Sunday morning music

I’m sure many of my readers know the Hu – a modern folk-metal group (they call their style “Hunnu rock”) out of Mongolia.  Here’s their “Wolf Totem”, perhaps their signature song.

However, there’s another group performing Mongolian music of an entirely different variety.  It’s the HAYA band, fronted by soloist Daichin Tana.  They offer Buddhist music as an aid to meditation, drawing on the Mongol folk music tradition and “spiritualizing” it, for want of a better word (much the same as Enya did from the Irish folk music tradition).  According to the group’s music label, they employ “the morin khuur (horse-head fiddle), tanbur (long-necked lute), khoomei (throat singing), shaman drum, [and] chanting”.

Here’s a single 20-minute video showcasing four of their songs:

00:00 ⋄ Ongmanibamai
05:43 ⋄ Qinghai Lake
10:23 ⋄ Snow Mountain
14:51 ⋄ Silent Sky

Definitely a very different side of Mongolian music to that offered by the Hu!  Buddhism has a long history among the Mongols, so it’s entirely authentic.

You’ll find more of their music on YouTube and elsewhere.

Peter