Yet another MicroMu post. What a find..

Today we’ll hear some Mongolian-Chinese folk music sung by Gangzi, the sound man at Beijing’s only “metal” venue, 13 Club. When I first heard this I thought, hey, that’s Eddie Vedder in his youth, deep into some throat singing. Indeed, as Ed points out, you can hear a bit of that heavy rock in his singing but the Mongolian roots are evident. Give this one a long listen, as it doesn’t really kick in until the 3rd minute or so. It’s a beautiful one.

Did any of you ever see that great documentary film, Genghis Blues?

Here’s some info on MicroMu from Ed Peto:

“MicroMu is an experimental, sponsor-supported, free-to-user record label model. We focus on contemporary Chinese songwriters and naturally lean towards acoustic music as a result of this. We have set up a compact recording process both for live and studio/semi-live recordings which means that we can produce good quality music quickly and efficiently. We give this music away for free through our website, combining it with relevant editorial, videos, etc as a way of building context and community around the music. A vibrant, focused community is always of interest to a brand who shares the same audience, so we generate the lion’s share of revenue from a cash sponsorship deal with Beijing based Plastered T-Shirts. The label was self-sustaining from the day it launched.”

Interesting. I knew of at least one similarly noble effort started in Senegal while I was there, but there weren’t the listener audience to keep it afloat. With a massive population and a surprisingly vibrant contemporary youth music scene, not to mention a growing middle class who can afford to go out and see live music once and a while, it’s easy to see why projects like MicroMu are doing well.

As usual with these MicroMu releases you can download the whole EP – free and legal – on the MicroMu site here: http://www.micromu.com/wp-content/uploads/MMDLEP003%5BMicroMu%5D.zip.

I picked-up a couple recordings by another Chinese-Mongolian group, Hanggai, today. You’ll be hearing some music from those later this week, along with music from a few other albums I’ve managed to scrounge during my time-off here in Beijing.

刚子 – 日出