BRUNCH WITH HUUN HUUR TU

Despite jeans and t-shirt, Kaigar-ool, the elfin lead singer of Huun Huur Tu (on the lower left in the photo), has the face and lithe compactness of a horseman from the Central Asian steppes, which befits his name (Kaigar-ool = Little Horse Thief). Eventually, I’ll watch him in action in Tuva. But for now we are breakfasting on mutton and rice at around noon in the basement restaurant of this bizarre place where Sasha has put us, a sports complex on the outskirts of Moscow built for the 1980 Olympics. Sayan Bapa, the English-speaking brains of the outfit (upper right corner), joins us and orders a beer.

To reach this restaurant you descend a musty stairwell, traverse a dimly-lit passageway passing a “Dive Shop” where people in goggles are trying on fins. Through a nondescript doorway marked simply “Restaurant” is this eatery, decorated with leftover gaiety from its Olympian era including an imitation Cadillac grill on one wall with framed automobile advertisements from long-extinct magazines. Windows look out onto a parking lot empty but for a white stretch Lincoln limo that never moves from the spot in the three days I’m here. Sullen, tattooed waitresses in mini-skirts bring us beer. Large-boned swimmers and chiseled wrestlers hunker over their meals at nearby tables. Somehow, it all makes perfect sense – but maybe that’s because I took LSD back in the Sixties, which will turn out to be the appropriate preparation for this trip to the Russian Federation.

Sayan and I click instantly. Though he comes from Tuva, one of the most isolated places on the map, he has traveled all over the world performing with HHT. He can talk just about anything, from where to get the best burritos in Ensenada to Robert Johnson and blues music arcana. Kaigar-ool takes off and Sayan asks if I want another beer, “You’ve read the book?” Sayan says. He’s referring to “Where the Mountains and Rivers Sing,” by Theodore Levin, a Dartmouth professor and scholar of Tuvan throat-singing.
I said yes, I had. “I mean, the end of the book?” he says. That’s where Prof. Levin describes Sayan Bapa as an alcoholic and quotes Sayan’s wife saying that her husband drinks to relax. “I’m relaxing,” he grins. I say, “So am I.” He laughs and we order two more beers.

Welcome to Russia

Three puffy-faced young drunks, arms encircling each other’s shoulders for comradely support, slowly pirouette – first one way, then the other – defying gravity and amusing the ladies behind the counter of the Moscow Airport Information Center and Meeting Point, until the bollocks Bolshoi crashes to the floor with loud oaths. Welcome to Russia!

One of the Information ladies, deciphering my odd gestures and Amerikanski babble, was kind enough to phone my host to come pick me up. And so he appears, Sasha Cheparukhin, the stocky, unshaven, serious-faced manager of Huun Huur Tu, the Throat-Singers of Tuva. Yawning and apologizing for oversleeping (they all flew in together from a concert in Finland last night), he steers me out into the cool Moscow dawn to where his sweet-faced mom is waiting patiently behind the wheel of their blue Opel compact. Polite words and smiles, then hit the road, traffic already heavy pre-rush hour. “This will be impossible in a couple of hours,” Sasha mumbles from the back seat. It’s already barely possible… exhaust fumes, gray blocks of Kruschev-era apartment buildings. But blue sky and sun threaten to lighten my jet-lagged mood.

In a comfortable Breshnev-era apartment complex, Sasha and his mom at home, with tea and fresh strawberries for breakfast, then it’s on to my hotel. “It’s not really a hotel,” Sasha warns me darkly. “When you look at it, you won’t think it’s anything. But it’s much cheaper than what you will find anywhere in Moscow.”

The city has gone mad with oil and gas wealth. Hotel rooms start at $300 a night. The streets are choked with brand new Toyota SUVs, Suzuki and Lexus, or Porsche Cayenne, the favored wheels of Russia’s young rich. “It’s crazy. Everyone from my graduating is a millionaire,” Sasha says. “Three of them – no, four – are billionaires.”

Impresarios of World Music are not reaping such rewards, however, so Sasha has stashed the four members of Huun Huur Tu on the southwest edge of the city in a sort of hostel at a sports complex built for the 1980 Olympics. I seem to recall the US boycotted that one, and as we drive up to a very strange jumble of oblong structures eroding out in the middle of nowhere, all marked by the Olympic symbol, I’m thinking: This US citizen has no such choice. But Russia is full of surprises, as Napoleon once said.

In addition to being a guest of the Sayan Ring Festival, I'm also coming at the invitation of the two Russian managers of the world famous Huun Huur Tu(http://www.huunhuurtu.com/ ), a group from the Republic of Tuva near the Mongolian border. The group is one of Russia’s big exports after the Bolshoi and Stolichnaya and they practice an ancient kind of music called throat-singing where a single voice emits two notes at once. I am told Huun Huur Tu will be receiving a Golden Irya at the Festival as a sort of Lifetime Achievement Award.

Volodya and Sasha , the group’s managers, asked me if I would help them do a documentary film on the group. They said I must get to know the group and see them perform, and the Sayan Ring Festival presents a perfect opportunity – so first stop is Moscow to watch the group rehearse and have a few drinks with the guys, then fly to Tuva where Huun Huur Tu live, watch them rehearse some more and probably do a fair amount of drinking with them and their families there, then drive over the Edge of the Known World to Big Shush for the Festival and their historic performance and probably a lot more drinking.

The Festival site (http://fest.sayanring.ru/gallery) displays photos of leathery-faced yak herders blowing weird flute-like instruments and ruddy-cheeked Siberian women in traditional costume – but you will also see a whole crowd of young international hipsters grooving on the cool sounds and really gorgeous hipster babes in trance-like states wearing garlands of flowers in a sunny, warm and unexpectedly beautiful place. Hey, I'm on my way!