fR316 PAGE 21 1/9/09 12:31 Page 1
root salad
21 f
Mamer
Old Kazakh folk songs on dombra, reworked for the
21st century. Jon Lusk is intrigued.
O
n a hot afternoon at Womad in guests come, they’ll sit and play together. is virtuosic urban court music with high
Wiltshire, the sleepy, post-lunch Everybody in my family played, so the music art associations, Kazakh folk music rarely
crowd in the Siam Tent aren’t has always been around me,” he explains. has more than ‘one man and a dombra’
really up for a boogie, even if
Mamer went on to study guitar and
and is often looked down on locally. For
they were born to. That’s probably a good
western music at a conservatory in
Robin, the challenge was to make this
thing, as the only member of Mamer’s
Urümqi, but was underwhelmed by the
music with no harmony or polyphony
band with a smattering of English,
old-fashioned teaching methods. After a
appeal to a wider audience, without com-
spokesman and dombra player Ibrahim
few frustrating years, he left, and worked
promising its essence.
Khusmanbek, is happy to acknowledge
doing voice-overs for a local TV station. By
that their music isn’t really suited to it
the end of the 1990s, he had joined a band
anyway: “Our music is not better for
called Jia You Zhan (Petrol Station) who
dance,” he declares as the band sidle into
travelled around the south of China doing M
amer’s objective is more
difficult to define: “It’s hard for
me to say what one single
objective would be. It’s just a
the tricky, halting rhythms of Man, from
covers of foreign ’70s and ’80s music. After feeling that I want to convey through my
their wonderful debut Eagle (see fR312).
this, he returned to Xinjiang, and started music and that’s manifold. I just want
More than half the set is new or taking his musical roots more seriously, people to like it, and to bring what I like
unfamiliar, including the intriguing making regular trips into the countryside to a larger audience.”
Adamzat 11 (Man 2), which sounds some- to seek out the old Kazakh folk songs that
www.myspace.com/mamermusic1
thing like Steve Reich or the Penguin Café
are now a big part of
Orchestra, as heard through a filter of
what he does. By
traditional Kazakh culture. This and the
2002, he’d moved to
cool strum of Antelope bode well for the
Beijing and set up his
next Mamer album.
own group IZ (Kazakh
Several months after its release, Eagle
for ‘footprints’),
remains among the year’s best, but this
which is where Robin
music doesn’t really lend itself to a festival
first met him.
setting, where the emphasis is naturally on
It was he that
bands that specialise in raising pulses. As if
introduced Mamer to
to underline that, Mamerjan Bayeshan
the late French pro-
(aka Mamer) spends the entire gig seated,
ducer Hector Zazou.
flanked by his two dombra players. He
Mamer’s musical
wears a stylish külapara hat with earflaps
vision is in some ways
pinned back as if swept aside by steppe
a reaction against
winds, and nods very slightly between
China’s official air-
songs to acknowledge applause. But that’s
brushed take on
about the extent of his ‘audience rapport’.
‘minority music’,
Unsurprisingly, he’s been accused of
which is usually sung
lacking on-stage charisma, and isn’t a lot
in Mandarin, with a
more vivacious in our interview shortly
political message.
afterwards. It is right next to a noisy gen-
“What Mamer does is
erator, though, and we have to talk
always to try and dis-
through translator Julie Kleeman and his
tance himself as much
producer Robin Haller, in Mandarin – his
as possible [from
second language.
that],” Robin
explains, “and so the
Mamer’s songs are all in Kazakh, the
more basic or tribal or
language spoken by 7% of the people in
unblemished or natu-
China’s north-western autonomous region
ral the sound can be,
of Xinjiang, an area in the news recently
the better for him. I
because of violent clashes between Han
think Hector went the
Chinese and the Uyghur majority (45% of
opposite way – he
the local population). But for Mamer, the
tried to make it sound
language of his songs is almost incidental:
beautiful and accessi-
“I think whether I’m singing in Chinese or
ble, and for Mamer
Kazakh, people don’t really listen to the
that was a problem,
words, it’s just a feeling…”
because he has these
Even so, singing in his first language associations…”
on Beijing’s underground rock circuit in
Although one of
the early noughties was what marked him
the tracks they
out, and inspired ‘minority language’
recorded with Zazou
bands like Hanggai (see fR302/3) to follow
made it on to Eagle
suit. He now lives back in Xinjiang’s capital
in remixed form, it
of Urümqi, just a three-hour drive from
took a lot more work
where he grew up in the countryside.
to find the right
“Most Kazakh people have a dombra in ambience. Unlike
their house hanging on the wall, and when Uyghur music, which Photo: Jak Kilby
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