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URNA CHAHAR-TUGCHI
The Magical Voice from Mongolia
It is late summer in Ordos, in Inner Mongolia. The young Urna has
riddenout with her mother at sunset to round up the family`s herds and
drive them to the stables. Several hundred sheep, a small herd of cows
and two herds of horses start moving. The animals know the familiar
calls, a mixture of beckoning and driving. Urna rides slowly around the
herds so that the circles become gradually smaller. Around her resounds a
whole orchestra of animal noises and running sounds.
The two women rest for a while in the grass before devoting
themselves to the chore of milking the cows and sheep. They gaze into
the endless distance. The steppe to the east and the gently rising dunes of
the Gobi desert to the west merge in the light of the setting sun to form a
brilliant red carpet. Her mother looks at her tenderly and asks: “Do you
think that any other places are like this, the air so clear, the water so pure,
the sky so blue?” Urna is silent, preoccupied by something very different.
Something that is more important to her.
Urna finished school in early spring and then shocked her parents by
expressing a definite wish: to study. She does not know how her parents
are going to react. As yet, neither her father nor her mother have
responded to her suggestions. From experience she knows that in
Mongolia such things take their time. At her age, Urna would normally
get married and start a family, like all the others. But Urna definitely
wants to study, possibly even music. Months have passed, months
without a response. But today is that kind of day, a day that could harbour
a miracle. Her mother sings a song, looks at her child and says: “You can
go to the city for one year.”
A few days later she sets off on her journey to the capital, Hohhot, the
so-called “Blue City”. First, she travels two hours by horse and cart, then
three hours by bus. She immediately contacts the teacher who has been
recommended to her. She wants to learn how to play the Chinese
dulcimer, but she cannot afford to pay for lessons. The teacher, touched
by the determination of this girl from the far distant steppe, makes her an
offer. Urna can look after her daughter, and in return she will give her
music lessons for free.
The months that follow are difficult: she looks after the child almost
the whole day, has daily music lessons and practises at night. Sometimes
she is so tired that she falls asleep, exhausted, her head resting on the
dulcimer, so that when she wakes up in the morning the marks of the
strings are on her face. But she makes great progress in master - ing the
instrument, which is none too easy to play. Six months later, however,
comes the bad news: her teacher is given a position in Shanghai. Several
months later, Urna receives a telegram from there. The teacher has not
forgotten the great talent exhibited by the girl form the steppe. She writes:
“Come to Shanghai, apply here, you should be attending the Music
Academy.”
The subsequent journey is even longer than the first. On her arrival in
Shanghai, she finds herself alone in a lively anthill of people. No one
comes to meet her, and she cannot speak the language. All she has in her
hand is the crumpled telegram with the address. She takes different buses,
but not quite sure to where. That evening, exhausted, lost, and fearful, she
sits sobbing on a bench. Finally, a kind old man looks after her, reads
the note with the address and accompanies her to her teacher.
That is how Urna`s life in Shanghai begins. In a foreign city, a foreign
culture, she has to learn a foreign language, Mandarin. She also has to
look after the child, study and practise. Much later in New York, when
Urna meets her teacher again at a concert in the Metropolitan, the latter
confesses: “I lured you to Shanghai not just because of your talent, but
also because our child missed you so much. She was always crying and
asking, `Where is Urna, where is Urna, where are her songs?`”
After some difficult months, Urna finally achieves her goal of
studying at the Music Academy. She attends concerts and listens in on
other students` public examinations. When the students sing she realises
that, although they are from different ethnic groups and traditions, they
all sound the same at the end of their studies. The young musician realises
that the singing technique taught at the Academies smoothes out the
differences in the voices and the expressiveness of the artists, making
everything sound similar.
She recalls her childhood, singing in the steppe. She remembers the
songs she sang with her grandmother: they all sounded different, much
more beautiful.
Urna can only visit her family once a year. Far from home, the
memories of her childhood live on in her day and night dreams: sitting on
her grandmother`s knee waiting for her grandfather, who often only
returned from the desert after many months with the camel caravan
transporting salt. She recalls the many songs her grandmother used to
sing. The long way to school on horseback. At the age of seven she was
already able to ride alone to the respective yurt where the lessons were
being held. She always looked forward to the other children and the guest
family who would prepare a meal for all the schoolchildren. She missed
looking after the little lambs and kids. And she missed riding. She had to
be quick to keep her herds separate from the others and to catch animals
that had run away. And Urna was quick, even when the biting wind was
against her body and face.
Meantime she can speak Mandarin very well. While still studying,
Urna gives her first solo concert in her hometown of Orodos in 1992,
playing the Chinese dulcimer, yangqin. On completion of her studies
at the Academy, she works with the National Orchestra of Inner
Mongolia. During that period she also gives concerts, singing in a small
ensemble with friends she studied with at the Music Academy. Later she
performs with international musicians and presents her songs on the
world`s stages. That was the start of a career which later took her to the
world’s stages, along with the respective ensemble or as a guest musician.
Her performances excited audiences and critics alike, transporting them
on a wonderful journey. “Urna’s songs thrive on the extra -ordinary
breadth of variation in her fouroctave voice and its perfect intonation.
From the highest pitches with a clear and piercing intensity, to powerful
eruptions whose volume and timbre sound scarcely human, to warm,
sometimes merely whispered pianissimo passages, Urna unfurls the
whole range of her art in front of fascinated audiences. Caprioles, such as
gliding swiftly up and down between head and chest voice or constantly
changing the timbre within one piece, combine to create an astonishing
work that carries us off to other spheres” (Frankfurter Rundschau).
“Rarely does a voice sound as varied as a small orchestra; and even rarer
are the vocalists who still retain a grip on reality and are not absorbed by
an artificial craft. Urna is one of these exceptions. The secret of this
highly qualified musician consists of a charm influenced
by Buddhist philosophy, a self-evident aware ness of tradition and a range
of melodies which, though earthed in the central Asian steppe, is almost
surreal” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung). Urna satisfies her listeners
thanks to her more than perfect mastery of her singing techniques, her gift
of associative interpretation, her charm and charisma. Hers is a heavenly
music best perceived with eyes wide shut. We then experience a world
which may seem to us like a sign of another time, a time when man still
lived a holistic life, balanced, and bound to nature.
Recently Urna played the main role in the film 'Two Horses of
Genghis Kahn'. She worked on the touching story together with the
film-maker Byambasuren Davaa (who also made 'The Story of the
Weeping Camel' and 'The Cave of the Yellow Dog'). The song 'The Two
Horses of Genghis Khan' uniquely incorporates the history of the
Mongolian people and a paradigm shift. Urna regards this song as a
wonderful part of her cultural identity, given that she had promised her
grandmother that should would restore the old destroyed horse head
violin, of which only the head and neck had survived, by giving it a new
body and strings of white horse hair. During the dark era of the Chinese
Cultural Revolution, her grandmother had not succeeding in preserving
the complete horse head violin, only fragments of it and of the verse
engraved on it. Now the time had come to fulfil the promise she made.
She visits a famous Mongolian State Morin Khuur Ensemble in the hope
of learning more about the old song, contacts an old horse head violin
maker and then travels to the nomads in the hinterland. She continues
her search by attending weddings and visiting a shaman. Finally she
meets a very old enchanting woman who knows many Mongolian songs
and still sings them today.
Urna realizes that the life of the nomads in Mongolia is under threat
these days. Once different mineral deposits, called “rare soils”, had been
found, larger areas of land were fenced off and so became inaccessible,
especially for the nomads and their herds of animals. The restriction of
their habitat, the confinement of grazing sites for their ani mals, the
blocking of trails they have to take, depending on the season and the
grazing, and the pressure exerted on them to settle down around cities, all
of this puts pressure on a culture that has survived for thousands of years
and in which people live in harmony with nature. Urna still sees herself to
this very day as a nomad. She frequently changes her place of residence;
she lived for five years in Cairo and cur rently Berlin is her home and the
point of departure for her international concerts.
Most of Urna’s songs are from the huge repertoire of her beloved
grandmother and celebrate her Mongolian homeland, the pastoral life, the
steppe, the customs and dreams of the people in those vast expanses.
by Christian Scholze (Network Medien)
translated by Pauline Cumbers
Discography:
URNA Portrait: Tenggeriin Shivuu, 2012, Network Medien, Gemany
Film, The two horses of Genghis Khan, 2009, Germany
Amilal, 2004, Trees Music & Art (TMCD-333)
Hodood, (re-issue) 2002, Trees Music & Art (TMCD-320)
Jamar, 2001, Trees Music & Art (TMCD-278)
Hodood, Oriente, 1999
Crossing, 1997, KlangRäume (30330)
Tal Nutag, 1995, KlangRäume (30200)