f64 Mongoliana
Anda Union are following in the hoofprints of Ghengis Khan, uniting the Mongolian tribes in music. Carole Pegg has the background.
A
nda Union, multi-award win- ners and festival headliners – who wowed us all in their previous appearances in the UK and became one of the
most talked about bands at Womad – will be back later this year to promote their new album Homeland. A nine-piece band from ‘Inner’ Mongolia in northern China, they are proud ambassadors of Mongo- lian musical heritage, helping to raise its profile in difficult times while exciting and embracing us with it.
We’ve become familiar by now with horse-head fiddles that evoke the rhythmi- cal canters and thundering gallops of hors- es, and the growling and ethereal styles of throat-singing. When I toured an eleven- piece Mongolian group in the UK in 1989 I was asked: “Where’s the flute player?” because at that time no-one understood the multiple simultaneous throat-singing tones produced by a single vocalist. Since then we’ve experienced bands such as Tuva’s Yat-kha, Huun-Huur-Tu and Chir- gilchen, Khakassia’s Sergei Charkov (with daughter Yulia), Altai’s Altaia, Mongolian throat-singers including Tserendavaa, and Inner Mongolian folk-rockers Hanggai. All were concerned to raise the profile of their endangered musics and indigenous identities. Anda Union – keenly aware of their status as a minority in Inner Mongo- lia (six million Mongols amid about 22 mil- lion Han Chinese), the problems of a rapid- ly changing social environment, and the endangerment of the Inner Mongolian nomadic culture and grasslands – are at the forefront of the effort to save their own Mongolian music and identities. How they are doing it is what makes them stand out as particularly special.
Anda Union gallop boldly in the hoof- prints of Genghis (Chinggis) Khan, who united the disparate tribes of the Mongo- lian steppes before creating the largest land empire the world has ever known. Anda Union are also uniting former Mon- golian tribal peoples, who have been sub- sumed by different states and separated by political and administrative borders. Impor- tantly though, Anda Union strive not only for unity but – through their choice of
songs, vocal styles, musical instruments and instrumentals – for ‘unity through diversity’ by fusing the musical traditions of all Mon- gols. Nars, a Horchin Mongol and founder of the group, explained how Genghis Khan and ‘brotherhood’ as concepts had seeped into their consciousness as children, saying “We all grew up with legends of Genghis Khan, Mongol tribespeople and many other folk tales about love, brotherhood and courage.”
The anda ‘blood brother’ relationship is a special one that was used by Genghis, as can be seen in the 13th Century epic chronicle of his life, the Secret History Of The Mongols. In choosing the name Anda Union, the band connects to this revered ancestor – who is tangibly present in a mausoleum in Inner Mongolia’s Ordos region – but also gives this relationship contemporary relevance. For instance, they extend the male blood relation by includ- ing two females in the group and then by broadening the ‘blood brother and sister union’ to include the different Mongols of Inner Mongolia, as well as those in other Chinese regions and the neighbouring countries of Mongolia and Russia.
return to the grassland homes of their youth to learn from their family tradi- tions. Travelling the 10,000 sq km of their grasslands, they transcribe lyrics in ancient Mongolian script as family members sing, play instruments along with them to learn melodies by ear, learn to carve the bodies of traditional instruments and gather materials, such as animal hides, with which to make them (see the DVD Anda Union: From The Steppes To The City). Nars, who learnt to play the horse-head fiddle from his grandfather, set out how the band feels about the current situation and what needs to be done: “The lifestyle of Mongolian people has changed. For example, people ride motorcycles on the grasslands rather than riding horses. Mon- golian music is a huge treasure that needs to be rediscovered and preserved.”
N
ow living and lecturing in the capital city Huhhot, the band’s members are drawn from descendants of these former nomadic tribes and
The implicit desire for unity is illustrat- ed by the Mongols of Mongolia’s reference to Inner Mongolia and Mongolia in terms of a single human body, a natural unity of politically divided peoples. Inner Mongolia is called ‘Breast’ or ‘South’ Mongolia (Övör Mongol) and Mongolia as ‘Back’ or ‘North’ Mongolia (Ar Mongol). This is in contrast to the Inner Mongolia/Outer Mongolia divi- sion still maintained by Beijing. ‘Outer’ Mongolia became Mongolia in 1945 when China recognised its independence), origi- nally created when the Manchu Chinese ruled both territories from the 17th to early 20th Centuries.
Unable now to gain political unity, Anda Union achieve it culturally by using those iconic markers of Mongolian nomadic identities that are now familiar on the world music circuit: long-song (urtyn duu), horse-head fiddle (morin huur) and throat-singing (höömei). By per- forming these classic traditional Mongo- lian musical genres, they connect to all Mongols. Their long-song lyrics praise Genghis Khan, 800 years of Mongolian his- tory (Mini Mongol on the Homeland CD) and their hugely esteemed horses (Gallop- ing Horses on the Windhorse CD; Sable Horse on Homeland), and refer to Bud- dhist wind-horse flags (Hiimor on Wind- horse; Mini Mongol) and shamanic wor- ship of sacred mountains (The Holy Moun- tain on Windhorse). In addition, together with throat-singing, they conjure up the vast mountain-steppe landscapes of their homeland. And their instrumental music creates stirring horse- and dance rhythms, and evokes the sounds of spirit-imbued nature and sacred places (The Legend Of The Swan Brothers on Windhorse). So how does this unity embrace diversity?
In live appearances and their first
album The Windhorse (currently unavail- able but planned for re-release), each band member performed a song of personal sig- nificance, handed down the generations within their own Inner Mongolian nomadic cultures that include Horchin, Ar Horchin, Ordos and Ujimchin peoples. On Wind- horse and the new Homeland album, Anda Union’s repertoire also draws on the musi- cal genres, styles and sounds of a range of
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