The text and more than one hundred full-page color plates document Tibetan folk music (particularly work songs), and local life in the Sman shod Valley, Sde dge County, Dkar mdzes Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province, China. Bo nyed, a local elder, describes the situation that motivated this timely documentation, "In the past we sang constantly, but now people don't sing no matter where they are or what they are doing. Now everyone is silent." The text includes richly contextualized and annotated transcriptions of the songs' Tibetan lyrics with English translations.

Audio materials related to this publication can be found at:

http://www.oralliterature.org/collections/zlaba001.html