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The chaos theory of Mongolia

I returned to Mongolia 15 years ago after an absence of 13 years, save for the occasional 2-week leave from work, and that time I spent a semester and a half at a local university drinking endless cups of brown, watery 150 Tugrik instant MaCcoffee at the café strangely, or perhaps egotistically, named "In my memory", writing the first and so far the only book that got us into trouble with the local intelligence who apparently had little else to do than to pore through the ramblings of teenagers to catch the tell-tale signs of drug dealery. But I digress. When you visit a country for a short period, be it home or not, you hardly have time to immerse yourself in the spirit of the country and the city and feel the nitty gritty and dirty shiny of it all. So after 13 years, it took me a while to readjust and finally understand what the hometown of my childhood had become.  The most striking, ubiquitous, and inescapable feature was and still, unfortunately, is the traffic. In 2008,

Playing Love II: Morin Khuur Ensemble concert

So on Saturday, we went to watch and listen to Playing Love II, the Morin Khuur Ensemble concert. The Morin Khuur Ensemble puts on these concerts once or twice a year. Playing Love II, similar to Cinema Nights, is the morin-khuurification of famous world film scores as well as Mongolian cinema music.
It was my first attendance of the Ensemble's cinema themed concerts, and overall found it very enjoyable, except for the 25-minute opening lecture by composer Jantsannorov on the origins of film scores and film scores he composed and the obligatory announcer, who would step out on to the stage after every song to remind us that the show goes on. Maybe it's just me, I think a concert should be just that, a concert. No lectures, no announcers to talk about the history of the local film industry and the significance of a particular film: just music you paid to see and hear. While the playlist could have been improved, by excluding a song from a Korean TV series featuring a young K-Pop look-a-like singer etc, the rest was excellent.

Below is from the original score to "Ferocious Saint Lord of Gobi" or Догшин Хутагтын Сахиус, a 1998 Mongolian film about the life of Danzanravjaa, the 5th incarnation of Gobi Noyon Hutagt, a poet, painter, writer and one eccentric son of a gun. The video is not the official clip, but it was all I could find on Youtube. For some reason, it reminds me of the Godfather theme. For me, this piece was one of the highlights of the evening.

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