> WHY MONGOLIA? - DIARY - AUDIO & ARTICLES
MAY 2006
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>MAY 2007
My article in Fanfare magazine
Purevsukh and me
Fame at last...
UB International Train Station
The flat steppes
Statue of 1st Mongol cosmonaut
The Great Gobi
A dust storm seconds later
Life! A ger in the Gobi!
Good news: my article for FANFARE magazine has been accepted and has gone to print. Fanfare is produced by Birmingham Conservatoire, my old music college, and my article is all about khoomei, essentially. I wrote about my thoughts about the singing style, and its relevence to myself as a freeform improviser, and to the world of 21st century music in general - in 500 words. For those of you who won't have access to a copy of Fanfare, I have pasted the text of the article below...
Connecting Heaven and Earth: the Shamanic Art of Khoomei
At the end of April 2006 I embarked on the 6000-mile journey to Mongolia, with the express purpose of seeing what effect a year living in Ulaanbaatar, one of the world’s coldest capitals, would have on my composition and performance. I have long been interested in the mysterious land of the Mongols and, as a result of a series of bizarre recurring dreams about Mongolia over a period of 15-or-so years, I finally decided to go and see for myself what was inexplicably drawing me there.
Although I had read a little about something called Mongolian throat-singing whilst still in the UK, there are scant resources available, and so the greatest musical moment in Ulaanbaatar for me came when I first heard khoomei, the ancient Shamanic art of throat singing. Khoomei singers manage to produce two tones when they sing: one is a low fundamental tone and the other is a harmonic, produced by a somewhat mysterious manipulation of the tongue and the throat. Unlike the subtle overtones one strains to hear on Stockhausen’s Stimmung or most of LaMonte Young’s output, khoomei produces extremely clear harmonics that even the most untrained ear can discern, and, most importantly for its use within an ensemble, it is loud enough to be heard unamplified above potentially loud acoustic instruments such as the drumkit.
Khoomei songs are sung with a flexible rhythmic feel and without a strict tempo, so I found performing alongside khoomei singers to be similar to the experience one has in freeform improvisation, i.e. a lot of listening and working together towards an intuitive final goal, which may or may not even be reached, the journey itself being more important than the perceived destination most of the time. Khoomei singers attempt to simulate the sounds of nature, and, in particular, the sound of the waterfall: a continuous wall of sparkling sound, constantly changing with time yet also retaining a recognisable identity, its own personal sonority and song.
For me, the appeal of khoomei goes beyond the initial amazement at the skill of the performer, and connects with something altogether more primordial. In Mongolian Shamanism, Khoomei represents contact between Tenger Etseg (“Father Heaven”) and Gazar Eej (“Mother Earth”) – the low fundamental being the earth and the high, otherworldly harmonic, the heavens. To hear the natural harmonic series is something of a rarity in our equally-tempered world, and although it represents something that is literally as old as the universe itself, it often sounds like music from the future, or from another world. Yet in its beautiful simplicity (low drone plus single melodic line) it could just as well be the first song ever sung by the first man on earth.
Exposure to khoomei changes one’s approach to listening in a very profound way. And it has also changed my approach to composition. To be able to hear inside a note has made me realise what can be explored with the simplest of raw materials, and I am currently working on a new work incorporating khoomei singers, to be premiered later this year. I guess that maybe now I know why I dreamt what I dreamt for such a long time.
- Steve Tromans, Spring 2007
Wed May 23rd 2007
It's official - we're off to China tomorrow morning! We're taking Train #24 from Ulaanbaatar to Beijing, which passes through the Gobi desert before continuing into Inner Mongolia (now part of China) and on to Beijing, arriving approximately 30 hours after we leave. Today was a sad occasion, since we had to say goodbye to friends who have made our time in Mongolia so special. So goodbye for now to Andrew, Purevsukh & Mandhai, Stani & Richard, and Erin, Lee and the gang from Ulaanbaatar. We hope to see all or some of you in the near future!
PS. Just noticed on the internet that my track "Pursuance" is listed number 9 on the Birmingham Music website. Not long to go now before a life of limos, AMEX Gold cards, luxury hotels and the rest...
Thurs May 24th 2007
7.35am - Ulaanbaatar International Train Station. Train #24 pulls into the station and we luckily manage to get ourselves to the front of the queue. There's a group of French tourists behind us who are dominating proceedings with their large amount of luggage and loud vocal demands. We load our heavy bags ourselves (since the train staff are too preoccupied by the French to help us!) and find our deluxe compartment (not that deluxe really, just the same as the one we took from Moscow). There's half-an-hour of complete annoyance as the French passengers try to oust us from our cabin so they can all be together in the same wagon, but we stay put with a steely English resolve and they eventually quieten down...a little - and with no signal or whistle or fanfare, we're off!!!
The first couple of hours are dominated by the Bogd Uul mountain range. After a year of seeing just one view of this spectacular range, it's great to see round the sides, so to speak. On the eastern side of the train tracks (we're heading in a southerly direction), there are a string of small villages, but on the western side, there is only the Bogd Uul SPA (Specially Protected Area). After a few hours, the surroundings level out to the famous Mongolian steppes - flat as can be, and nothing on the horizon for 360o around. I'd of course read about the flatness of the steppes, but it is truly awe-inspiring to see them with your own eyes. The photo doesn't really capture the sense of flatness accurately enough. Just take my word for it that it was... damn flat!
The service on the Mongolian train is definitely better than on the Russian one. We are provided with a hot-water flask and a couple of tea cups. Tea is served not long into the journey and the compartment is regularly cleaned. After some passable grub (a sandwich, a piece of fish and some tasty kimbab - rice wrapped in seaweed) and a few hours sleep, we wake to find ourselves on the outskirts of the Gobi, at the tiny station in Choir (pronounced "ch" as in "change").
Choir's economy depends almost entirely on the trains that pass through, and, like in Russia, the station platform is crowded with people selling water, pot noodles and assorted items for the passengers. There is also a statue commemorating the first Mongolian cosmonaut, who took part in one of the Soviet Soyuz missions in the 1980's. So the Mongolians beat the British into space!
Choir used to be the site of the largest Soviet military base in Mongolia, but since the collapse of Socialism, the place has become something of a ghost town, with empty, vandalised concrete flat blocks and statues of MiG fighters. Choir is designated a Free Trade Zone and is Mongolia's smallest aimag (similar to counties or states), Gov-Sumber, but apparentely being a Free Trade Zone has had little to no effect so far in turning around the economic fortunes of this desperate town on the fringes of the second largest desert in the world. Which is where we are headed next...
"Only a fool crosses the Great Gobi without misgivings" - Mildred Cable, Gobi traveller, 1926.
With these words (courtesy of the Lonely Planet Guide to Mongolia) fresh in our minds, we eagerly await our first glimpses of this ultimate desert - foolishly? Everyone knows about the Gobi. When we first told people we were moving to Mongolia for a year, the two things people mentioned were the Gobi and Ghengis Khan (correctly spelt Chinggis Khaan - Ghengis is the Chinese and Western corruption of his name - Chinggis means "Oceanic" and Khaan, "King"). Gobi in Mongolian simply means "desert". And for the rest of the Mongolian part of our journey, the Gobi is all we are going to see. Dusty and dry, with a sense of hopelessness and finality, it stretches as far as the eye can see on either side of the train tracks.
The thought comes to you: how can anyone live here? But we do see outposts of human existence - the odd ger, cattle and a JCB or two mark the presence of astonishingly hardy families, battling it out with the extremes of nature in this barren landscape. The Gobi region of Mongolia has one of the lowest population densities in the world - just 0.5 people per square kilometre! And from what we saw from our cosy cabin, that is really no surprise at all. Dust storms are frequent, almost constant. A clear blue sky and impeccable vision turn - in the matter of a few seconds - into sand blizzard conditions and almost no visibility whatsoever.
Our time in Mongolia hasn't always been fun - in fact, a lot of it has been downright difficult, and it has always been a struggle. A struggle to have hot water, or any water for that matter, in our apartment. A struggle to get around Ulaanbaatar on foot, walking on poorly-maintained pavements with open manhole covers, or no pavements at all. A struggle to communicate with the UK by telephone, a struggle to post anything out of the country, a struggle to deal with bureacracy that is a hangover from Soviet-style socialist times. A struggle to teach a room full of people texting and/or talking on mobile phones. And finally, a struggle just breathing in the air during the long winter months. A recently commissioned survey put the air quality in Ulaanbaatar during the winter at over 20 times the accepted International standard, and at a level dangerous enough to kill after just 20 minutes of exposure at its ghastly peak during rush hour.
But surely all of this is nothing compared to what these people must endure in their short, hard-fought-for lives. A last lesson from Mongolia maybe? Or just confirmation of the amazing ability of mankind to exist, and persist, in even the most inhospitable of climates on Earth. Mongolia gets under your skin, and it changes you. We are not the same people who left the UK just over a year ago with no idea of what to expect from life in Ulaanbaatar. We are stronger and hopefully a little wiser. As a musician I feel most affected by the exposure to the timelessness of Mongolian life and traditional music. And my ears are full of pentatonics, overtones and non-equal temperament tunings. It has been a great focus and release to be able to put down in writing some of our experiences here in this online diary, but this is the final entry as we leave the land of the great Khaans. Bayartai, Mongolia, and we look forward to the next meeting under Ikh Tenger...
- Steve Tromans, pianist, composer and confirmed Mongolphile!