September 25, 2007

Otgonbayar Chuluunbaatar and Wolfgang Hofer | Zastiin Nogoodoi |Zakhchin Music | Mongolia

At the tail end of the second millennium, father and son John and Alan Lomax traveled the rural south of the United States collecting the last vestiges of music transmitted solely by way of mouth in that part of the world. Ironically, the means of their effort--the technologies of motorized transport and sound recording--were also the means of "pure" folk music's demise. These harbingers of modernity came later to much of the world, and in the third millennium there are still Lomaxes out there trying to catch the last drops of musical streams running dry.

Western Mongolian singer Otgonbayar Chuluunbaatar is one of these. As the youth of her Zakhchin tribe, which numbers only 25,000, move from the steppes to the cities, blending with the Khalkha majority and listening to popular music, they break with the oral tradition of Zakhchin songs. Chuluunbaatar has made it her mission to collect these songs, which she says have never been transcribed or studied.

On Zastiin Nogoodoi, the third in a series of Zakhchin music she has produced, Chuluunbaatar sings more than 30 "short" and "long" songs--so described not because of their total length, but for the way the long songs stretch out syllables. Unaccompanied or with the simple companionship of Wolfgang Hofer's guitar or Altaic lute, her strong, emotive voice brings to life tales of mountains, drunkards and horses.

Her voice is the voice of a thousand voices before her, filling a space where silence may otherwise have been, providing a glimpse of the soul of a people you may otherwise have never known. Once again, the hand of technology cuts off a cultural stream, then casts its droplets out to unexpected places, far and wide.

For ordering information, contact the artist: zakhchinmusic@yahoo.de

September 17, 2007

Rebuilding the Rights of Statues | Cut Off! |Tag Team | China

Until recently, the indie scenes of China hadn’t made a dent on the outside world. An increasing number of Chinese bands were developing in terms of musical competence and taste in influences, but in terms of writing music with a spark of originality--music outside indie fans would want to listen to more than once--little had broken through. Then, in 2006, Beijing’s SUBS made an impact on Europe with their driving, noisy sound and kinetic live show. Now, in 2007, another dark band from the capital, Rebuilding the Rights of Statues, has taken a strong stab at western ears, performing at South by Southwest and releasing an EP on L.A. imprint Tag Team Records.

ReTROS look and sound as enigmatic and alienated as their name suggests. They traffic in the danceable rhythms and staccato guitar work of their post-punk-influenced Stateside contemporaries, but they make it their own, welding a metalic figure out of pieces of Joy Division and the B-52s and bringing it to life with a nihilist Beijing electricity. (Open question: Does Beijing 2007 really feel like Berlin 1977?)

The Cut Off! EP pops out of the speakers as tight and punchy as you could want, but the real source of distinction is in the vocals. Guitarist/songwriter Hua Dong has a great voice, at times sounding like Fred Schneider at his early best—especially when bassist Liu Min plays the Cate Pierson/Cindy Wilson role in "TV Show (Hang the Police)."

But Hua is no mere mimic. In the standout "If the Monkey Becomes (to be) the King," he deploys the vocal range and theatricality of a Beijing opera star to transport the mythic Chinese monkey hero into a future (or present) controlled by soldier automatons. The song is funny and more than a little spooky— in six minutes, it says more about China’s tangle of creativity and state control than a thousand Newsweek articles.

Hua is playing freely with the past and present of his country as well as the past and present of indie music. In other words, he is a real artist, reflecting his reality in sounds that will become part of your reality. One gets the sense that ReTROS will continue to develop into something even more starkly original.

Video: "TV Show (Hang the Police)"

September 09, 2007

Kon Ichikawa | The Burmese Harp | | Japan

buy it
The Burmese Harp is a beautiful and unusual film about Buddhism, music and the aftermath of war. Many others have reviewed this 1956 Japanese release, in which director Kon Ichikawa depicts the struggle of Japanese soldiers in Burma to come to terms with their defeat--my purpose here is to discuss the role of music in the film, as well as a broader point about colonialism.

The story centers on a platoon of soldiers who have kept their sprits up during the long retreat across Burma by singing. They are accompanied by Private Mizushima (Rentaro Mikuni), a self-taught player of the Burmese harp. Unlike the stiff-lipped Allies in The Bridge Over the River Kwai, these soon-to-be POWs don't whistle jolly tunes--they sing songs full of loneliness and nostalgia in beautiful choral harmonies, set to Mizushima's elegant harp arrangements.

There is a strange disconnect between sound and image in the film's many musical scenes. The beautifully framed cinematography was shot on location, realistically depicting dead bodies strewn across Burma's serene landscapes. The music, however, is recorded in the studio, with seemingly no similar effort toward verisimilitude: the soldiers' singing is pitch perfect and the harp parts, obviously played on a western harp, utilize a wide range and chromatic pitches not found on the Burmese harp. Moreover, the sound of the harp often projects through jungle and stone walls and across fields in an utterly unrealistic manner. Rather than seeming corny or old-fashioned, this treatment of sound serves to amplify one of Ichikawa's themes--that music unites, transcends, heals and ties together.

In an early scene, the platoon, feigning obliviousness to an impending Allied attack, starts singing what they think of as a Japanese song. Soon they are joined in singing by the opposing forces, who sing the song's English version: "There's No Place Like Home." It turns out that the war has already ended and a needless and bloody confrontation has been averted by a song whose melody and homeward-yearning sentiment transcend nationality and enmity.

Mizushima is soon separated from his fellows and nearly killed. Stealing a Buddhist monk's robes in order to disguise himself, he treks toward the camp where his platoon is interred. However, the scenes of carnage that greet him at every turn profoundly affect him, and the quest for physical survival becomes a quest for spiritual survival. Eventually, he reunites with the other Japanese only to play them a musical goodbye on the harp. The disguise has become reality--when they return to Japan, he will stay behind in "Buddha's land" as a monk.

More than any piece of writing or film-making I have encountered, The Burmese Harp gives a sense of the soul searching that must have taken place in Japan after WWII. Shot eleven years after the war's end, it reveals both the depths and limits of that search. In this film, music is a stand-in for the goodness in the soldier's heart, and Mizushima represents the Japanese realization of war's futility and brutality. However, it is telling that the warrior-turned-monk makes it his mission not to make reparations toward the Burmese people he helped oppress, but rather to save the bodies of Japanese soldiers from Burmese vultures.

Just as in many Hollywood films set in Asia, in Ichikawa's film Burma is merely the backdrop for the colonialist's quest--be that quest "good" or "evil." The song of Japan floats over the Burmese landscape in a grand chorus; the music of Burma is scarcely heard at all.