Jibesh Chamling Rai

Jibesh Chamling Rai was a Nepali music teacher, composer and singer who spent decades training schoolchildren and younger musicians in Kathmandu while composing songs, including many written for children. He died on the night of Wednesday 1 October 2026 at Hams Hospital in Kathmandu while under treatment for a brain tumour. He was 65.

According to musician Basanta Sapkota, Rai was born in Ramite in Miklajung Rural Municipality, Morang, and had been immersed in music since childhood. He later built his working life in Kathmandu as a music guru rather than as a star performer. Fellow musician Shanti Ram Rai recalled that Jibesh taught vocal music at about twelve schools across the city and that much of his livelihood came from that classroom work. Contemporaries described him as sociable and deeply knowledgeable about music, someone who preferred the long craft of teaching to self promotion.

As a composer he set music to numerous songs, many of them children's songs that circulated in schools and among families. His public profile grew further through his daughters Melina Rai and Junu Rai, both well known Nepali singers who were inspired by their father's dedication. OnlineKhabar English and Nepali language reports named him as a senior music guru and as their father, while stressing that he was also a composer and teacher in his own right. That combination of school work, composition and family mentorship is how peers summarised his place in Nepali music.

Away from the classroom he remained part of Kathmandu's music community. Friends remembered a musician who kept close ties with peers such as Shanti Ram Rai and Basanta Sapkota, and who continued to talk about music even as his health declined in recent times. Detailed discographies and an exact birth date were not published in the first obituaries. This memorial page records only what those reports confirmed, rather than filling gaps with speculation about uncredited recordings or undocumented early schooling.

Rai is survived by one son, two daughters and two wives. Family sources told OnlineKhabar that he died Wednesday night at Hams Hospital during treatment for a brain tumour. His funeral was arranged for Friday afternoon at his birthplace in Morang. Tributes from fellow musicians stressed both his quiet craft as a teacher who spent much of his life helping children learn to sing, and the musical path he opened for Melina Rai and Junu Rai. In a music culture that often celebrates stage fame, he is remembered as a guru whose influence ran through classrooms, children's songs and the careers of the singers he raised.