloved royal family in June of 2001 and the 9/11 attack on the U.S. that soon followed in September.

Tiny 12 year old Astha was not mature enough at the time to understand the gravity of the situation, but she was definitely emotionally aware enough to feel its weight. #neverforget

More recently, my deepest condolences to all the earthquake victims and survivors in Northwestern Nepal as I post this🕯️.

#sambodhan #satabdi #1974AD #songsthatmademe

Listen to the original here:

Daisy Baraili / Dawa Gyalmo - Mayalule Samjhe Ki Kaso

This week I am listening to “Mayalu le Samjhe ki Kaso” by Daisy Baraili and Dawa Gyalmo. Dashain and Tihar celebrations always remind me of this song because, this song was a huge hit in our household, one that we sang a lot at our family gatherings and still do to this day 😀. After we were done with tika, we would end our night around the firepit with a spectacular bhoj featuring my thulo mamu’s special kauli, pahelo daal, mitho saag, chicken tarkari, and aalu ko achaar. #bhoklagyo

The minute my uncle Ramesh Mama (whom a lot of you may already know as “cool professor” from Kathmandu University 😀 – #viral #pleaseyoutubehim ) would pick up the guitar and start singing, the energy of the night would take off 🚀 and all of us would join in with our vocal harmonies and claps 😅. #lifeoftheparty #sorrydearneighbours . He would start with this song and lead to an encore performance of “Musu Musu Hasideu” by Hong Kong-based Nepali pop rock band The Himalayans. Even our family pet dog (pyaro chhori), MusuMaya, is named after these two iconic songs 🐶.

To this day, memories of singing around the firepit with my parents, uncles, aunts, and cousins play back so vividly in my head. I find myself tearing up every time 🥹🤧, especially while revisiting memories of my parents slow dancing deeply in love.

I find this song particularly inspiring as it features the work of three incredible women; singers Daisy Baraili, Dawa Gyalmo, and singer-songwriter Shanti Thataal - who is also credited as the first female music composer of the Nepali film industry on Wikipedia. The melodic transition to the E major chord is so unexpected and beautiful! I’m also feeling a deep awe and respect for the Darjeeling, Assam, and Sikkim diaspora of Nepali artists who have contributed so much to the Nepali music community🙇🏻‍♀️.

#daisybairaili #dawagyalmo #shantithataal #mayalulesamjhekikaso #songsthatmademe

Listen to the original here:

Ben Harper - Walk Away

This week I’m listening to Ben Harper’s 1994 debut album “Welcome to the Cruel World”. This album takes me back to the year 2003. I had just received a care package 📦 from my dii, and this time she had sent me this amazing album, which is one of my favourites of all time. Track 10 on the album, the song “Walk Away,” is one I have a very deep emotional attachment to as it takes me back to many memories of my 14 year old self, learning how to play this very guitar riff in the silence of late nights spent awake in my room. #nightowl

This song finds me again later in 2008, as I was finishing up my 18th year in this universe and my very first relationship was coming to an end. He was moving away for uni and I was about to head to Kathmandu to write and release my first album. “Astha, don’t say anything, just listen to the words to this song okay?”, he said. And through the tiny speakers of my white Sony Ericsson W810i phone, to my surprise, he played me this same song by Ben Harper. A complete coincidence or a sign from the universe?

This song in that moment, felt like a warm blanket’s embrace on a chilly morning. I felt comforted, understood, and in awe that the universe had given me exactly what I needed. Songs always have a way of finding their way back to you, when you need them the most. From that moment on, I knew that everything was going to be okay, and you know what? Sabai thikai nai bhayo :).

#walkaway #welcometothecruelworld #benharper #songsthatmademe

Listen to the original here:

Nabin K Bhattarai - Aankhama Timilai

This week I’m listening to Nabin K. Bhattarai’s debut single “Aankhama Timilai”. This song takes me back to my family’s first year in Canada. Tiny 12 year old Astha was navigating her new life, figuring out culture, norms, language, and what being a Nepalese Canadian meant for her going forward. At the time, my family had moved into our first 2 bedroom apartment in North York with my uncle Badri Kaka, who had been in Canada for a few years already.

Mamu was super pregnant with my sano bhai in her belly, and I was entering grade 7. Baba had picked up a series of night shifts, and all of us would cook up daal bhat and momos and wait for him to come home to delicious home cooked meals :). Badri kaka had an Art and Lutherie acoustic guitar, and it was so beautiful sounding. “Someday, I will learn how to play the guitar and become a rock star,", I would tell myself. #bigdreams #littleme

I asked Badri ka to teach me how to play the guitar, and oh boy, he was such a good teacher. “Learn all the basic chords and move down the fretboard with the bar chords, bujhis Sodium?”, he would say. Sodium was Badri kaka’s nickname for me. He was and still continues to pursue his wonderful profession as a chemist. Now, this song is special to me because Badri Kaka was a huge Nabin Bhattarai fan! He would teach me how to play guitar chords to ‘Sanjha Pakha’, and I would listen to him sing all the pop hits from his era as he sipped on a can of chilled, light beer. I have a lot of treasured memories with Badri ka, and truth is, I don’t know if I would learn how to play the guitar if it were not for him.

Fast forward to 2009, Kgarira ko atti awesome dai haru, Dipesh dai and Batta dai had booked me a show in a venue called Lakhey in Durbarmarg. Midsong, I remember looking up at the banisters above, and connecting eyes with a very familiar face wearing his iconic cap🧢. Soon after that, I looked for him to say Namaste, but he was nowhere to be found. He must have ninja’d out of there 🥷🏼. To this day, I have this burning curiosity, was that Nabin dai? If not, there is someone who looks exactly like him somewhere in Kathmandu🕵🏻‍♀️.

#aankhamatimilai #raharairaharma #nabinkbhattarai

Listen to the original here:

John Mayer - Back To You

This week I’m listening to John Mayer’s 1999 debut EP ‘Inside Wants Out’ and damn, this song hits so hard. “Back to you. It always comes around”. I immediately get transported to my 14 year old self, visiting Kathmandu after 2 years of being away, and listening to this album while letting my damp, wavy hair dry in the Kathmandu morning sun. I have so many memories associated with John Mayer’s songs, like jamming out in college with my friend Natalie, who always seemed very impressed that I knew how to play ‘Why Georgia’ on guitar :D. #iwastotallyshowingoff #iwasnothumble

This song in particular reminds me of many late night drives taken down highway 427 as I headed downtown Toronto with AJ (whom a lot of you may know as DJ AJ, a pioneering figure in the early underground Nepali Hiphop scene 👀 #NepHop). We used to blast John Mayer really loud and head to Nepali Dashain parties - where sometimes we got to perform and sometimes we just partied :). Alongside being a talented music producer, AJ’s emotive and philosophical songwriting had a way of tugging at heartstrings. #KahileKahi Strangely, we never really got a chance to write music together. As to why? That will always remain a mystery to me. #itsallabouttiming

Throughout life, I always seemed to find myself in spaces surrounded by musicians who pushed and inspired me to grow musically. So many memories of playing music with AJ, Sash, Ishan, Deep dai, Janmanjay dai, and who can forget Jimmy dai’s iconic music studio in his basement in Mississauga, where all of us were given the opportunity to play and practice. #eternallygrateful #howluckywerewe #jimmydaiyouarethebest #istillhavetopickupmybassampfromyou

John Mayer’s songs are such a joy to play on guitar but they also conjure up many traumatic memories of connecting via dial up internet 🤕 just to visit ultimate-guitar.com haha. If you know, you know lol.

#neon #backtoyou #insidewantsout #johnmayer #songsthatmademe

Listen to the original here:

Robin n' Looza - Nepal

This week I spent hours listening to Robin n’ Looza, who perhaps are one of my favourite Nepali bands of all time. Memories of little Astha listening and singing along to Robin n’ Looza make me so emotional 🕯.

Released in 1998, I had the ‘Nepal’ album on cassette, and I must have listened to each song on the album thousands of times on my Sony Walkman :). My sweet Pooja didi, would send me care packages all the way from Kathmandu to Canada, and the cassettes and CDs she would send over became the foundation of most of my music inspiration in my teenhood, especially once I started writing songs. Over the years, I had collected all three Robin n’ Looza records which I listened to religiously. Robin dai’s presence was mesmerizing #NasaDya , his lyrical phrasing of Nepali words were particularly quirky and Looza’s musical chemistry had sparked a wave of creativity that our generation felt so deeply inspired by.

Pooja didi was the main source of my connection to all the amazing and creative people I would later meet in 2008 including Looza ko dai haru. Robin n’ Looza’s songs are so special to me, especially because I never would have expected in a million years ki, I would grow up to record my debut album “Sabai Thikai Huncha” in their studio Rec Records bhanera 🤯. So many memories of 19 year old me learning about songwriting basics and music business with Rizu dai, recording instruments with Sunit dai, sitting through hours of loadshedding while mixing with Sharad dai, and learning how to play in a trio with Prajol dai…crazy how life works out, hai?

Track 6 on the album, the song ‘Nepal’, is one of my favourites to sing when I’m by myself. I used to plug my mic into my guitar amp, jack up the reverb, and entertain myself for hours with power chords lol (the only chords I knew how to play at the time 😛). The joy of singing for no one but yourself is really something—a part of myself that I have been reconnecting with these days. Sharing my rendition of this beautiful song with you today.

#nepal #robinnlooza #songsthatmademe

Listen to the original here:

songs that made me

For the next couple of months, I'll be going down memory lane to revisit some of my favourite albums from my child/teenhood for inspiration. Stay tuned for the upcoming uploads on all my socials @asthamusic ! #reelstab #songsthatmademe

Khula Aakash (Acoustic)

“Perhaps the butterfly is proof that you can go through a great deal of darkness and still become something beautiful” 🦋 - unknown

Our lives are filled with uncertainty, especially in times like these. These last couple of months have been a reminder that more than anything we all need to practice gratitude... for those risking their lives to keep us safe, for our health, for the food on our table, the shelter over our heads, and most importantly for the love we share and experience with our close family and friends.

Khula Aakash is a song about freedom and freedom truly is the greatest gift we can give ourselves. I hope that this song reminds us all that we are resilient and that we all will get through this.

Love,
Astha
#khulaaakash #freedom #asongforeveryemotion #asthaunplugged

Muskuraye (Acoustic)

I want to dedicate this song to my beautiful Mamu and Baba - for all the sacrifices you’ve made for us and continue to make - to give us the life we've always dreamt of. My mother pushed me to follow my passion and my dreams no matter what while carrying myself with grace, pride and humility.

My father taught me to be strong, balanced, independent and to be the empowered woman I am today. Hopefully, someday when I have children, I will be able to do the same for them. I wrote this song about 10 years ago when I was first visiting Kathmandu after many years of being away from home and growing up in Canada.

Performing this song for you all today has made me indulge in a lot of nostalgia and I'm very thankful for that :) 🌻.

Love,
Astha

#muskuraye #selflove #asongforeveryemotion #asthaunplugged