Loten Namling is a Tibetan musician, singer, multi-media artist (performance and visual),
curator, filmmaker, activist, thinker, and a global ambassador/patriot for Tibetan culture and
heritage.
He was born in Darjeeling, India to Tibetan refugee parents。 He studied at St. Stephen's
College, University of Delhi, now living in Switzerland.
Namling has been singing for over 45 years. He is considered one of the finest Tibetan
traditional contemporary musicians. He received transmission of singing with Dranyen (lute)
from his dear parents. On a rocky edge, high up in the Himalayas in India, as a young boy, after
TCV school, Namling would run and stood on top of the rock, singing to the vast expansion of
the boundless land on the high plateau. His mother told Namling: “My son, one day, you will
travel with Dranyen around the world for Tibetan music.”
Namling’s performances include not only songs but also stories of his lives and fates of the
Tibetan people from the ancient time to the present. He traveled the world with his lute, singing
the traditional Tibetan songs as well as the songs for His Holiness Dalai Lamas (2 nd and 6 th and
14 th ). His footprints include the North Poles, Mongolia, Kalmykia, Estonia, Czech Republic,
Japan, Wales, Africa, USA, Germany, Korea, India, Norway, from remote rural villages to capital
concert halls. He tells stories of Tibetan lives, connecting and performing Tibetan music with
regional musicians from Arab countries to Rajasthan, India to Mongolia and beyond. His
Holiness the 14 th Dalai Lama called Namling “a singer with a voice.”
Namling formed Porok Karpo in 2015, he is the founder and frontman of this world preeminent
Swiss-Tibetan folk pop-rock fusion band. And it has been making its influence across Europe
and beyond. He is passionately and consciously dedicating to link traditional Tibetan music to
contemporary blues, rocks, raps and traditional world music, tirelessly connecting the sounds of
Tibet and Himalayas to a world culture and spiritual journeys without boundaries. His mission is
to revive and preserve traditional Tibetan music and its tradition and to promote the
understanding of Tibetan history, culture and heritage with truth. He has released five albums
including: Behind the Two Mountains and Porok Karpo: Tibetan Alternative Rock.
In 2013, Namling gained wide recognition for Tibet with his ‘Journey for Freedom – One Man,
One Path’, where he dragged a black coffin with the sign FREE TIBET from Bern to Geneva.
Upon his arrival, he gave a concert in front of the UN headquarters building. The performance
and journeys were documented in Tibetan Warrior film (2015).
Namling acted as a guru in Shambhala (2024), in competition for the Best Foreign Film at
Oscar, his film credits include: Looking for a Lady with Fangs and a Moustache (2019), Vox
Pacis: A Challenge to Humanity (2010), Angry Monk: Reflections on Tibet (2005), and Beresina
or The Last Days of Switzerland (1999),
