VIEW THIS PAGE The sound of galloping horses, Middle Eastern melodies and reggae — keen listeners will hear all of these influences in the music of Yerboli Ahmethan (葉爾波利), a Kazakh musician born and raised in China’s Xinjiang Uigur Autonomous Region.
Ahmethan, who is currently based in Shenzhen, is traveling outside China for the first time ever to play at the Bitan Music Festival (碧潭音樂節) in Taipei County tomorrow and Sunday.
Although he started learning the dombra, a traditional stringed instrument common in Central Asia, at the age of 5, Ahmethan says he also spent his youth listening to the likes of Frank Zappa, AC/DC and “all kinds of rock ’n’ roll.” He finds it hard to communicate at length in Mandarin, so during a phone interview earlier this week his manager and close friend, Tu Fei (塗飛), helped answer questions.
Ahmethan, 28, now plays Kazakh folk music — which reflects a combination of “Islamic and Mongolian culture” in Tu’s words — but with his own twist.
He rearranges traditional songs, adding elements of improvisation and displays of virtuosity on the dombra. He says half of his material consists of original songs, which mix Kazakh lyrics and music with contemporary forms like reggae, folk and rock.
The dombra features prominently in Ahmethan’s debut CD, Kazakh Spirit, which Ahmethan released on his own last year. The instrument, which has two nylon strings, a pear-shaped body and slender neck, was traditionally used as accompaniment for Kazakh folk songs and poems.
When strummed rhythmically, the dombra has been compared to the sound of galloping horses, which play a major role in the lives of the nomadic Kazakhs. When plucked, it sounds somewhat similar to the oud, an Arabic lute, and echoes the hints of Middle Eastern melodies found in Kazakh music.
Ten years ago, Ahmethan wouldn’t have imagined that he would still be playing the dombra. After leaving Xinjiang at the age of 16, he was a guitarist in AC/DC cover bands and made a living by playing piano, mandolin and accordion for live bands and studio sessions.
Ahmethan’s situation is typical, says Tu, who works as a radio DJ and runs a live music venue in Shenzhen. “In the interior [of China], a lot of traditional things are almost all gone. A lot of young people, in order to survive, can’t do [traditional music]. So they have to do Western music in order to make a living.”
Ahmethan started to rediscover his musical and cultural roots when he moved to Beijing in 2000. There he played in IZ, the locally renowned band led by fellow Kazakh musician Mamuer Rayeskan (馬木爾). Ahmethan met Tu on a visit to Shenzhen, where he gigs regularly with his current three-piece band, which will also be in Taipei this weekend.
Tu encouraged Ahmethan to go back to his “roots” while exploring “world fusion” music. Tu says Ahmethan’s current interests include working with avant-garde and free-jazz musicians.
But Ahmethan doesn’t intend to put the dombra down again. “His biggest goal,” says Tu, “is to let more people around the world know about Kazakh culture.” VIEW THIS PAGE
The Taipei Times reported last week that housing transactions fell 15.3 percent last month, to under 20,000 units. However, the market boomed for the first eight months of the year, and observers expect it to show growth for the year as a whole. The fall was due to Central Bank intervention. “The negative impact of credit controls grew evident for the third straight month,” said Sinyi Realty Inc (信義房屋) research manager Tseng Ching-ter (曾敬德), according to the report. Central Bank Governor Yang Chin-long (楊金龍) in October said that the Central Bank implemented selective credit controls in September to cool the housing
During the Japanese colonial era, remote mountain villages were almost exclusively populated by indigenous residents. Deep in the mountains of Chiayi County, however, was a settlement of Hakka families who braved the harsh living conditions and relative isolation to eke out a living processing camphor. As the industry declined, the village’s homes and offices were abandoned one by one, leaving us with a glimpse of a lifestyle that no longer exists. Even today, it takes between four and six hours to walk in to Baisyue Village (白雪村), and the village is so far up in the Chiayi mountains that it’s actually
It’s a discombobulating experience, after a Lord of the Rings trilogy that was built, down to every frame and hobbit hair, for the big screen, to see something so comparatively minor, small-scaled and TV-sized as The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim. The film, set 183 years before the events of The Hobbit, is a return to Middle-earth that, despite some very earnest storytelling, never supplies much of an answer as to why, exactly, it exists. Rohirrim, which sounds a little like the sound an orc might make sneezing, is perhaps best understood as a placeholder for further cinematic
The results of the 2024 US presidential election rattled the country and sent shockwaves across the world — or were cause for celebration, depending on who you ask. Is it any surprise then that the Merriam-Webster word of the year is “polarization?” “Polarization means division, but it’s a very specific kind of division,” said Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster’s editor at large, in an exclusive interview ahead of Monday’s announcement. “Polarization means that we are tending toward the extremes rather than toward the center.” The election was so divisive, many American voters went to the polls with a feeling that the opposing candidate was
RSS