Until 2006 and as a singing nun, Ani Choying Drolma toured France, Germany, the United States and Japan.
On the 10th anniversary of Hong Kong's handover to China in 2007, she sang alongside famous singers from China and Taiwan, as well as 600 Buddhist monks.
In a recent interview, Ani Choying told Star2 that these days she is on tour for seven months a year! It’s no wonder then, that she has earned the moniker of “singing nun”.
The singing nun’s musical journey began in 1994 when American musician Steve Tibbets heard her singing and sent a recording to legendary music producer Joe Boyd.
Three years later, Tibbets returned to Kathmandu to record the album, Cho, with Ani Choying. A year later, Ani Choying and two nuns were on tour in the United States.
With a dozen albums under her belt to date, Ani Choying regards her fourth album – Moments Of Bliss released in 2004 – as the first to enjoy “real success”.
Although she was already known in Nepal, Ani Choying says the popularity of the fourth album made her “a big star almost overnight”.
The album in Nepalese is full of humanist songs with modern arrangements. It also has a big hit, Phoolko Aankhama, which was picked as Best Song Of The Year and Ani Choying was named Best Female Singer in Nepal that year.
Ani Choying attributes her teacher, Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, and his wife for teaching her chanting.
“They never thought me strictly, but treated me with love and gave me space. It was not a formal class or session; I learnt chanting anytime I was with them,” she says.
Ani Choying was appointed as the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) Goodwill Ambassador to Nepal in 2014.
As goodwill ambassador, she is a public voice against violence against children and adolescents – there are 1.6 million child labourers in Nepal while 5,000 live on the streets.
She explains: “I travel to the rural areas and villages to check on the situation of the women and children. I am the face, media voice and lobbyist for spreading awareness of the rights of women and children.”
In 1998, she first founded the Nuns’ Welfare Foundation (NWF), a non-government organisation, in Kathmandu. The foundation is dependent on donations from supporters. Through the foundation, a school for nuns was set up.
Later, she managed to buy land for her school, Arya Tara School, built on the mountain in Pharping, outside Kathmandu.
The free boarding school, which combines traditional Buddhist studies with modern education is home to 85 girls aged five to 27 from Nepal, Tibet and India. Extra-curricular studies include music, dance and thangka painting.
The foundation is said to have helped more than 15 different projects for the welfare of children and women, and animal protection in Nepal.
Ani Choying lamented that in the Nepali society, people are still ignorant and practise patriarchy. “They think higher academic educational opportunities are not so important for girls,” she says.
Such perceptions, she says, are a setback to the progress of women. She opines that if women were not respected and brought up equally, the nation would not experience success.
In 2010, Ani Choying set up the non-profit Aarogya Foundation which runs a hospital for kidney patients in Kathmandu. “The hospital is set up as a promise to my mother, who passed away from kidney failure,” she says. “I promised her that I would do something to help people with this disease (diabetes).”
Prior to this, she had a dream of starting a centre so that kidney sufferers could be treated and avoid dying prematurely due to lack of medical facilities. The kidney hospital has 14 dialysis machines to cater to kidney patients. The dialysis machines are run 16 hours daily seven days a week.
“We’re trying to facilitate organ transplants, and a law to be passed soon in Nepal. In brain-dead cases, the organs can be donated for transplant if relatives give their consent. Organs can also be donated to those with urgent need of organ transplant,” she says.
Ani Choying also finds time amidst all her singing and charity work to raise funds for animal protection as well.
“I love puppies. I have adopted three dogs and they are at my school. Recently, someone gave me a pug for my birthday,” she says.
She feels immensely satisfied to be involved in humanitarian work. “I feel my existence is very meaningful.”
Deep within, she is happy to give to the community. She feels that the more she gives, the more she receives. She says with a smile: “Almost always.”
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READ MORE: World-famous Ani Choying sings for change, not to be a rock star
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