I was downloading what I could from freegal but they don't have much good contemporary Mongolian music, though youtube has a ton of it apparently. I kept wanting to listen to it on pandora while I'm writing but that didn't work out either.
So yesterday I downloaded my five songs of the week from something that sounds like it was generated for the Chinese market. I think that's the nicest thing I can say about it. The first thing I noted about Mongolian music was that it sounded like everything I do when I try to noodle out an original song on any instrument I can find, except that everyone around has the same sense of rhythm and tune and has input other than "wtf are you trying to do".
Anyway, when we try to just expand on that natural sense I think we are the best of the traditional musicians, and the oldest stuff sounds the most modern, or we have a lot more rock and roll in us than most traditional musics, but when we try to imitate what we think modern music is, a decisive lack of salience of what is going on with that tends to show, unless we've spent enough time with other ear players and didn't waste any time with people who got their music from places our critters don't travel.
It also reminds me of my time on the Powwow trail and talks I had with American Indians (I never really got along with Native Americans) about how spirit taught them how to dance and sing they way they did, and I felt like I usually did in those days that I had a lot more in common with any non white person I met than I did with any white person I met, but hadn't spent much time with Mongols back then. With American Indians I think it was a haplogroup thing and I think with blacks it was a tendency to trisomy kind of thing.
Anyway, I'm stuck with youtube as my source for now because like hell I'm getting out my credit card and the public library.
One thing about youtube is I get to see a lot of people with my complexion, and even my wrinkles.
