Mongolia: Kazakh Songs and Epic Traditions of the West

Ethnomusicologist Alain Desjacques made most of these field recordings of Kazakh, Uriangkhai and Zakhchin Mongol musicians in 1984, though some were supplemented by material he recorded in 1990. Tracks one to 20 feature the songs of the Kazakh minority group in Khovd province, west Mongolia. The passionately sung An songs are typically between one and three minutes long and are thematically about love, horses, nature and nostalgia for the past. They are accompanied by the dombra, a two-string fretted lute, its spirited rhythms inspired by the different gaits of their treasured horses.

The Kuy category is comprised of instrumental pieces for the dombra. Again, the lively nature of the rhythms and virtuoso display on this simple instrument are put to use for not only Kazakh dance music but also to illustrate folk legends and tales such as ‘Zarali Böken, a tragic fable of fratricide. The other five tracks focus on magtaal praise songs and tuul epic songs sung by the Uriangkhai and Zakhchin groups. The epic song has almost disappeared, rendering these important historical documents. The three versions of ‘Altai Magtaal,’ a praise song to the Altai mountains, demonstrate different ways of singing: the conventionally voiced ayalakh style and the tense guttural back-of-the-throat voice of khayalakh. It is the latter style that can form the basic quality for the khoomii overtone singing from Zakhchin singer Enkhbalsan. These archive recordings may give the casual world music listener a little more than they bargained for. However, they will complement and contextualise many of the contemporary recordings coming out of Mongolia and Kazakhstan.