The combination of rock star Billy Corgan and Tibetan
singer Yungchen Lhamo touring and performing together in support of Billy's recent, New York Times bestselling book of poetry, Blinking With Fists, is as interesting and profound and beautiful a duo as ever....
Yungchen is a refugee from Chinese-occupied Tibet. Â She escaped a
horrifying situation at the risk of her life by trekking over the
Himalayas, only to find, in the West, a spiritual illness and
unhappiness that made her feel as imprisoned as she had previously been
in Tibet. Â Billy, through his illustrious career with the Smashing
Pumpkins and Zwan, has been the voice of that same cultural alienation
and yearning—a voice he's inhabited more maturely and compassionately
as his art has grown.
Billy and Yungchen together represent a kind of karmic divine union in which Billy liberates all the longing and the shadows and the desires of the Western heart, while Yungchen's crystalline voice blesses everything it touches with the love of a dakini goddess. It truly is a mind-blowing and heart-melting experience....
This series of clips, recorded live by Integral Naked at the Soiled Dove in Denver on October 23, 2024, was to be a poetry reading with songs mixed in. Unfortunately, Billy had come down with laryngitis! He couldn't sing and could barely speak. So he invited audience members to come to the stage and read his poems, in an experiment that hovered wonderfully on edge of chaos all night. At his side was the radiant Yungchen, who did sing, both acapella and with Billy's accompaniment on guitar, and won over a sometimes raucous crowd through the sheer gentle force of her loving-kindness. In the meantime, Billy directed the energies and consciousness of the room to the simple present––radically open and infinitely precious.
We're unspeakably proud and honored and blessed to present you with
Billy Corgan and Yungchen Lhamo!