In the 1960s Morup Namgyal sparked a social movement to preserve the traditional Himalayan culture of his homeland. What Morup could not imagine at that time was that he would ultimately embrace modernization. Through the intimate interactions of three generations of the Namgyal family, The Song Collector explores the uneasy relationship between culture and development and ultimately offers a new vision that seeks to find a lasting and beneficial coexistence between tradition and modernization.