Transcript for the Piece Audio version of From Sagebrush to Steppe
SOUND: (mz36) Big Gong
ACT: (mz36) That?s letting the gods know there?s a visitor
HAL: After coming half way around the world we?re hungry to smell the cooking, see the sites and hear the voices like those of the monks at Gandan Buddhist Monastery.
SOUND: Chanting from monastery (mz32@2:46)
HAL: It?s been a long flight. We?re disoriented. The chants spin us like a prayer wheel.
SOUND: (mz32@ 5:36) Cymbals and horns/cacophony
HAL: Though it?s the middle of the afternoon jet lag triggers a yawning epidemic in our group. As we leave the monastery Byomba, our guide and translator, hands us seed to feed pigeons, an exercise for good karma.
SOUND: (mz07@ :44) Pigeons take off/fade to black
SOUND: (md#2@ 58:30) van ambience with techno music
HAL: The next morning we all pile into four vans and bounce along past railroad yards with retired trans-Siberian locomotives repleat with red Soviet stars on the grillwork. We?re headed to Genghis Khan?s ancient capital of Karakorum. Just outside Ulaan Baatar the road deteriorates to a mass of potholes. Mongolian techno music on the radio seemed fitting in the blocky soviet style city ? now it?s out of place on the endless grass steppe.
MUSIC: (briefly bring up techno)
HAL: I can?t help wondering how American cowboy music will sit with the musical landscape of this ancient and very far-away place. Arizona cowboy and singer Gail Steiger wonders the same thing.
ACT: (md28@ 11:20) Gail- I worry about how our music is going to fit in. Particularly the kinda stuff I do?I don?t consider myself a good musician, but rather a kind of purveyor of ideas and if the language doesn?t translate?well what else do I have?
HAL: We?re getting into the rhythm of the road which has become a braid of dirt tracks. Each driver aims for the smoothest path as they race one another across the plain. After 9 hours we see what looks like mushrooms doting the landscape. It?s our first camp -- typical nomadic homes. The Mongolians call them Gers, the Russians -- yurts.
After dinner we are treated to a performance by a musical quartet dressed in embroidered silk robes of blue, gold and red - with the ubiquitous Mongolian beeny with a pointy beacon on top.
MUSIC: (mz18@ 14;15) Haunting tune up in the clear (will have started under previous track)
HAL: They play the Mongolian national instrument, the moren-hoor, a 2 stringed affair with a horses head carved into the peghead and, my favorite, a reed instrument that curves around the player?s neck, made from Yak horns.
We learn it?s a song about missing a mother who is far away herding and milking her animals. And as the musicians play their eyes hint at the melancholy of the lament.
MUSIC: (mz18@ 14:15) Nice chunk of this haunting tune.
HAL: 800 years ago Genghis Khan took troops of performers on his conquests including musicians, dancers and contortionists. Tonight this troop brings out a 14-year-old girl who wills her body into a dozen different rope tricks ? and then the group breaks into a version of John Denver?s ?Take Me Home Country Roads,? complete with throat singing. By the end of the show we are all speechless.
MUSIC: (mz18@ 36:30) End of Country Home. big applause.
HAL: Our American guide Linda Svendson gets up and through a translator asks the performers a simple question. (optional track)
ACT: (mz19@ 7:35) Would they be interested in hearing a couple songs from our cowboy musicians?
HAL: I wonder why the cowboys are all looking at their feet? Ron Kane and his sidekick Bruce Stanger reluctantly pick up the fiddle and banjo and play a tune or two. Later Ron called it the most faded ?Faded Love? he?s ever been part of.
MUSIC: (mz20@ 2:45) Cowboy tune (sour sounding)
HAL: Who knows why the Mongolians were so musical tonight and the Americans weren?t. Was it embarrassment, shyness, or just being unprepared for the moment? I?m told that every time a musician plays it?s an act of faith ? will it be music or will it be noise. I found Ron later.
ACT: (mz27@ 10:29) Ron- (agitated) I just sort of feel like how the coach would feel if he says ?okay let?s get out there you guys. We?ve been practicing this and now we?re going to go for victory? and it?s like somebody wasn?t trying very hard. And not only trying very hard, it was like ?take me out? you know. ///2:20 And this dismayed me, and then I went away.
ACT:(mz28@ 1:44) Gail Steiger. Well those Mongolians kicked our ass tonight. (laughs) (Track could go before act is it works better.)
HAL: Gail Steiger caught the whole thing on video tape
ACT: (mz28@ 1:44) Gail- Which I don?t believe music is a competitive sport.
Hal- But if it would have been? (both laugh)
Gail-Yeah if it would have been yeah?we were toast?we were dust.
HAL: It?s time to pack up the instruments but there?s something?s going on over in the corner.
MUSIC: (mz26@ 3:20) Stephanie & horn player working out a tune
HAL: Montana rancher and musician Stephanie Davis is learning that beautiful tune from the horn player.
ACT: (mz46@ 3:32) Stephanie- Suddenly they became people.///They went from being exotic foreigners to fellow musicians and brothers and sisters. it just blew my hair back?it just?I?m sputtering looking for descriptions. And it just makes me see how narrow my focus has been..Probably most Americans. There?s a big old world out here of great music.
MUSIC: End of fiddle & horn tune///mz46@ 5:37) everyone laughs (fade to black)
ACT: (mz42@ 3:00) Horse snort/ Byambaa- Generally these guys are trained to be mild..they are trained to be sensitive?
HAL: The next morning, it?s time to switch from seat belts to saddles, but first a lesson on riding sturdy little Mongolian horses.
ACT: (mz42@ 5:40) Linda- To go you just say chew!
Byambaa- C-H-U
Linda- That?s like kiddy-up
///6:05 Chu chu?bye bye (laughter)
Linda- that was superb ///
SOUND: (mz45@ 1:00) horse clopping
MUSIC: (MD#2@ 66:00) Mongolian Jews Harp (much like horse clopping)
HAL: Five days on horseback, riding and camping, looms before us ? but that doesn?t seem to matter. Distance is now measured by the next hill to cross, and time by the slant of the autumn sun.
MUSIC: (MD#2@ 66:00) more Jews Harp
MONTAGE over Jews Harp
Linda- This is a dream come true?it just doesn?t get any better than this.
Gail- I saw cattle, I saw yaks, I saw camels for the first time...goats, sheep. And the no fences is amazing. Kinda of a cowboy fantasy.
Bruce- We were almost a couple of horses short this morning cuz in the night a
couple of rustlers came in and boosted two of our ponies.
Children- sing horse song / Translator- It?s called a Gingwa and that?s the name
for the encouraging song for the horses before the horse race. It?s performed by the riders..all kids from age 6 to 11. So while they warm up their horses they do this song for their horses.
Stephanie- We?re looking at heaven..my idea of heaven anyway. We?re looking
at these hills of many colors and herd after herd of horses.
MUSIC: Jews harp ends & applause
ACT: Come & get it..dinner?s on the table!! Don?t be shy!
HAL: We?re being spoiled, enjoying fresh vegetables; a rarity out here ? and our hosts are going easy on such Mongolian favorites as fermented mare?s milk and unidentified mutton parts. We settle into an easy good-natured relationship with our hosts, the horses and the landscape. The music has turned from performance to something more akin to conversation. It?s not just the music that?s different ? there?s something different about the way it?s used? Like the kids singing to their horses before race.
SOUND: (mz48@ top) yak milk hitting a kettle
Hal- a woman milking her yak here?(more milking)
HAL: The early morning sun catches an old woman?s red silk robe as she milks a black, shaggy Yak in a field nearby. The milk pulses into her pail like a drum.
MUSIC: (mz48@ 1:02) woman sings lullaby song
TRANSLATOR: (mz48@ 1:52) This is a song when the mother yak needs to feed the baby one?and just to give them more love. It?s a lullaby song for the animals.
MUSIC: woman finishes song
ACT: (mz48@ 10:23) Herdswoman speaks in Mongolian
TRANSLATOR: She?s saying especially after she sang?now it?s going really well?you can hear the sound.
SOUND: (mz48@ 10:58) milk hitting the kettle
HAL: It dawns on me; music here is inseparable from life. The song simply relaxes the yak so she?ll let her milk down. There?s no performance in the singing. It?s purpose is specific. I find myself longing for a musical language that?s been lost to most of us.
It?s the last night on the steppe, and the days in the saddle are almost over? and the cowboy musicians are determined to make music serve yet another purpose.
ACT: composing song
HAL: Soon the group will make the arduous drive back to Ulaan Baatar where the cowboys will give a farewell concert at the capitol?s newest nightspot, the Genghis Khan Irish Pub. Tonight at camp they decide its time to make a new song.
ACT: composing. Let?s do it...and let?s do it in our big show. I want to throw in ?may your horses never fall, may your grass always be tall. Is that OK?
SD- Yes..that?s a winner.
HAL: And then they decide this song of friendship should be sung both in English ?& Mongolian.
ACT: Byamba shows up
HAL: As if on cue, Byamba shows up just in time for the brainstorm.
ACT: Byamba telling people how to pronounce Mongolian words?nice spontaneous composing.
HAL: It seems so effortless for him to switch back and forth ? not only in language but in culture. And it makes me wonder what this exchange is like for the Mongolians. One of our horse guides ? Tseye ... has won our hearts with boisterous songs and antics, like the time he squatted under a horse and tried to pick it up on his back. He invites me into his Ger, out of the chilly morning breeze.
Two years ago Tseye met many of us when he was part of the group that visited Nevada. I ask him about this reunion, this time on his native soil. He answers with a smile
ACT: Sey-ye begins answer with chuckle
HAL: I smile back?and wonder what he?s saying. (Then) There?s a small change in his voice ? his eyes well up and his lips quiver in the dim light. I don?t need to wait for the translation to know that in this very foreign place, we have made a very dear friend.
ACT: Sey-ye stops talking abruptly?crying.
MUSIC: New Mongolian cowboy song
HAL: For NPR news, I?m Hal Cannon from the wild west of Mongolia.
MUSIC: New Mongolian cowboy song continues
Funding Credit: George and Delores Dor?e Eccles Foundation. Produced by Taki Telonidis and Hal Cannon for the Western Folklife Center
