We just donated to Dimitri’s Kickstarter the other day. He is trying to gather funding to do something totally amazing. He only has a few days left to reach his goal. If you have the funds, help him reach the goal before the campaign ends.
Link to kickstarter is below:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/856671058/music-and-the-legitimacy-of-nomadism-in-mongolia
Here’s a bit of what he has to say about the project:
A documentary about cultural Mongolian music and its relation to the legitimacy of nomadism.
In preparation for going to Mongolia I was lucky to connect with a man named Greg Simmons who has become somewhat of a mentor. He told me a story about recording a group of old men singing a prayer in a village in the foothills of the Himalayas. When he returned a year later to make a better recording, they would not sing the prayer again because the man who had led the prayer had died. They explained to him that the old man ‘held’ the music and could only pass it on to his son. He gave them a copy of the previous recording. When he returned 2 years later to that village, they sang the prayer for him. He commented that, “I guess that passing on a recording of the old man who ‘held’ the music was the next best thing to him passing it on himself, and they were able (or allowed?) to sing it again.”
While Mongolian nomadic cultures are certainly different than the culture of that village, the story is still pertinent to Mongolian music because a similar situation is occurring. Mongolia is becoming increasingly industrialized and, young men and women born as nomads are moving away from this lifestyle. As a result nomadic musical traditions are in danger of becoming extinct as quickly as a generation from now. Their music and their stories need to be heard and told now before it’s too late. I am going to Mongolia to film a documentary about cultural Mongolian music and its relation to the legitimacy of nomadism.
