Daily Planet

Beijing group Hanggai’s leader, Ilchi, was fronting a punk band until he heard Mongolian overtone singing and formed a new group to perform the traditional music of Inner Mongolia, his father’s homeland.

He enlisted Han Chinese drummer Chen Kun and guitarist Xu Jingchen, and Hugejiltu and Bagen, Inner Mongolians who were studying music in Beijing. Except for one track that hints at East/West fusion with a Spaghetti Western guitar, the CD is all-acoustic, the morin khuur (two-string horsehair fiddle) and the tobshuur (strummed two-string lute) at its centre. The singing is like Tuvan singing, with its deep overtones, rumbling sounds and whistling harmonics. Robin Haller, who was hosting a weekly show on China Radio International about Chinese folk music and always struggling to find some, ran into Ilchi at a small bar in one of central Beijing’s oldest hutongs and became the album’s producer, setting up a small studio in his home. ‘Hanggai’ is an ancient Mongolian word describing an idealised grassland landscape of mountains, trees, rivers and blue skies.

Playlist

1421
Innuendo Out The Other
Philip DeGruy
Degruy-Gruy Music
NYC 6013 2 (US Import)
Philip DeGruy, Innuendo Out The Other
15 seconds (excerpt)
(solo 17-string elec guitar, fingerstyle; v quirky, virtuosic & humorous, more or less a bent-boogie)

1422
CD Cut 1 - 'Black Annie'
Trad, from Hobart Smith, arr by Paul Brown
Pub Not Spec
5-String Productions 5SPCD-06002 www.5-string.com
Paul Brown - 'Red Clay Country'
2:29
(Simple banjo tune played solo and percussively on a gourd banjo)

Segue

1424
CD Cut 1 - 'My Banjo and I'
Words: Xiao Hu, music Ilchi, arr Ilchi/Robin Haller/Matteo Scumaci
Riverboat UK Music (MCPS)
Intro 111 CD ( In Australia, through The Planet Company/ MGM
email: info@theplanetcompany.com
website: www.theplanetcompany.com
worldwide: www.worldmusic.net
Hanggai - 'Introducing Hanggai'
3:44
(Mongolian banjo-like lutes play backbeat with bowed lutes and percussion and massed deep, harmonic-rich deep male vocals in song about singing praise to one's Mongolian homeland while accompanied by the banjo)

1431
CD Cut 4 - 'Great Big Wall in China'
Words by Abigail Washburn. Music by The Sparrow Quartet
Abbyinchina Music, admin by Bug Music, BMI, arr by Abbyinchina Music, admin by Bug Music, BMI, Fleck Music, administerd by Bug Music, BMI, Tin Ear Music, BMI, C-String Tunes, ASCAP
Nettwerk CD, Through Shock in Australia www.shock.com.au
Abigail Washburn and the Sparrow Quartet - 'The Sparrow Quartet'
6:05
(Abigail's partly yodelled vocal in partial waltz song that uses the Great Wall of China as seen from the moon as a symbol of human divisiveness. Backing varies from a lone banjo to bowed strings and two banjos)

Segue

1437
CD Cut 5 - 'Flowers'
Trad, arr Ilchi/Robin Haller/Matteo Scumaci
Riverboat UK Music (MCPS)
Intro 111 CD ( In Australia, through The Planet Company/ MGM
email: info@theplanetcompany.com
website: www.theplanetcompany.com
worldwide: www.worldmusic.net
Hanggai - 'Introducing Hanggai'
3:00
(Banjo-like plucked introduction then low lute, backbeat percussion, high flute, bowed lutes and single and unison male vocals in song that says 'flowers blossoming on the cliff are the earliest to fade, the girl married in a far off place languishes in her lover's arms.'

1441
CD Cut 11 - 'Worry B Gone'
Guy Clark, Gary Nicholson and Lee Roy Parnell
EMI April Music Inc., Sony/ATV Tunes LLC/Gary Nicholson Music, admin. By Sony/ATV Music Publishing (ASCAP); Dean-Parnell Music, LLC/Lillie Dale Music, admin. By Dean-Parnell Music, LLC (BMI)
Lost Highway 1723622 ( in Australia through Universal
worldwide: www.losthighwayrecords.com )
Willie Nelson - 'Moment of Forever'
3:08
(Willie and Kenny Chesney sing good-natured song about chemical escapes from too much 'reality')

Segue

1444
CD Cut 8 - 'My Bucket's Got a Hole in it'
Clarence Williams
Universal Music Corporation ASCAP
Blue Note Records 509999 5 04454 2 4 (Through EMI)
Willie Nelson/Wynton Marsalis - 'Two Men With the Blues'
4:56
(Up, cheery version of song associated with Hank Williams, sung by Willie and Wynton, with solos on clarinet by Walter Blanding, Willie on acoustic guitar, Ali Jackson Jr on drums and Wynton on trumpet, with flagwaving Dixieland ending)

1451
CD Cut 9 - 'Drinking Song'
Trad, arr Ilchi/Robin Haller/Matteo Scumaci
Riverboat UK Music (MCPS)
Intro 111 CD ( In Australia, through The Planet Company/ MGM
email: info@theplanetcompany.com
website: www.theplanetcompany.com
worldwide: www.worldmusic.net
Hanggai - 'Introducing Hanggai'
3:56 with party noise
(Lots of ambient noise of party, then accelerating Mongolian drinking song recorded during a drunken evening - 'Let our song never end, let our fortunes never decline, a cup forever in our hands, a song forever in our throats.')

1456
CD Cut 5 - 'Birdspace'
Mia Shaw and Linda Laasi
APRA
www.soteriabell.com
Soteria Bell - '44 Sunsets'
3:25
(Austral comp and perf: Mia and Linda's solo voices intertwine with bell and bass drum percussion and Dean Frenkel's harmonic whistling)

Presenter

Lucky Oceans

Producer

Lucky Oceans