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25 February , 2002
THE
SOUND OF MUSIC ... IN MONGOLIA
Sometime during my career as a music critic, I got bored with just listening to rock and roll music. Call me an old fart, but I found myself interested in and learning about other types of music, from country, folk, jazz and classical to world music.
| Throat singing is so startlingly different from anything western ears have heard before that I was immediately enchanted. |
But recently I saw a performance of an ancient type of music that I hadn't known before, and it was an exhilarating experience.
I was lucky enough to be on hand for a short concert by Winds of Mongolia, a group well-known in its native country as cultural ambassadors to the rest of the world. And, I saw this group at a Japanese restaurant, Domo in downtown Denver.
 |
Let me explain: The owner of Domo, Gaku Homma, also operates an aikido dojo in his building, and has become known for his many community activities and for his support of many non-profit causes.
Through the friendship of some Mongolian students who were in his aikido classes several years ago, Homma and his partner, Emily Busch, met Mongolian officials when they traveled to Denver. The two have since visited Mongolia, a longtime province of China and a Soviet state for much of the last century that is still in the process of joining the contemporary global community. Homma and Busch, who is head of the Aikido Humanitarian Active Network (AHAN), both support efforts to preserve Mongolian culture, and want to introduce the US to its riches.
Homma invited people to his restaurant to hear Winds of Mongolia, which is touring the US this year and using Denver as a home base. He figured anyone who hears this music would become a fan of it, and he was right. The diners who were lucky enough to be at Domo that night got an astounding bonus with their meal.
The musicians filed into the dining room in traditional dress - colorful silky robes and elaborate headwear. The three singers were backed by four instrumentalists: one similar to the Japanese samisen, which can be compared to a banjo in tone; two stringed instruments played standing up with bows like a viola or cello, with varied tones from high cries to low moans (one had an elaborately carved horse's head as its tuning peg); and a beautifully carved and decorated hammer dulcimer, an instrument that originated in Persia and was adopted both by Asians and by Europeans (eventually evolving into the harpsichord).
The music played by the group immediately made me think of the slinky, sinewy melodies of traditional Chinese music. I've just recently started listening to some Chinese music, so the basic sound was familiar. The music was gorgeous, and intricately played; it was a treat to watch the group members weaving their instruments together.
It's when the singers joined in the songs that I almost fell off my seat.
During the first song, "Altain Magtaal," a tribute to the Mongolian mountain range that parallels the Himalayas to the south, the husband-and-wife duo of Sarantuya ("Sara") and Erkhembayar ("Eric") took turns with their strong, clear, elastic voices and sang together in unique harmonies. They soared through wild fluctuations of notes with ease, like acrobats in aerial routines.
The second song featured Sara with Zulsar ("Zula"), who is renowned as a master of Mongolian throat singing. What's that, you say?
It's a style of singing that is so startlingly different from anything western ears have heard before that I was immediately enchanted. In throat singing, the vocal chords are played like a stringed instrument and the mouth is used as the sound chamber. Performed correctly, it produces a sound that incorporates several tones at once, from a low buzzing bass to a very high whistling. It's fascinating to hear, and even more incredible to see performed.
The group performed four more songs, changing their outfits and adapting the lineup to suit each song's needs. A song about the Gobi Desert was haunting; an epic about a man's relationship to his horse sounded American Indian at times; a tribute to nature was downright otherworldly, and the last song, about the five senses, brought me back to Chinese melodies.
If the concert wasn't amazing enough, Erin and I were lucky enough afterwards to be part of a group of diners invited out in back of the restaurant, where Gaku Homma - never one to do things halfway - had built an authentic Mongolian yert (or ger). One of Homma's Mongolian aikido students had been staying in the cozy collapsible circular tent (Mongolians being a nomadic culture), which is about 18 feet in diameter. We were shown how to enter (clockwise) and Homma fired up the wood-burning stove in the center, which quickly had the room simmering.
A handful of us got to ask questions of two of the musicians, including Zula, who tried to show us how to do throat singing, but it was beyond my talents. We learned about Mongolia, and how its traditions are still intact in most of the rural country, but already disappearing in its cities, including the capital, Ulaanbaatar.
When we finally parted ways, we saw the rest of the Mongolians in a corner of the restaurant, finally getting their dinners. They had doffed their native outfits for jeans, t-shirts and other western clothes. Looking at the group, you would never know they had just shared thousands of years of their world music with us.
NOTE: Homma's Nippon Kan Culture Center and AHAN will sponsor a benefit concert for Mongolian Homeless Children Project with Winds of Mongolia, March 21 at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. Details are online at Nippon Kan's Web site, where you can also click for an online sound sample of their music.