All Around This World heaps high praise on a transcendent Western Chinese musician, Mamer.
Mamer is a Kazakh who hails from Xinjiang where he lives on the grasslands, plays the dombura and finds musical inspiration. Mamer’s 2009 debut album, Eagle, seamlessly blends Kazakh folk music with Western alt-country, ushering in the age of an entire new genre of music called Chinagrass. Listen to Eagle. It’s fantastic.
Earlier this week we met the Uyghur dutar, a two-stringed long-necked lute that’s all the rage among Uyghur traditional musicians.
The Uyghur dutar is an impressive instrument and we’d love to play it, though in a Uyghur home it’s apparently it’s just one of many — according to Wikipedia’s page about the Uyghurs, “Russian scholar Pantusov writes that the Uyghurs manufactured their own musical instruments; they had 62 different kinds of musical instruments….” (We sure hope that’s true.)
We begin our exploration of Uighur music with Hajajim, an ensemble that impressed the heck out of us with this video.
Such striking, confident musicians, especially the fellow playing the dutar, and they are performing such a powerful song. Hajajim gives us a kickin’ start to a beautiful Uighur week. We just hope someone with a van shows up to give them a ride back to town.
This week in our online class we visit a number of Central Asian peoples, dabbling in Kazakh and Kyrgyz customs while focusing attention on the Uighur people who mainly live in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region in Northwestern China, which many Uighur who are eager for political independence from China refer to as “East Turkestan.” Over the last few years the movement for an independent East Turkestan has received international press due to increasingly intense clashes between the Uighurs and the Chinese government. The Chinese government has sought international support for its controverisal effort to stop Uighur separtests and refers to them as “terrorists.” Of course the Uighur people are more than a political independence movement; Uighur culture is as ancient and rich as Uighur history. In music class we largely dispense with the politics and SING!
A Kazakh yurt is a sturdy, circular structure prevalent among traditional nomadic peoples of Central Asia, especially places like Kazakhstan and Xinjiang in Western China.
A Kazakh yurt requires only sturdy, simple materials, can be built in two hours and is easy to dismantle, making it the nomad’s perfect home. In our online class we to learn how to build a yurt — okay, an imaginary yurt — with little kids.
“Qambarxan” is a Uighur song about finding beauty in even the least beautiful places. Our version is based upon the traditional Western Chinese folksong “The Girl from Davanching,” which is based upon a poem likely composed by a Uighur soldier who was posted in a land far from his own. Davanching is a rather rough and arid land. The soldier misses his love, Ambarhan, who lives there, and writes a poem of longing: “The soil of the Davanching is hard but the watermelon is sweet. My darling is in the Davanching. Ambarhan is so sweet.”
