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traditional mongol musicians
khoomei singers at mealody
the dalai lama
Great gig last night at Meal'ody Restaurant. The trio sounded tight and was cooking with gas (definately what I needed after a long week of course design and teaching at the academy), and we had some special guest artists performing alongside us. We were joined by five traditional Mongolian musicians: three khoomei singers, a morin khuur player and a Mongolian-zither player. They performed a traditional song, Four Seasons, and then we accompanied them in a fledgling attempt to create a jazz/khoomei fusion. This is an area I definitely want to pursue further. We (Andrew and I) plan to get together with some khoomei musicians on Sunday to investigate possibilities.
Andrew has just returned from the Khoomei Naadam (festival) in Chandman Soum. Chandman is a small village in Western Mongolia, near Khovd. It is the place to go to study khoomei, since most of the master khoomei singers of Mongolia live there, and last night the audience numbers at the Mealody Jazz Club were swelled by a large group of German khoomei singers and enthusiasts who were in Ulaanbaatar after coming back from Chandman. Some of them joined the Mongolian musicians who played alongside the U-Bop Band. it was a very memorable night for all concerned and some of it was recorded I believe (will try to get a copy of this if it exists). I am very happy with the way things are developing musically over here, and am excited to see what will happen next. I of course never expected to be playing jazz, or any other kind of music, over here.
Mon Aug 13th
Yesterday myself, Andrew and a German musician called Felix (one of the group from Germany over here for the Khoomei Naadam in Chandman) recorded two improvisations using 2 khoomei vocals, 1 morin khuur, 1 water-percussion metal bottle and 1 melodica. [Editor's Note April 2007: you can hear the results of this session, plus other Khiimori recordings at: RECORDINGS]
Expect much more in this direction in the coming months. It feels good to be doing some free improvisation again, and I think the melodica works extremely well alongside the sound of the morin khuur. It's reedy timbre mixes with the extraordinarily rich harmonics of the morin khuur's two strings. The improvisations were recorded in the living room at our small apartment, but you'd never from the excellent sound quality! Afterwards we had a lengthy discussion about the merits of overtone-rich music versus the equally-tempered variety. To explore music that makes full use of the harmonic series is one of the reasons why I wanted to come to Mongolia in the first place, and it's great to be getting involved in these sessions so early on into our stay.
Sun Aug 27th
Today we were privileged enough to see the Dalai Lama (along with several hundred other people) at the Gandan Monastery in Ulaanbaatar. Gandan is the main monastery in the city, and is a really relaxed, beautiful place to spend some time at. Also, the views of the Bogd Uul range are splendid from inside the monatery walls. It was a beautiful sunny day and there was a strong, spiritual feeling to proceedings. We don't speak Tibetan, and so had no idea whatsoever what was being said, but just to see the great man was enough. The Chinese were not happy about his presence, as a result of the whole debacle surrounding Tibet, but he was welcomed wholeheartedly by the Mongolians, and I believe also had a private meeting with the president, Enkhbayar. His perpetually smiling face is on billboards all around the city, although the message says, "A long live for Dalai Lama from Jetsundamba Centre". I'm not sure who wrote this dodgy English sentence, but it gave us a chuckle all the same, and maybe the Dalai Lama himself found it amusing too. I'd like to think so.