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miss bright, best teacher 2006
andrew on kazakh dombra
piano and dombra spontaneity
It has been the first week back at work, and the best news is that Hannah was awarded a Diploma of Honour from Santis Educational Services, for "achievement and hard work throughout the year of 2006". This award is based on the student feedback forms all of the teachers' classes are given near the end of their 100-hour courses. Everyone's feedback forms were totaled up, divided accordingly, etc, and Hannah came out on top! Aside from a lovely certificate, she was awarded a cash prize too, which is going to help our finances no end this month after the usual yuletide excesses. Say no more.
Sun January 14th 2007
U-Bop were asked in December to be part of a benefit concert at the Catholic Church, Ulaanbaatar, in order to raise money to buy presents for underprivileged children who live in the ger districts that the church has positioned itself in. We took part in the belief that these children would be present in the audience at the concert (I just assumed that would be the case). Unfortunately, in reality the audience was full of rich expats and their kids, some of who gave some of the most lacklusture performances of carols and other songs I've ever heard - one girl in fact sang "Last Christmas" by Wham, and quite what that's got to do with Catholicism, I have no idea! The whole idea of distributing presents amongst the poor community is of course a thinly-disguised attempt to attract those families to the church, and if the same happens in Mongolia that happened in Africa, South America, and the Pacific Islands, these poverty-stricken Mongols will be attending in their droves to learn all about what sinful creatures they are, not having embraced the principles of Catholicism yet.
Since the days of the MPR ( Mongolian People's Republic), yuletide is a big deal for Mongolians too, and we were surprised to see Santa Clauses everywhere in the run up to Winter Solstice. It turns out that the socialists played the same card the christians did when they appropriated the solstice as "Christmas" originally, ie. re-launching the age-old festival as their own. That way, people still get a winter solstice celebration, and they only have to make slight adjustments with regards to who to be thanking for the holiday and what to be celebrating! The socialists recast Santa as a kind of Old Father Time, and placed a socialist red star at the top of the yule tree. Genius! I overheard a few christians bemoaning the "lack of christianity in Mongolian new year festivities", but they've just had their tables turned, that's all. Of course, just as in the west, feasting, intoxication, singing and dancing are all part of Mongolian new year festivities, so good old-fashioned yuletide excess wins through it all anyway, ultimately.
Tues January 23rd 2007
My birthday was yesterday, and over the weekend, I had my birthday part at Mealody - essentially, to avoid any weekday hangovers for those present! It was great to have a stage with a piano, drumkit and double bass on hand to play to the various Mongolian and fellow-foreigner friends who came, along with some of my music students from the academy. With Mongolians, it's vodka with everything, so two of my presents were bottles of vodka, which was perfect for distributing amongst the 20-or-so guests for the obligatory (in Mongolia, anyway) birthday toast. After the drinking, U-Bop played a short set of Mongolian songs and some Jazz tunes before Ganbat had to travel to the countryside to visit his mother.
Andrew brought along his Kazakh dombra (a two-stringed guitar) and gave an impromptu solo performance. Later on in the evening, after more refreshment, we did a bit of spontaneous piano and dombra improvisation, which went pretty well I feel. We vowed to get together again to record more Khiimori improvisations using the dombra alongside my melodica and Andrew's khoomei singing (we are planning on gettting together at mine and Hannah's apartment on the 27th at the time of writing, but things often change from day to day in this city), and that is definitely something I am looking forward to doing.
All in all, it was a great afternoon and evening, and definitely one of the highlights of our time over here, being able to bring together two groups of people - from our social network and from the music scene.