A festival features music from Tibet and traditionally Buddhist regions of Russia.
By Anastasiya Lebedev
Tuvan throat singing, Buryat folk music, traditional Kalmyk melodies and epic songs passed down by a Buddhist saint who lived nearly 1,000 years ago — these are some of the highlights of a concert set to take place Saturday night in honor of the Dalai Lama’s 70th birthday. The organizers of the Tibet Festival expect an eclectic crowd, including Buddhists, ethnic music aficionados and fans of Russian rock legend Boris Grebenshchikov, who will also offer his congratulations.
Moscow’s first Tibet Festival was held in October 2004 to celebrate the opening of Tibet House, a center devoted to the culture of the Himalayan region. Yelena Vrublyovskaya, the center’s president, has been promoting Tibetan culture in Moscow for the past five years. Her initiatives have included inviting monks to perform Buddhist rituals such as building mandalas — elaborate designs made of colored sand — and constructing sacrificial sculptures made of butter.
While last year’s Tibet Festival featured a mix of exhibitions and musical performances, the program this year focuses more on music, Vrublyovskaya said during a recent interview. Some of the best-received performers from last year’s event are coming back for Saturday’s concert at the Moscow International House of Music, or MMDM. These include the monks of the Gyudmed Tantric monastery, originally located in Tibet but now based in India, and singer Loten Namling.
The overtone singing technique of the Gyudmed monks, often featured in films about Tibet, was honed and perfected over the past five centuries. Namling — the “superstar” of last year’s festival, Vrublyovskaya said — records Tibetan music from his home in Switzerland. On Saturday, he will perform pieces from his latest project, a musical reconstruction of “The 100,000 Songs of Milarepa.” The epic consists of songs and poems attributed to Milarepa, a Tibetan saint who lived in the 11th century.
What’s new on the playbill at this year’s concert is music from Russia’s own traditionally Buddhist republics.
Musicians from Tuva, Buryatia and Kalmykia are sometimes better known in the West than in Russia. Huun-Huur-Tu, an ethnically Tuvan quartet, is “the most famous musical act from the former U.S.S.R. not counting performers of classical music and the pop duo Tatu,” states a press release from Tibet House. The ensemble has gained fame for its recordings of traditional Tuvan throat singing — a virtually unique form of vocal music that it helped popularize in the Western world-music scene. Saturday’s concert offers a rare chance to see the musicians of Huun-Huur-Tu between their tours abroad. “[They] can be heard very rarely in Russia,” said festival art director Igor Yanchyoglov. “Popularity came to them in the West, and since then they haven’t left there.”
Buryat music is not as well known than Tuvan throat singing. “Its fate is similar to that of Tibetan folklore — it suffered much during the Soviet regime,” Yanchyoglov said. The lone representative of Buryatia at Saturday’s concert is Badma-Khanda, who was born in a small community of Buryat refugees in China. Since then, the singer has returned to her ethnic homeland to help revive its nearly forgotten tradition of folk ballads.
Finally, the Yoryal orchestra will make its Moscow debut by playing string instruments from Kalmykia, a historically Buddhist region where the traditional culture was nearly wiped out under Soviet rule.
Against this backdrop, some might find it odd that the concert’s headliner is Boris Grebenshchikov. But his presence has an explanation, since the former frontman for Aquarium has expressed his admiration for Buddhism.
Muscovites bought 30,000 tickets to the Tibet Festival’s exhibitions last year. Vrublyovskaya wants the festival to become a two-week outdoor musical event with four times as many performers. “It’s an inexhaustible culture,” she said. “Every time, you discover something new for yourself.”
The Tibet Festival concert takes place Sat. at 7 p.m. in the Svetlanov Hall of MMDM, located at 52 Kosmodamianskaya Naberezhnaya, Bldg. 8. Metro Paveletskaya. Tel. 730-4350. For more information about Tibet House, see www.tibethouse.ru.
