Live From Mongolia

by Patricia Sexton

  Brothers in their mid-twenties, Quiza and Bold had a passion for hiphop, and American hip-hop in particular. A decade earlier, they’d both been fans of the Wu Tang Clan, Cypress Hill, and Dr. Dre, and Quiza liked to emulate the various groups’ styles and moves. On a whim as a teenager, he’d recorded a single song to submit to Mongolia’s FM 102.5, a commercial radio station in the capital. The song was an instant hit, and the station played it often. Armed with nods of approval from the general public and the professional DJs, Quiza had earned himself a chance to make it big.

  Instead, he went ahead with his family’s plan to send him to the Czech Republic to go to school. At the time he was only sixteen years old and the youngest of eight children; his mother had died long ago. On a government clerk’s salary, his father had supported the family, but money had been tight and the family’s hopes for Quiza had been high. In Prague, he studied agricultural business. Like anyone who’s hanging on to an improbable dream, Quiza snubbed his passion and stuck to what he was supposed to be doing, like his homework.

  Until he recorded another song.

  With the embers of passion stoked all over again, Quiza began toying with the idea of setting up a band. Through the Internet grapevine, he found a fellow Mongolian musician living in the UK and together they formed a group called the Crew. Quiza quit school and moved to London. Facing the cresting wave of his passion, he left in his wake all those expectations that had been set out for him. Shortly thereafter, Quiza’s brother, Bold, joined him in London. Together, the brothers worked in restaurants to save enough money to make the music they so loved.

  Depending on whom you asked in 2006, take-home pay for your average Mongolian family was anywhere from thirty US dollars a month in the rural areas, to a few hundred dollars a month in the capital. Without any record labels in the country’s cottage music industry, and with no outside support from the music industry at large, Bold and Quiza would have faced a bill of five to ten times their combined monthly income back home to produce just one more song, never mind a whole album. Including marketing, the finished product of an album can easily run up a bill of thousands of dollars. It’s hard to imagine how any band can make it at all in the country, until you see for yourself the creativity artists employ in order to be employed by their creativity.

  Consolidating the savings they’d made in the United Kingdom, Quiza and Bold purchased sound and recording equipment from eBay. Bold returned to Mongolia while Quiza remained in London, writing lyrics for the Crew, gaining traction and increasing confidence.

  In late 2005, Quiza moved back home. By this point, he’d written, sung, or coproduced about sixty songs, creating a grassroots fan base. No sooner had he arrived in Ulaanbaatar than a member of Camerton, then Mongolia’s hottest boy band, asked Quiza to write lyrics for three songs he was producing. The band member was going solo and wanted to use Quiza’s broadening fan base as well as his unique ability to capture the essence of local flavor in his lyrics. Quiza eagerly accepted, and that December he received the Mongolian Grammy for Best R&B and Best Dance lyrics.

  Finally, with Bold as manager, the band was able to use the sound and recording equipment they’d bought. And with Bold, Quiza produced his first album, TAABAR MET, which was released the following winter. Singing about problems endemically personal to Mongolia and Mongolians—poverty in the ger districts, political corruption, and human rights—Quiza’s homespun lyrics and literal tone hit the airwaves as a smashing success. Mongolians simply loved him.

  By the spring of 2006, a music video featuring Quiza performing his title track made him one of the most recognizable artists in the country. His second album followed soon after. Titled, HIIMORIIN SAN, or “Spirit Catcher,” it couldn’t have been a better or more fitting name for someone who’d staked everything he’d known to follow his dream.

  Mongolians love music, and they’ve loved music for as long as anyone can remember. Whether sending a message in song to a distant lover on the steppe, coaxing an ornery camel (again, in song) to suckle her calf, or announcing sports results at an annual festival, your average Mongolian will go to any length whatsoever to get his message across lyrically. Take, for instance, the practice of throat singing. Called khöömii in Mongolian, it’s the ancient art of producing two simultaneous sounds from deep within the throat. The result is both a whistle and a guttural vibration. However, it happens to be quite dangerous.

  There are five methods to learning throat singing, one local told me, and four of them will completely destroy your larynx within just a few years. In other words, Mongolians who learn this age-old practice must really be committed to it if they’re willing to risk losing their speech.

  In fact, throat singing is such a coveted skill that there is currently a massive diplomatic argument brewing over its origin. In a still-simmering dispute, Chinese students learning throat singing from Mongolian master Odsuren Baatar supposedly betrayed their teacher, secretly using a video of what he’d taught them in order to pitch to UNESCO that throat singing had originated in China, which Mongolians insist isn’t true.

  In a downtown housing block, Bold and Quiza had rented a small apartment and installed a makeshift music studio. They shared their space with the Lemons, a local indie rock band. While Tobie and I waited for Quiza to arrive, Bold pulled up a few chairs and we watched the Lemons practice amid a cacophonic jumble of cymbals, throat-clearing, and high-pitched microphone whines.

  I was excited to meet Quiza. Earlier that week, we’d pitched his and Bold’s story to Gandima. She was skeptical, and her interest seemed limited to getting us out of her office and off her back. Reluctantly, she agreed to make a final decision after we showed her a sample of the footage we were about to get.

  Suddenly, the Lemons stopped playing, and a rounder version of Bold walked in the door. “Hello,” the man with the cherubic mouth said softly as he tentatively stuck out his hand. “I am Quiza.”

  Quiza was twenty-five years old and very shy. Pasty blotches had spread across his smooth face, and he shifted uncomfortably in his seat next to mine in front of the camera. After Tobie signaled that he’d begun rolling, I first asked Quiza about the hip-hop scene and Mongolian hip-hop in particular. But it wasn’t just his music that I was interested in. It was his passion. Truth was, I knew little about music, and even less about hip-hop. Finally, I asked the question I’d been waiting to ask.

  “As an artist,” I said, “what do you do to make your passion happen?”

  Quiza didn’t answer. In fact, he seemed a little confused, almost timorous, as if he were lost. Throughout the interview so far, he’d struggled to answer my questions. Bold had helped bridge the language barrier when he could and did so again. However, this left me with only a hesitant, somewhat wooden account of what Quiza and his music were all about. That is, until he took to the stage in the little studio apartment where we were filming. It was the only way he could answer the question. Right away, any evidence of nerves vanished completely, and Quiza was immediately transformed.

  Closing his eyes, he began to rap. Rocking and tapping to the steady rhythmic beat, Quiza submerged himself in the music. When the song ended, he actually looked surprised, as if someone had just awakened him from a blissful dream. Quiza had performed the title track to TAABAR MET, which means “As a Quest.” The name couldn’t have been more apt, and I noticed in him just the same expression I’d discovered in Anne O’Brien, the pregnant Irish cyclist. Quiza looked found. It had been incredible to witness, once again, this transformation.

  With nothing more than a demure nod to his small crowd, Quiza stepped down from the stage. Completely impervious to his own glory, he politely thanked Tobie and me and sat down to watch the Lemons resume practicing their riffs.

  “You will join us to watch Quiza perform live tonight?” Bold asked as he showed us to the door, explaining that Quiza was scheduled to open for the Lemons at a local music venue. Nara would be there too. It was the first time I’d been invited out by a
local Mongolian, and I felt truly honored to be making friends in a place so far from home.

  Before meeting Bold and Quiza that night, Tobie and I made our way to the Grand Khan Irish Pub. The manager of the Grand Khan had made sure that his pub was the pub to go to if you wanted to watch the 2006 Football World Cup matches. And he’d agreed to let us interview him. Tobie and I figured we should hedge our bets with Gandima. She hadn’t seemed particularly interested in our pitch to produce a feature story on Quiza and Mongolian hip-hop, and we’d have to deal with that later. But for now, surely she’d agree to a story on Mongolia’s take on World Cup viewing rituals.

  That summer, all over Mongolia, from city folk to nomads, local Mongolians were doing everything they could to watch the soccer matches, going as far as hooking up satellite dishes to gers. Some of these outposts were so remote that they were dozens of miles from their nearest neighbor, not to mention a reliable food source. But they all made sure they had access to the matches. Fascinated by this creative dedication to a sport that’s not exactly part of the country’s culture, Tobie and I were sure everyone else would be just as fascinated.

  “I’m here at Ulaanbaatar’s famous Grand Khan Irish Pub!” I shouted into the mike over the deafening din of revelers. Standing in the lobby of the bar next to the coat check, I was being pushed aside by people trying to get inside to see the match, which was just about to begin. A slow-moving line snaked from the doorway out through the parking lot. On a much smaller scale, it was like what reporting in the midst of the Super Bowl or Olympic mayhem must be like: crowds, bouncers, security, and excitement.

  “And we are in for a treat!” I shouted as a security guard shoved me aside.

  Earlier that week, Tobie had uncovered the name of the Grand Khan’s manager. A jetsetter among the Ulaanbaatar elite, he’d been surprisingly difficult to track down, and we’d spent an entire day trying to locate his private telephone number. When he’d agreed to talk to us for our story, even Gandima had seemed impressed. But once we got to his bar, he was nowhere to be found. Or so we thought.

  Standing inside watching the game, he told me he was nowhere to be found. Of course, the joke was lost on me. It wasn’t until I saw him being introduced on camera by another reporter that I finally understood: he’d changed his mind about who was going to interview him. And instead of granting an interview to MNB, he’d decided at the last minute to grant one to TV5.

  One of a handful of Mongolian television broadcasters, TV5 was the new kid on the broadcasting block in the country. Funded in part by private investors, the station’s goal was to shake up the somewhat staid atmosphere of traditional post-Soviet, government-funded local broadcasting. With cutting-edge technology, the station boasted luminescent new studios, a snazzy Web site with access to online video streaming, and arrestingly handsome reporters to deliver the whole package to you. Where MNB commanded authority from years in the job, TV5 won respect for trying something new and looking good doing it. Grumbling to ourselves, Tobie and I tried to figure out how to get decent enough footage to beat an actual interview.

  “They’re good,” Tobie said as he watched the TV5 production crew. He seemed to imply that he’d rather be there than where he was. Incredibly, he soon would be.

  Tobie and I filmed as much as we could and then packed up to head back to the office, just as a Beatles cover band began playing. Sporting an authentic retro bowl cut, a Mongolian man belted out “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and a cheer went up from the tightly packed crowd. He stopped suddenly midsong. All of the bar’s flat-screen television sets, positioned around its perimeter, were tuned in to the World Cup matches, and their volume had been turned all the way up. The Japan-Croatia match was about to begin, and a hush fell over the crowd.

  “Nomads,” I began my pitch to Gandima, a little bit theatrically. “Watching”—I paused—“the World Cup!”

  Gandima’s eyes narrowed.

  “Patricia,” she began with breathy irritation. Over the last few weeks since I’d arrived in Mongolia, I’d noticed that Gandima’s patience wasn’t exactly exhaustible. And right this minute, I realized I’d discovered its limit, and I thought I knew why.

  “Patricia,” she said again, this time with exaggerated patience. “Mongolia is about more than nomads watching television,” she added reproachfully, her voice rising in exasperation. Right away, I knew what she was insinuating and where our pitch had gone wrong.

  Many of the Mongolians I’d met so far that summer were quick to point out the rapid pace of the capital’s evolution since the fall of Communism. At the same time, they seemed reluctant to acknowledge the quaintness of the steppe. Proud of their heritage, they were fiercely protective of it, too, as if protecting a kid brother. Occasionally, foreigners’ interest in Mongolia’s recent past is regarded a little bit suspiciously, sometimes with outright hostility. Basically, you’re guilty of poking fun until you’re proven innocent. And proving ourselves innocent to Gandima was just what Tobie and I needed to do to get the go-ahead from her to film World Cup–viewing rituals in the steppe.

  “But wait, Gandima, what I meant was …” I pleaded, hastily tripping over my words to paint the picture that Tobie and I had envisioned, making sure to leave out the part about how intriguing we’d both found the imagery of an old nomad tinkering with his satellite dish so he could cheer for the Japanese soccer team. Leading her through the thought process behind our concept, I trailed off as I finished, as you do when you’ve been talking far too long to convince someone who was never going to change her mind anyway.

  Sitting quietly at his desk, even Tobie looked on skeptically.

  While we waited for her verdict, the seconds seemed to stack themselves on top of each other, and it was clear that Gandima was going to turn us down.

  “No,” she said finally, explaining that Mongolia cannot be defined exclusively by its nomads and that highlighting their World Cup viewing practices was definitely not news. It wasn’t even a feature. Frowning, she stalked off to her office.

  A third of Mongolians are herders living and working in the steppe, which provides pasture for their grazing livestock—livestock that happens to outnumber human beings by a margin of no less than sixteen to one (compared to New York City, where people outnumber livestock by approximately eight million to zero). In my mind, no matter what image Mongolians wanted to portray to the outside world, they would be hard-pressed to change their own facts. Besides, many of our viewers were foreigners, tourists who’d come to the country to see the steppe and its nomads. It was a case of then and now, and the fusion of the two seemed as beguiling as any news story I’d seen on the air since I’d arrived.

  At the time, I didn’t quite realize it, but Tobie was angry. Angry enough, in fact, to quit, land another job at a rival television station, and finish it all off in a shouting match with Gandima. For Tobie, this was unusual. Although we’d spent an entire month working together, I didn’t know much about him, other than that he was English, nineteen years old by now, and gifted at whatever he tried his hand at. But what I did know about Tobie was that he was polite to a fault. He had a well-bred, aristocratic air about him; he simply never lost his temper.

  That night, Tobie was still smoldering as we made our way to the local pub where Bold had invited us to watch Quiza and the Lemons perform. At some point, and he’d never said when, Tobie had put in a call to Urna to help him find a new job. Because it was Urna’s responsibility to make sure all the interns were happy and fulfilled in their summer roles in Mongolia, she would’ve been his first call. But as it turned out, Tobie’s reputation preceded him, and he would hardly need the recommendation of either Urna or the British company for whom she worked.

  TV5, the rival television station where Tobie would soon end up, had already heard about Tobie.

  Lost in our own thoughts, Tobie and I walked in silence through a warren of streets and gritty back alleys until finally we found Bold and Nara, who were waiting outside
to invite us in to watch Quiza. The venue had been difficult to find; it was one of those places you’d only locate with the benefit of explicit directions or luck. Fortunately, we had a bit of both.

  “Hello, welcome!” Bold cried warmly, clasping our hands to shake in that intimate way you do when you’ve known someone a lot longer than we’d all actually known each other. He had an intensity about him, a real philosophical air that made you want to think carefully before answering any of his probing questions.

  “Why are you here?” Bold asked after we sat down at a wooden picnic table, his dark and brooding eyes staring intently, not blinking once. Although he was only in his twenties, he seemed to be much older, much wiser.

  I had to think a moment, because it was obvious Bold was not one to suffer fools. By his side, Nara sat quietly and smiled.

  “Because I believe in taking risks,” I said, without elaborating.

  “And is Mongolia a risk to you?” he probed.

  “Well, yes,” I said. “Isn’t any new adventure a kind of risk, no matter where it takes place?”

  Bold nodded and said nothing more. Tobie was quiet.

  “I would like to say welcome to my guests,” Quiza said from up on the stage, pointing in our direction. Tobie and I raised our glasses in return and sat back, listening to the performance. That summer, Quiza was able to draw a small yet lively crowd at obscure venues like this one, but it wouldn’t be long before he’d be one of the biggest music sensations in the entire country. Both he and his brother, Bold, had pursued their passions, and they were squarely in the middle of making it happen for themselves.

  CHAPTER 17

  Consonant Omelet

  The Asia-Pacific Director of the International Labor Organization visited the Mongolian Prime Minister today. Mr. Gyok Bu Ng told Prime Minister Enkhbold that Mongolia’s progress in developing the labor market has been significant.