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ubop in action

the face of mongol nazism

sukhbaatar square at new year

fireworks video [click to play]

second visit to the ascwa

the tashlag being demonstrated

baatar plays the tsor flute

close-up of the mouth technique

Sat December 9th 2006
The police are cracking down on pubs/restaurants that serve alcohol later than midnight, so last night's Mealody Jazz Club was brought to an abrupt end by the arrival of five police officers standing impassively at the door of the restaurant. They brought along a video camera to film the activity in the restaurant too - we were on stage playing "When You Wish Upon A Star" as a slow ballad. It was a surreal moment - the police, the cameras, the audience dissipating into the night, and the sounds of Walt Disney. It was like something out of a strange dream.

Darker developments to report on: one of the students in one of my English classes proclaimed himself to be a nazi a couple of lessons ago. It's not the first time I've heard a Mongolian talk about the greatness of Hitler (or "Gitler", as he pronounced it), but it was still shocking to hear in the classroom. The reaction of the other students spoke volumes for how limited this nazism is in the country, but still, it's there. This afternoon, I turned on the TV and was channel-hopping a little to see what was on the different Mongolian TV Channels, when I was confronted with a most alarming pop video featuring its performers all decked-out as nazi officers. I know that the swastika is an ancient Mongolian symbol, called 'Hass', but its use in this video, combined with the nazi regalia and uniforms that this pop band wears in the video is alluding (without the slightest subtlety) to something from much more recent history. One of my old students told me that some Mongolians have respect for Hitler because he was a fan of Chinggis Khaan and also because of the fact that he didn't invade Mongolia during WWII. In fact, that particular student said that "Hitler was Chinggis Khaan's guard-dog". 99.999% of Mongolians I know are welcoming, friendly and pro-foreigner, but this minority is worrying. Where are they getting their information from? Who is extolling the virtues of the nazis to them? Definitely one for further investigation.

Tues December 19th 2006
Yuletide festivities abound in Ulaanbaatar, although they're called New Year festivities over here. I've already done a couple of New Year parties with the UBop Band. One for a Japanese company that I never did find out the name of, and another for an opthmologist - again I don't know much info, just like doing function gigs back in the UK - that is being ignored all night and being less popular than the disco. I'd rather not do any of these type of gigs if I could help it, but it does get the UBop name around a little, and provide a little drink and groceries money, so can't complain too much!

The Shaman connection will hopefully be re-established this weekend. My friend and bass player in UBop, Andrew Colwell, has asked one of his Mongolian friends (whose English is excellent) to translate between us and the Asian Shamanist Continent and World Association, and to try to arrange a meeting for this Saturday or Sunday. If anything does occur, I will of course post it up here asap.

Sat December 23rd 2006
My second meeting with the Asian Shamanist Continent and World Association took place earlier today. This time I was accompanied by my friend and co-member of the UBop Band, Andrew Colwell, and a Mongolian woman, Soyolmaa (not the Soyolmaa who is one of my Academy students, another one). Soyolmaa is a teacher at the Turkish school in Ulaanbaatar, as well as (luckily for us) being a research scholar on Shamanism (North American not Mongolian). She acted as our translator during the hour-long meeting we had with Sh. Sukhbat, President of the Shamanist Association, D. Badarch, a Shamanist researcher working for the Association, and Baatar. Baatar, a friendly-faced man in his thirties, is a musician schooled in the Shamanic ways, and was asked by Sukhbat to demonstrate some of the key Shamanic instruments for us today.

The meeting was arranged for midday, and took place at the President's modest quarters near the Gandan Monastery in the Bayangol district of the city. I took our camera along this time, which also has an audio record facility, and was able to capture some audio examples of Shaman instruments alongside a few photos. The ASCWA are planning to open a Shaman Museum in the future, to display the 512 (yes, 512!) original Shaman instruments - some dating back to c.3000 BCE. They want the world to know about these instruments and also about their use as an integral part of Mongolian Shamanism over the last 5000 years. There are, at the moment, 160 of these instruments in regular usage during Shaman ritual, and the remainder are going to have to be built specially for the museum project. This of course requires money, and so one of the main points of discussion during the meeting was funding and how to secure it. Those of you who know me will know that I am not the best person to ask regarding matters of dealing with arts funding bodies, so I'm not sure what this means for our future association.

Then we were introduced to four Shaman instruments: Tumen Khuur (similar to a jaw's harp, click to listen to two different size tumen khuur: SMALL AND LARGE TUMEN KHUUR and just the small size one SMALL TUMEN KHUUR), Tsor (a beautiful wooden flute), ever buree (made from a horn), and tashlag - according to Sukhbat, the most ancient of all the Shamanist instruments. Tashlag is used to this day by the Tsatan people of Northern Mongolia, the reindeer herders, as they are sometimes called, and consists of a piece of wood that is held on the side of the mouth, and a small hollow bone, that is struck against the wood to produce a percussive sound. This sound is maniupulated by movement of the mouth to produce, what else, the harmonic series. In this respect it is very similar to the tumen khuur and jaw's harp, but with a distinctive wooden quality [listen here: TASHLAG].

Ever buree produces a reedy tone which reminded me instantly of the melodica. It oringinates from around the times of the Hunnu (around 10 BCE) and was used by both Shamans and soliders, the latter using it to signal the onset of battle. Tsor is made from a plant similar to bamboo, its wood being cut down only between August and October and crafted into a type of flute. The demontration of Tsor was when Baatar came into his own, first demonstrating the vocal techniques used in conjunction with this instrument [listen to these two vocal techniques here: TSOR VOCAL TECHNIQUE 1 and TSOG VOCAL TECHNIQUE 2], and then playing 2 minutes of beautiful unaccompanied tsor [listen to the recording of Baatar's tsor performance here: TSOR 2 MINUTE SOLO]. The tsor you hear on this recording was given to Baatar as a present from his teacher 30 years ago. Baatar's brother lives in the countryside and is a tsor maker, which prompted us to ask to be able to see some of these incredible instruments being made in the new year. In fact this request, along with my next request, to be able to witness a real Shamanic ritual, were both instantly agreed upon by Sukhbat, and after Andrew's return on January 7th (he's off to Kazakstan for the next couple of weeks to study Dombra, a two-string guitar native to that country), we can look forward to the next step forward in developing a greater understanding of this most ancient of musicial arts.

I like to think of music that communicates on a higher level as muse-ic rather than the "music" that only operates on an entertainment level that the majority of the population is exposed to. Would you believe James Blunt and Blue are two of the most popular artists played in Mongolia, alongside US Hip-Hop? Although this mixture of street-tough rap and pretty-boy pap makes for unintentionally amusing juxtapositions. For example, on my way back from the ASCWA meeting I crossed Sukhbaatar Square where I encountered three teenage boys dressed in Hip-Hop fashion clothes. They of course gave me up-and-down hard-man stares, but what makes this amusing is what happened next: the lead kid started singing Wham's "Last Christmas" at me - same angry-looking face, but to the tune of 80's cheesy pop! I had a good laugh when I got out of earshot, needless to say...