Rocking Traditions

Hailing from Beijing with cultural roots in Mongolia, dressed in traditional Mongolian dress, throat singing and relying on crowd participation that begins and ends with holding your beer in the air and screaming, “Hey!”, Hanggai are a remarkable sensory experience. Their music veers across stately traditional court music to flat-out Mongolian hillbilly romps that draw influence from horses careering across Mongolian grasslands and, well, rock music. In 2011 they were a sensation at Womadelaide, their mixture of traditional instrumentation such as the horsehair fiddle and more Western instruments providing a truly unique cultural experience. The drinking doesn't hurt in bridging the cultural gap either. Their first album, 2008's Introducing Hanggai features a song called Drinking Song, with traditional instrumentation that comes across as something of a sea shanty. Their 2010 follow-up, He Who Travels Far, produced by Ken Stringfellow (The Posies) of all people, features the same song, this time with a bigger bottom end, somehow grander. When Hanggai play this song live, suddenly it becomes clear: most of their songs seem to be about drinking.

“Yes,” laughs bandleader Ilchi. “It's part of the culture for Mongolian people. During touring usually we like to drink together, after the show and maybe before the show we drink maybe one or two beers.”

Ilchi began his musical career in a grunge band influenced by Nirvana and Sex Pistols, before developing more into punk-rock thanks to the influence of local punk bands such as 69 and Brain Failure. Later he moved onto rap metal. It was in 2003, while playing rock music that he began to develop an interest in his own cultural heritage after a friend slipped him a tape of traditional Mongolian music. What followed were two years of relentless attempts at developing a fusion. While initially the focus was on learning the traditional instrumentation, more recently Hanggai have managed to incorporate rock elements in their live shows and move effortlessly between the two.

“I think our music is about coming back to listen to the traditional songs,” he offers. “Many things change and the traditional sound also changes. There are so many pop songs or people doing electric with traditional sounds, or they copy Korean or Western music in Mongolia and that is not a good thing. So before we do the band I think most young people don't know about this, but now many young people can do something for our own culture. Some young people they are designers and they design with traditional Mongolian clothes, some of them design Mongolian tattoo. Now I think that many people do for Mongolian culture but different way, different things.”