Sons of the Taiga-Tangdy: Gifts of Music and Medicine in the Bayan-Dugai Mountains
An essay film by Robert O. Beahrs and Victoria Soyan Peemot (2021, Tyvan with English subtitles)
Cher Törel: In Kinship with the Land is a series of essay films about how people relate to their animals and homelands in Inner Asia. The project is a collaboration between an ethnomusicologist from Minnesota who researches song-based storytelling in Inner Asia and an anthropologist from the Tyva Republic who specializes in human-horse relations.
Sons of the Taiga-Tangdy traces entanglements of musicality, medicine, and kinship in the mountainous homelands of Orlan Tokaevich Mongush (1967–2020), a gifted musician from the Chöön-Khemchik school of khöömeizhi (throat song masters) in the Tyva Republic. In this essay film, we recount our fieldwork experiences in 2018 on a UAZ road trip with Orlan driving up the Chadaana River into the mountains, meeting Orlan’s brothers, horsemen, and being introduced to the musical and medicinal properties of the place. It had been more than thirty years since Orlan visited these summer pastures where he learned to do khöömei, kargyraa, and sygyt in the 1980s while herding sheep and goats with his brothers. Suffering from a multiple-year sickness that caused him to stop singing, Orlan drank from the clear mountain waters, ate wild rhubarb, and shared songs with us and his brothers. On our way back to town, Orlan understood that the Taiga-Tangdy eezi—superordinate nonhuman beings who dwell in these mountains and guard this place—were happy for their son’s return. Orlan expressed that his body and spirit were uplifted from sharing gifts of music and medicine with us, his brothers, and the nonhuman beings who live in this place.
Off/For the Earth (a short film by Robbie Beahrs)
This mini-documentary follows NASA Astronaut Tom Marshburn (my uncle) and his Soyuz TMA-07M crewmates Chris Hadfield (Canada) and Roman Romanenko (Russia) as they launch from Baikonur, Kazakhstan on December 19th, 2012 up to the International Space Station for a six-month expedition.
Dedicated to my Uncle Tom and the extended Marshburn family
To read more about Expedition 34: "Off the Earth... For the Earth" click here
ROSCOSMOS/Soyuz crew theme song (used in the film) "Trava u doma" by the 1980s Soviet/Russian rock group Zemlyane
The folk ensemble at Baikonur's Palace of Culture performed "Sary-Arqa" (Golden Steppe)
Click here to view other film projects on Vimeo
Tethering Foals and Praising Masters of the Altai Mountains
An essay film by Robert O. Beahrs and Victoria Soyan Peemot (2020, Tyvan, Mongolian, and Kazakh with English subtitles)
Cher Törel: In Kinship with the Land is a series of essay films about how people relate to their animals and homelands in Inner Asia. The project is a collaboration between an ethnomusicologist from Minnesota who researches song-based storytelling in Inner Asia and an anthropologist from the Tyva Republic who specializes in human-horse relations.
During our fieldwork in Bayan-Ölgii, Mongolia in July 2016, we stayed with a family of herders who belong to the Adai-Irgit clan of Altai Tyvans. The Tyva people, whose territory has been divided among Russia, Mongolia, and China, speak a Turkic language and maintain transhumant practices of herding horses, yaks, cows, sheep, goats, and camels. In the early morning, our hosts began making araga, an alcoholic drink distilled from fermented cow’s milk, for a celebration called Kulun Baglaary, or Tethering the Foals. This film follows Dondog and his family over one day as they tether their foals, milk their mares, and offer praises to the Masters of the Altai Mountains, the nonhuman, nonanimal beings who guard this place.
Mapping Voices and Landscapes in Tuva is an ongoing arts-research collaboration with Todoriki Masahiko (voice, Tuvan traditional instruments) and Robbie Beahrs (live composition with field recordings/videos) based on cross-cultural interpretations of folk songs and nomadic musical practices in the Tuva Republic (Russia). Premiered at FlyTrap Studios in Oakland, CA on 9 Nov. 2013.
This excerpt features the Tuvan song “Bai-la Taigam” (My Rich Taiga).
Photo essay and exhibition by Victoria Peemot / Soundscapes by Robbie Beahrs
0:00 - 2:30 A herd of more than 800 horses at the lake Khadyn/Algyi, Tannu-Ola mountain range/Chagytai lake, Tuva Republic (Russia) - an area covered by the expedition, groups of Hausen and Backlund.
2:30 - 3:42 sounds of the Erzin river, Tuva Republic (Russia)
All photographs are from the Finnish geological expedition in the Inner Asian state Urjankhai took place in 1917. Today it is the Republic of Tuva, a part of Russia. Among the expedition members were accomplished geologists Johannes Sederholm, the head of the expedition, Hans Hausen and Thord Brenner from Finland, Steinar Foslie from Norway and Helge Backlund (Sweden/Russia). The expedition was conducted despite the unstable political situation as it was in 1917: World War I in Europe, revolutions in Russia, the recent end of Chinese rule, independence and Russian protectorate in Tuva (Urjankhai).