The Art of the Mongolian Yatga (ARC Music, 2014)
Anyone who has followed many of my reviews here at World Music Central knows my affinity for ARC Music recordings. ARC has just got the knack for searching out the true masters of a genre or an instrument, as well as providing extensive, informative liner notes and having some of the cleanest, most beautifully recorded offerings in the business. Having said that, I wish they would chose some less academic sounding titles for their releases.
The Art of the Mongolian Yatga by yatga mistress Chinbat Baasankhuu is a good example because The Art of the Mongolian Yatga in no way sums up the beauty and the sheer excellence of Ms. Baasankhuu’s talent in the way of the yatga, a zither with ties to the Japanese koto, Chinese gu-zheng, Vietnamese dan tranh and the Korean gayageum and instrument that would eventually provide for the invention of the guitar. While the title might not be exactly worthy, Ms. Baasankhuu’s mastery of the 13- and 21-string yatgas is not up for debate.
Hailing from a village in the Altai province of Mongolia with ties to surrounding mountain ranges, the Gobi desert and stepped landscapes, Ms. Baasankhuu traveled to Mongolia’s capital Ulan Bator to study at the College of Music and Dance before going on to the National University of Culture and Art and finally taking a position as a professor of the yatga in the Department of Traditional Music.
Capturing and holding close the techniques of the yatga and of Mongolia’s musical traditions, Ms. Baasankhuu opens up with inner loveliness of the extraordinary instrument on The Art of the Mongolian Yatga.
Opening with quick string work on “The Trot of the Horse with the Black Velvet Coat,” Ms. Bassankhuu plays out the imagined visuals of the movements of a horse with grace and ease. The Art of the Mongolian Yatga offers up dainty compositions as in Mongolian composer A. Mend-Amar’s “Variation 2,” lush tracks like L. Murdorj’s “The Colt of the Kherlen River” and B. Sharav’s “An Elegant Saddle” and soulfully sweet tracks like “My Mother” and Ms. Baasankhuu’s arrangement of the traditional tune “Sunrise.” Delicate, intricately played tracks conjure up the Mongolian countryside in Ms. Baasankhuu’s graceful, precise lines, making this recording almost meditative.
The Art of the Mongolian Yatga is an elegant, audible picturescape.
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Author: TJ Nelson
TJ Nelson is a regular CD reviewer and editor at World Music Central. She is also a fiction writer. Check out her latest book, Chasing Athena’s Shadow.
Set in Pineboro, North Carolina, Chasing Athena’s Shadow follows the adventures of Grace, an adult literacy teacher, as she seeks to solve a long forgotten family mystery. Her charmingly dysfunctional family is of little help in her quest. Along with her best friends, an attractive Mexican teacher and an amiable gay chef, Grace must find the one fading memory that holds the key to why Grace’s great-grandmother, Athena, shot her husband on the courthouse steps in 1931.
Traversing the line between the Old South and New South, Grace will have to dig into the past to uncover Athena’s true crime.
