The Nonesuch Explorer series is “the series that introduced countless listeners to music from afar," says the New York Times, "opening up the delights of world music by mingling the scholarly and the sensuous ... The albums, recorded from the ‘60s to the ‘80s, have held up magnificently.”

While much of what is released today as “world music” reflects the influence of many cultures, most of the recordings in the Explorer Series offer a musical window to a specific community at a specific point in time, without the strong imprint of Western society or pop music. These recordings have served as source material for much experimental and world music today, and the series itself continues to stand on its own as a unique document of musical culture.

In Tibet, music plays an integral role in Tantric Buddhism, seen as a means to transform the whole stream of being into illumined awareness. The basic musical concepts and the teachings of Tantric Buddhism originally came to Tibet from India beginning in the eighth century. Chanting is recognized as a powerful medium for inward transformation, since it is a dynamic form of meditation.