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Clarence Tsui

Eclectic Tales of Mongolia

Li Chin-sung and Khoomii Sound Machine

City Hall Concert Hall

Reviewed: November 3

Producer Hannes Nimpuno writes in the programme notes that, to thrive, multicultural musical ensembles must find  a 'common [sonic] language'  and an 'emotional match'.

With Eclectic Tales of Mongolia,  he's achieved his aim. It's a masterful synthesis of traditional Mongolian music,  free jazz, electronica and even a bit of funk  - two cultures managing to blend into something both familiar and new.

Following  in the footsteps of American blues singer Paul Pena (who worked with  Kongar-ool Ondar  on  Genghis Blues)  and  Bjork (who recruited Canadian throat-singer Tanya Tagaq  Gillis),  Hong Kong's  Li Chin- sung succeeded in drawing out the similarities in  timbre between modern, western instrumentation and its traditional Mongolian counterparts.

The show began with a short piece from throat-singers Naranbadrakh  Nergui and  Damdin Gantulga, followed by  computer-aided tweaking of  these snippets  by Li and fellow keyboardist  Josef Novotny.  Li's major vocation is in electronica, but his idea has blossomed into a musical performance that showcased the best of both worlds.

The second half fulfilled the cast's potential, with a series of powerful,  perfectly in-sync numbers combining laptop beats, throat-singing (khoomii), Jonas Hellborg's funky electronic bass and  Mikhlai Burgedbaatar's morin khuur (the horsehead violin, left).

Rarely - if ever - did the musicians lapse into the easy option of rendering the Mongolian elements  as a stand-alone exotic spectacle. The khoomii, morin khuur and Khongorzul Ganbaatar's urtiin duu (long-song singing) were always provided with a western response, such as  when the Mongolian musicians' virtuosity was set in a cinematic context through Li's electronic glitches and locomotive sounds.

Such joyous fusion is heralded  by the way the second half opens, with Gantulga (on cow horn flute) and trumpeter Valentin Garvie performing from  either wing of the upper stalls, a signal of the cultural synthesis to come.



Eclectic Tales of Mongolia