For collaboration to be successful all parties involved need to dissolve their egos for respect of the greater whole. Only when everyone approaches a project with open minds and, most importantly, the ability to listen, can something unique and prosperous occur. On Selwa, a Tibetan nun and American guitarist grant one another the space to move freely through their respective disciplines. What results is a lesson in listening, not only between the artists, but everyone else fortunate enough to purchase the album.

Born in 1971 in Nepal, Chöying Drolma’s Buddhist education began at 13 under the guidance of Vajrayana Master Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche at the Nagi Gonpa nunnery. Rinpoche was renowned for his willingness to teach women and as well as men, a rarity in the male dominated culture of Tibetan Buddhism. The precocious Drolma, quickly rose to the status of chant master shortly after entering the nunnery, later becoming Rinpoche’s personal attendant until his passing in 1996.

The year after Rinpoche passed, Drolma met a Minnesota guitarist named Steve Tibbetts in 1997. Tibbetts was known for his globetrotting ways and exquisitely textured, luminous recordings for ECM Records. Winning a grant from the Minnesota Composer’s Forum in 1985, Tibbetts traveled into Nepal and around Asia, falling in love with the local folk music and Tibetan Buddhist philosophy. After studying Javanese gamelan drumming, Tibbetts soon returned to record Drolma in the heights of the Himalayas. Using a click track for tempo he returned stateside to produce Chö with the help of percussionist Marc Anderson. The result was richly textured album far superior to any “fusion” album. Tibbetts’ understanding of native philosophy allowed him to enhance rather than impinge on a sacred music rarely heard outside Drolma’s community.

In 1998, with proceeds from the album, Drolma founded the Arya Tara School in central Kathmandu. Taking cue from her guru, she devised a curriculum aimed at empowering women. Currently twenty-nine study and live there, trained in the spiritual discipline of Vajrayana as well as social-oriented subjects like health care, science, geography, and mathematics.

Seven years after their stunning debut, Tibbetts reunited with Drolma in Boudhanath to record Selwa (“clear,” “awake”) for Six Degrees Records in 2004. While much on their roster involves electronic reconstruction of international folk instrumentation, Selwa is the opposite: a tempered, minimalist retouching of one woman’s sacred music backed with light guitar flourishes and intelligently enhanced percussion. At first listen the lightness of being is unavoidable: Drolma’s polyphonic melodies married to Tibbetts’ sweeping orchestral suites offer a sonic senses of contemplation and quietude. When one dives deeper into lyrical translation, however, a whole other dimension unfolds.

“Palden Ranguing,” for example, with an abstracted rhythmic lilt and nearly gothic drone plays a minor key against Drolma’s resonance. The effects are eerily transparent, but her tone works above the repetitive hammering of percussion, adding a clear layer amid seeming chaos. Much like the music, the lyrics are emotive, devoted to wrathful (but just) feminine energy of nature and humanity. Making reference to Tibetan and Indian warrior/protective goddesses, her voice, as these deities, seek balance among confusion, even if their means at times seem violent or dangerous.

In the devotional “Vakritunda” and the nine-minute lullaby “Song of Realization,” Drolma’s voice fades in and out, slipping comfortably between Tibbetts’ musical architecture, inviting the listener to meditation. “I do not recognize me to be me” Drolma sings in the latter, and one realizes language need not be a barrier to feeling her songs. The listener and the listened meld inseparably.

Throughout the record Drolma’s voice is the showcase, and Tibbetts makes no mistake on this point. He often keeps his guitar aside to give Anderson free range on various percussion instruments, and Tibbetts’ reverberated orchestrations of drones and synthesizers fill out the background. When he does pick up the six-string, as on “Gayatri,” his gentle finger plucking is the masculine equivalent to Drolma’s goddess worship.

On the predominantly instrumental “Mandala” Drolma’s voice forgoes lyrics for echoing howls. Moments of exaltation are wrapped in melancholy; grandiose pleasure touches silent reflection; the entire song moves like a lifetime under seven minutes. As the title suggests, “Mandala” is an album onto itself. The closing “Je Lama,” an a cappella track with minor accompaniment, offers much the same.

Many fusion projects seeking to unite East and West fail by demanding too much of one or the other. Thus you might have seriously diluted electronics with a mere vocal snippet or other such malady. On Selwa, Tibbetts uses meticulous care not to impede or demand. His own understanding of Tibetan folk music from personal introspection allow him to accentuate while creating something entirely his—and Drolma’s—own. As Krishnamurti noted, “The very act of listening is more important than the noise, so listening becomes the important thing and not the noise.” Selwa is the silence before the noise. One simply listens.