A horse and rider gallop across the grassy hills, the horse’s mane and tail flowing, the rider’s garments billowing in the wind.
The galloping rhythms of Mongolian band Hanggai evoke such images – but not only those.
Hanggai is a study in contrasts.
Wearing a red ball cap and red T-shirt, bassist Niu Zin plays a very modern bass guitar. Band leader Yiliqi (or Ilchi), dressed in a traditional head scarf and brocade-trimmed tunic, creates melodies on a Mongolian topshur or two-stringed lute.
Hanggai defies classification.
The band’s rich sound spans hard-driving rock to haunting, plaintive folk songs, providing glimpses into its eclectic influences.
Yiliqi, originally a punk rocker, was driven to explore his Mongolian roots when he first heard throat singing. Travelling to Inner Mongolia from his home in Beijing, China to learn more, he studied the art of creating harmonic sounds deep in the throat. There he met two other players of traditional Mongolian music who would become the original members of the band. One remains – Batubagen, who is also a throat singer and plays the Mongolian morin khuur or horse-head fiddle.
That was 10 years ago. The now seven-person Hanggai has seen its members change over the years, but its focus and Yiliqi’s passion have never wavered.
Hanggai is a Mongolian word which means a landscape of grassland, mountains, forest and river. The landscape, accordingly, is key to the band’s focus.
Yiliqi is one of two members of the group who speaks English as well as Mongolian and Mandarin; the other, guitarist and sanxian player Ailun. Relaxing after his set on the Roots and Blues’ Main Stage Saturday night played to an enthusiastic, dancing crowd, Yiliqi explains that the band plays traditional Mongolian songs for two reasons. One, to emphasize care of the land and the environment, as his people have always done. The second is to keep the traditional culture strong.
He says the new way of playing the old songs gives them “a new face, so young people take care of the culture, and also take care of the homeland.”
All the group but one lives in Beijing, a city of more than 20 million. Yet another contrast, as they sing songs of wild and untouched land.
“(The songs) don’t mean we want to come back to the romantic life of the grassland… We also have to go to the city,” Yiliqi says.
Shadowed by Russia to the north and China to the south, the traditionally nomadic people of Mongolia, with their many different dialects and groupings, have been divided and their culture has been weakened by the oppressive dominant cultures.
Yiliqi’s aim of reaching young people with the band’s modern version of the traditional songs has been beyond successful.
It all started, he says, when he and an earlier incarnation of the group competed in Sing My Song, a Chinese counterpart to American Idol.
“After the TV show, every people know Hanggai.”
Since then, Hanggai has toured the world and produced three albums.
A film featuring the band, Away from the Grasslands, is an official selection of the 2015 NYC International Film Festival.
“More young people see Hanngai as their hero, it’s changed them a lot, they are living with their heart. Now we have a responsibility to keep doing that…”
Upon leaving Salmon Arm, the group was off to Vancouver to spend 10 to 15 days producing their fourth album, as yet untitled, with Amsterdam producer JB Meijers. It is another milestone in Hanggai’s quest to keep Mongolian culture alive.
Says Yiliqi: “We just need to keep playing, to keep the feeling. We can’t forget.”