Cowboy music encounter in Mongolia

Subject: RE: Cowboy music encounter in Mongolia
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 26 Apr 11 - 06:34 PM

You can definitely that horsey rhythm in the music of Huun Huur Tu.

I just found that the link to the NPR article from the Western Folklife Center is problematic. This is a more direct link.

~ Becky in Long Beach

Subject: RE: Cowboy music encounter in Mongolia
From: CupOfTea
Date: 26 Apr 11 - 03:42 PM

Very neat.

Other horse-oriented musicians from that part of the world who are worth hearing: Huun Huur Tu the throat-singers from Tuva (which is just north of Mongolia). Their lives on the steppes revolve around horses, and much of their music reflects that. When I heard them in performance, their use of horse hooves as a rhythm instrument was thrilling & reminded me of the Andean musicians who use strung up llama toe clippings in their indigenous music.

I wonder if there's a niche in every culture that has folks riding herd on beasties of some sort that parallels what we think of as "cowboy music" in North America.

Joanne in Cleveland

Subject: RE: Cowboy music encounter in Mongolia
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 24 Apr 11 - 03:41 PM

That is wonderful. They are of course reknowned horsemen, are as people from Uzibekistan and elsewhere.

And there are the formerly called "Lost boys of Sudan" who wrote songs for their cows..it would be great to get them too. mg

Subject: Cowboy music encounter in Mongolia
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 24 Apr 11 - 02:23 PM

This came about in 2005, but I just ran into the story via Teresa Jordan's website. She is an author and artist and married to folklorist Hal Cannon, who was a founding director of the Western Folklife Center in Elko, Nevada.

Nearly two years after Mongolian horsemen and musicians traveled to Elko in to perform at the 20th Anniversary of the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, Folklife Center staff and a group of musicians traveled to visit them in Mongolia.

Here are Hal and Teresa's "Postcards from Mongolia" on the Western Folklife Center web site. There is a link on that page to a "Deep West Radio" report that aired on NPR's Weekend Edition.

Here is Teresa's writeup on her web site, with a link to a page of her sketches.

(I got to this via Tony Norris's Facebook posting of a link to Teresa Jordan's "Year of Living Virtuously (With Weekends Off)" blog -- highly recommended. Tony is a wonderful Western storyteller and musician in Flagstaff, Arizona.)

~ Becky in Tucson