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Zhang Tianran: Mongolia takes root in metal

By HONG XIAO in New York | China Daily USA | Updated: 2016-01-05 01:13

Zhang Tianran (second from left) and other members of the Tengger Cavalry.

Zhang Tianran, whose Mongolian name “Nature Ganganbaigal” might be more familiar to New York rock fans, says Mongolia for him is a deeply held faith.

The 27-year-old musician showed up in Times Square on a sunny winter afternoon dressed casually but wrapped in a traditional Mongolian printed headscarf, which made him easily recognizable in the crowd.

On Oct 30, CNN broadcast a video interview with Zhang titled “One part metal, one part Mongolia,” featuring the rising rocker in New York and his “Mongolian folk metal music”.

The musical style created by Zhang blends nomadic overtone throat sing- ing, the traditional Mongolian horse- head fiddle and other nomadic music traditions of Central Asia with heavy metal rock.

“The Mongolian folk music elements and heavy metal that I blend together just reinforce each other and achieve great harmony,” the composer said.

Born of Mongolian ancestry, Zhang has always had a great interest in tra- ditional Mongolian music, culture and everything related to Mongolia.

Raised in Beijing, which has been at the center of China’s rock scene since the 1980s, Zhang has been greatly influenced by rock music, especially heavy metal.

“I have been playing both horse-head fiddle and guitar since I was in high school,” he said. “And I was exposed to a lot of music by foreign heavy-met- al bands that put the traditional folk music of their nations together with modern rock.

“I liked them a lot and got inspired — why not blend the Mongolian folk melodies I knew with heavy metal?”

Zhang said he thinks the Mongolian culture and rock music have a lot in common. “Mongolian culture is about the horse, the eagle and the prairie.

 A nomadic people has to be strong and courageous enough to struggle with nature, which are two characteristics I think a rocker should have,” said Zhang.

When he began to perform after moving to New York in 2013, his Mongolian folk metal music soon won acclaim.

“It surprised me that American audiences could understand and showed interest in what I was singing,” Zhang said. “Some of them truly take my music seriously, they even study the lyrics and discuss them online to better understand the Mongolia featured in my songs.”

“In one of my performances in October, an American in the audience even held up a fl ag with a portrait of Genghis Khan,” Zhang said with a laugh.

Modest by nature, Zhang does not believe that his music is really an authoritative carrier of Mongolian culture.

“I think my music is more about the old civilization seen from my point that I want to show to the audiences, especially the Western ones, to excite their interest in it and then they learn more about it by themselves,” Zhang said.

Zhang’s music features three aspects of Mongolia: the religious belief, which is Shamanism, the history and the daily life.

“For example, two of my songs — The Black Horse and The Blood Sacrifice Shaman — were inspired by the Mongolian horse culture and the rites of Shamanism,” Zhang said.

Spending most of his life in China, with a free-loving nature, Zhang was never the teacher’s pet.

He complied with his parents’ wishes to study industrial design, which he was not that into in college.

Instead, Zhang immersed himself in playing rock ’n’ roll and learning music composition.

After graduation, Zhang applied to a graduate program in music at New York University with a concentration in scoring for film and multimedia to get systematic training.

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