Mongol pop music

Mongolia Monday- Music, Part 2: Three Western Musical Genres Mongol-Style

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There doesn’t seem to be a western musical genre that hasn’t found its way to Mongolia over the last twenty years or more. I get a kick out listening to pop, rock, jazz, etc, with lyrics sung in Mongolian. There are covers of western songs, but most are original compositions by Mongolian songwriters. There are standards too, obviously well-loved songs that have been recorded many times.

Rock arrived in Mongolia very shortly after democracy. Groups like Haranga, Chono and Nisvanis were extremely popular and there are still lots of videos of their music on YouTube. Today the alt rock band The Lemons is very popular.

Boy Bands were big in the United States at the same time the youth music scene started up in Ulaanbaatar. The most successful Mongolian group in this pop genre was Camerton, four guys with great voices who created wonderful harmonies. They’ve all done solo albums and one member, Bold, has gone on to write, record and produce at least a half dozen albums and now has his own production company, B Productions.

Hip Hop isn’t really my thing at all, but it’s a very important genre in Mongolia and often is used to draw attention to serious social issues like alcoholism. I chose this one because it’s about the Democracy Movement and includes images from that time.

Next week: Mongol music that is a synthesis of traditional and western styles

Mongolia Monday- Mongol Musicians Cover American And British Rock Songs

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One of the fun things about exploring and learning about other cultures is seeing how familiar things like rock music are taken up and reinterpreted.

I’ve found a number of gems on YouTube:

A Sound, a particular favorite of mine who I would love to see live sometime, takes on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” by George Harrison and pulls it off very nicely:

Another group, Signal, created this dramatic video cover of Daughtry’s “Over You”:

A Sound seems to have gotten their start on the Mongol version of American Idol, “The Universe’s Best Songs”. Fun to see them in the beginning and how polished they’ve become in the first video above. Here’s their performance of Maroon 5’s “This Love” from the tv broadcast:

Finally, this young Mongol guy kept it simple. Nice voice, a guitar, the Mongolian flag in the background and Dylan’s “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door”:

Mongolia Monday- Contemporary Music, Part 1

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This is the first in an on-going series about one of the many delightful and unexpected discoveries that I’ve made since I’ve started going to Mongolia-

I was channel-surfing one evening when I was staying at the Narantuul Hotel in Ulaanbaatar during my 2006 trip and came across a music video channel. That’s where my introduction to the music scene in Mongolia began. Most of what is available for sale through outlets like Amazon are traditional “folk” music CDs, particularly performances of khoomi (throat-singing) and long song (in which female singers greatly elongate the notes). One could be left with the impression that Mongolian music consists only of these “indigenous” forms. One couldn’t be more wrong.

Great cultural synthesizers that they are, the Mongols seem to have picked up a number of western popular music idioms within five years of the changeover from socialism to parliamentary democracy and capitalism. In rapid succession that evening and on subsequent trips, I watched boy bands, rap groups, rock groups, neo-folk groups and a variety of male and female soloists. I found myself trying to scribble down names in Mongolian cyrillic. The first group that really grabbed me, and it will come as no surprise to anyone who knows the music scene there, was Nomin Talst. This last trip I “discovered” The Lemons, A Sound, A Capella and Pilots. Poking around on YouTube, which has hundreds of Mongol music videos, unearthed superb soloists like Ganaa (who was, and I guess still is, with one of the first successful boy bands, Camerton) and a woman who has an extraordinary voice, Maraljingoo. Here they are in a duet. I’ve  never been able to figure out the plot in this one. (Any Mongols reading this want to help me out?)

Here’s a solo video by Maraljingoo:

And one from Ganaa:

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find a way to buy any of this music via downloads. I purchased a few CDs when I was in UB in July and a Mongol friend brought back a stack last month from a list that I gave her. Otherwise, I have a 100 song playlist on YouTube and listen to a Mongol Facebook friend’s internet radio station here. His 32,000 song selection really runs the gamut from old-style vocalists to hard rock and everything in between.

I really enjoy listening to Mongol pop music while I work on paintings and drawings with Mongol subject matter!