Trista Newyear offers what will be, for many, an introduction to the musical and lyrical traditions of the Buryat people, native to Russian-Mongolian-Chinese border region. Newyear's conversations with Buryat musicians hints at the challenges facing Buryat culture in the post-Soviet era in the Buryat homeland, elsewhere in the Russian Federation, and abroad.

Tristra Newyear, originally from the Midwest, has lived in Russia and is currently based in New York City. She is a singer and works for World Music Institute, a non-profit traditional music presenter. She has particular interest in Siberian music.

Buryatia, an autonomous republic of the Russian Federation, lies in south-central Siberia near Lake Baikal and the Mongolian-Chinese border. I first learned about Buryatia in New York City, of all places, when I heard of a group of traditional musicians involved with an experimental East Village theater company. Having traveled a bit in Russia, I had a vague idea who the Buryats were, but until I had spent some time with the visiting artists, I had little concept of the wealth of Buryat traditions or of the great transformations these traditions have undergone since the collapse of the Soviet system. My new Buryat musician acquaintances, Sayan Zhambalov, Namgar Lkhasaranova, and Battuvshin, illustrated through the stories of their lives the great knot of cultural and political influences that defines Buryat traditional culture today. In pursuit of their artistic vision, they have crossed the physical borders of their homelands and the boundaries of Buryat identity, an identity formed over the last seventy years, but now shifted under the pressure of a very different world.

A multitude of cultures have left their mark on Buryat traditions through trade, war, and colonization. The Western Buryats, for example, long ago adopted some of the ways of their Evenk and Khakas neighbors. Khalkha Mongols and Eastern Buryats had extensive contact with Chinese and Central Asian artisans and travelers. Chinese textiles have long featured prominently in the traditional garments of the Mongolic peoples. Chinese "brick," or pressed tea, has been brewed with lard or butter and salt for centuries. Some scholars suggest that one motive of Genghis Khan's empire building was to dominate the trade routes that conveniently crisscrossed the steppe territory of his people that had proved to be so lucrative. In the same way, Buryat traditional music resonates with the many music traditions that have crossed the Eurasian steppes over the centuries. One of the main instruments for solo pieces or accompaniment is the morin khur, or two-stringed horse head fiddle, an instrument with many analogues from the Altai (igil) to Persia (kamanche) to China (erhu). The pentatonic scales and common use of fourths in both tuning instruments and in songs closely resemble those used throughout the rest of Siberia and East Asia. As in the traditions of East Asia and the Indian subcontinent, the accompaniment of songs refrains from polyphony. Rather, the voice and instrument stick to the same melody with slightly different ornamentation and timing. Despite the Buryats' position at the crossroads of multiethnic Eurasia, a strong sense of Buryat identity has been transmitted for centuries through music. In the Buryat musical tradition, unlike much of Chinese, Indian, or Persian music, instrumental and vocal pieces revolve around narrative and narrative structures. Many instrumental pieces tell long, rather elaborate tales which are clearly defined by both performer and listener, despite the lack of text. This narrative quality is of great importance to the transmission of Buryat history and culture. For instance, historical songs often claim to be the last song of a particular famous leader or figure, usually before the hero is overtaken by a foreign army and executed. These songs, unlike more direct epics, often hint poetically at the character's situation and fate without telling the entire tale. In the "Last Song of Rinchin Dorzhin," a historical song about a nineteenth century Khori Buryat prince sung in the Aginsk Buryat Region, the singer first sets the scene and addresses the listener:

Have you ever seen a wild eagle Swoop down across the horizon? Have you ever seen Rinchin Dorzhin Gallop on his horses across the grasslands?

The song then goes on from Rinchin Dorzhin's perspective:

I once had a grand and fine home That graced the entire valley of Anon. I once had a young son Who will grow up looking for me. I once had an urga cut from a birch tree That will turn to dust on the gate I'm closing.

After this last line, the song ends abruptly, leaving the last couplet unfinished. This sudden stop, concrete imagery, and shift in narrative perspective, while not transmitting history precisely, perform the important function of connecting the listener on a personal, emotional level with the fate of Rinchin Dorzhin and by extension the fate of the Buryat people under many oppressors and conquests. Since the Russian Revolution, a new, less self-determined concept of "Buryat" has been forged on the anvil of Soviet power, as expressed in artistic endeavors involving traditional material. Stalin's desire that cultural expression in Soviet republics be national in form but socialist in content led to the formation of many ensembles, both professional and amateur, that proclaimed the glory of the USSR using the musical idioms and language of indigenous groups. The traditional content which expressed nationalist, religious or erotic sentiment was deemed detrimental to socialist society and prohibited. More "advanced" composition techniques such as Western-style polyphony and standard tunings were applied relentlessly to traditional material. After seventy years of domination, the Soviet Russian influence can be strongly felt in newer Buryat compositions, as Buryat musicians and composers create songs in typical Soviet hymn style or in the Russian romans, or romantic ballad, style which first became popular in the nineteenth century and remains so today. Blatniye pesni, songs based on Soviet prison slang and unpleasant situations, as well as student songs have also made their mark on the Buryat musical landscape in the last few decades.

While Soviet policy dictated the proper use of folk forms in public institutions and dominated professional artistic expression in urban areas, the traditions of the Buryats were quietly maintained in remote corners of the republic. In settlements far from urban centers, the older generation continued to practice the rituals of Buddhism and shamanism, and true "folk" music, music sung by the people for the people, was performed and enjoyed, if only by grandmothers. The harshest blows to traditional cultural in isolated areas were dealt not by censors or urban-trained cultural workers but by economic policies. Soviet economic planning drastically disrupted the lifestyle of the Buryats, which had formerly consisted of nomadic stock breeding supplemented by limited agriculture in some areas. The Soviet regime outlawed nomadic herding as uncivilized and forcibly collectivized production into sedentary villages. Because musical traditions are frequently associated with a particular kind of social or work activity, when the way of doing things changed, so did the musical traditions. The wealth of epics, songs and poems, long the storehouse of collective knowledge and history, became irrelevant to the younger generations. At the same time, the number of young people willing and able to learn and transmit traditions was decreasing rapidly. Many younger artists associated traditional music with Soviet folk and turned instead to the West and other "exotic" sources for inspiration and salvation. The rock'n'roll culture of the U.S and Great Britain, for instance, was transformed by the popular imagination of Soviet youth into an icon of freedom of expression and rebellion, unsullied by dogma or materialism. With perestroika and the break-up of the Soviet Union, the situation changed again. The political pressures transforming traditional music were replaced by commercial ones. Where Moscow once dictated the socialist content which filled the national forms, its commercial networks now provide the Russian Federation with the same mediocre Russian and Western pop in every kiosk at every market. Where censors and cultural activists once condemned certain genres or performers as unfit for socialist consumption, now the Mafia-dominated music business funnels its limited repertoire and pirated Western pop into every disco, restaurant and taxi in Russia. As the market for traditional or folk-inspired music remains extremely limited, state support for Soviet-created arts institutions and organizations has all but disappeared, leaving small, traditional groups struggling or destitute. Despite the continued dominance of Soviet-style approaches to traditional music and mounting commercial pressures, many musicians are using the current freer situation and taking other paths. Sayan, Namgar, and Battuvshin have been part of this post-Soviet transformation of traditional culture, and each of their stories demonstrate a different kind of movement within or approach to tradition. All of their routes have carried them across the once clear-cut boundaries of Buryat Soviet culture.

Sayan Zhambalov comes from the rural and remote Aginsk Buryatia Area near the Chinese and Mongolian borders, where many Eastern Buryat traditions have been preserved, and currently lives in Ulan Ude. His primary training was as an actor-- he attended a theater institute in Leningrad, where he met his wife Erzhena. Together, they composed the majority of the music for the first Buryat rock band, Uragsha. Uragsha is one of few groups in post-Soviet Russia to use folk material and sing in a Siberian language as well as in Russian, and still manage to fill stadiums with young fans. At the same time, Sayan and Erzhena also wrote a series of ballads for voice and acoustic guitar. The melodies and guitar strumming techniques are clearly in the Russian ballad style, yet the lyrics are in Buryat. For the past four years, the Zhambalovs have collaborated with an American theater ensemble, Yara Arts Group. In their close collaboration with American artists, they have begun to dig into more traditional Buryat material, collecting songs and shaman chants on expeditions organized together with their American colleagues. Sayan, along with Battuvshin, currently concentrates on traditional song and throat singing , accompanying himself on the khun khur, or swan-headed lute, a two-stringed strummed instrument. The interest of foreigners in Buryat traditional music has led Sayan to a deeper involvement with his roots and in active pursuit of traditional material.

While Sayan has remained in Buryatia and sought inspiration from folk roots, Namgar has taken a different road. Also from the Aginsk area, she is an accomplished traditional singer with a natural soprano voice that easily navigates the long phrases and extended ornamentation of the folk repertoire. However, she lives in Moscow with her husband, a Russian bassist from Ulan Ude, and studies in the Pop and Jazz Department of the Russian Academy of Music. When she came to America this fall, she brought an album of Buryat-language pop music she had recorded several years ago along with her. On the recording, her stunning voice is accompanied by the sea of pop-synth characteristic of the overwhelming majority of Russian pop records. However, there is an undeniable element in her voice and her treatment of melodies which reflects her past. When we spoke about her debut, she dismissed it as very different from her true, more restrained and acoustic vision. While Namgar's voice and ear have been formed by tradition, she has turned to more Russian and Western idioms, unsure of the value of traditional music.

Battuvshin has roots in both traditional music and Soviet-influenced official folk, but is above all a musician who appreciates a good performance of any origin. Battuvshin was born in Mongolia into a family of famous traditional musicians. He remembers as a young boy listening to someone playing the limbe, the traditional Mongolian traverse flute, and knowing from that moment that he wanted to play it. After a childhood of herding on his own and practicing his flute on the grasslands, he went to music school and then to the Conservatory in Ulaan Baator. He became a member of a well-known traditional ensemble which toured Europe and the Middle East performing various Mongolian song and dance traditions. After some difficulties in his homeland, he made the brave decision to move to Ulan Ude in Buryatia where, starting from scratch, he soon created a career for himself as a limbist, throat singer, and morin khur player. He is now a member of two state-sponsored folk ensembles. He performs in Mongolian and has also taken an active role in performing the Buryat traditional music Sayan has collected. This year, he was named Honored Artist of the Republic of Buryatia, an honorary title left over from Soviet days which has much significance in the republic and which has rarely been granted to foreigners. His circular breathing technique, which allows him to play entire extended solos continuously in one breath, and his musical versatility make his accomplishments and his reputation in Buryatia unsurprising. He has an authoritative command of tradition Mongolian repertoire and can also perform Western classical music, which was part of his conservatory training. Though the folk ensembles of Mongolia and Buryatia continue to operate on a Soviet model, Battuvshin enjoys exploring other traditions and genres. While in New York, he worked with a traditional Ukrainian musician and developed several pieces based on Mongolian and Ukrainian melodies with ease and spontaneity.

Though the economic and social prognoses for the Russian Federation are often grim, the lives of these three musicians tell a different, more optimistic tale. The trouble that faces the former Soviet Union has haunted the Buryats' corner of the world repeatedly, but life continues in much the same way it always has. In fact, the chaos that we Westerns expect to cause great suffering has its moments of great good. Across the Buryat Republic, people are returning, often by choice, to older ways, to nomadic herding practices and to shamanism. As Sayan, Namgar and Battuvshin's experience demonstrates, this renaissance is not limited to the older generation or to the rural population. It is also deeply affecting the cities and urban youth. Naturally, not all young Buryats are merrily leaving their apartments for felt tents, but at least symbolically, many are seeking the nomadic road forward by walking the paths of their ancestors.