The Rex Report: In Siberia

IN RED SQUARE

2008-12-23T15:00:00.000-08:00

Wednesday, June 27, 2007
I'm drinking free champagne and consuming skewered fresh fruit and petits fours at the opening of a new Kiehl’s boutique in the GUM department store on Red Square. My Hollywood Reporter business card got us past the PR girl with the clipboard, though my name was somehow not on the list. Odd to be in Moscow at the opening of Kiehl’s, a funky old family-owned shop where I used to buy shaving cream when I lived on the Lower East Side. Now it’s a global brand.

I’m hanging with Timour from Kirgyztan, who used to be a yuppie working for DHL and now works for Sasha’s music management company, Greenwave, when he isn’t playing guitar with various rock bands. He’s been tasked with showing me the tourist sites and now he’s on his third glass of champagne.

So here I am, in this place that I’ve seen on TV newscasts since Kruschev’s time, where he and his successors stood sternly on Lenin’s tomb and reviewed the marching armies and megaton weaponry said to be pointed our way. It’s hard to believe that now, given the general shabbiness and utter dysfunction of Moscow’s infrastructure – please, Timour, don’t make me ride that horrible subway again! Yet the sheer power of Moscow’s vast central plaza, flanked by the Kremlin one side and the multi-colored onion-bulb spires of St. Basil’s at one end, is undeniable.

The real power, however, now sits across from the Kremlin in the GUM department store with its Chanel and Dior boutiques, and its sleek women on the arms of newly minted billionaires gliding through the marbled passageways. Another glass of champagne, please… and here’s to Kapitalism!

THE NAKED AND THE DAMNED

2008-12-23T14:00:00.000-08:00

Thursday, June 28, 2007
Turns out that I am sharing my room in the Olympic Village Hotel with Lu Edmonds, London-based musician from the Mekons and The Damned ( http://www.wacobrothers.com/lu.htm ) and a “key figure in World Music,” according to the program for the Sayan Ring Festival (he's on the jury, too). It’s true – he not only speaks Russian but knows all the stars of Central Asian roots music personally and all the inside-Tuvan gossip. We’re traveling to Tuva together with Sasha and Huun Huur Tu, and going on from there to the Festival in Big Shush. He’s really into the arcana of the throat-singing genre and the personalities involved. He goes on and one about this guy and that one… “A really fucking phenomenal singer, man, really strong on the kyrgyraa. I’ve been there with them, northern herders, they hang out in buckskin, like the Sioux. And this one guy, a southern boy from the Mongolian side. He’s been in trouble, man. Horse thieving. A lot of rustling going on a few years back, a lot of bad blood.”

We have a few days in Moscow before heading East, so Lu and I hang out at the brand new Mall just a stroll from our Olympic Village Hotel, logging onto the free Wifi, eating pizza at the food court and ogling the girls. What do they feed them here? Moscow girls are utterly stunning – miniskirts and high heels at noon! Ah, but the girls are interested in billionaire oligarchs, not a couple of scruffy rock n’ rollers from the impoverished West.

When we get bored, Lu and I head for the Banya – the Russian baths. It’s full of businessmen with bottles of vodka and whiskey, eating smoked fish and sausage. The call goes out and everyone crowds into the sauna. A big cedar-lined room full of naked men sweating, wearing silly-looking felt hats. One man sits on a stool and fans the heat around the room, waves of heat searing the flesh. Moans and groans in a rising crescendo of heat and sweat, some beating themselves or one another with eucalyptus branches, shouting encouragement until by mutual agreement the room bursts into applause and everyone pours out the door to sluice off the sweat in the showers, or plunge into the cold pool. I suspect Lu of secretly enjoying a little too much the beating he gave me with those branches, but then he probably thought the same about me. In any case, we’re eager to get the hell out of dirty filthy Moscow and head to the cleaner climes of Siberia.

ON THE ROAD TO SIBERIA

2008-12-23T13:00:00.000-08:00

Friday, June 29, 2007
A 10:30 PM flight from Moscow lands us in Siberia at dawn in the city of Abakan. A waiting van with a grumpy driver takes all of us – the four members of Huun Huur Tu, their two managers Sasha and Volodya, Lu from the Damned, and me. Two documentary film crew guys are also aboard; a tall serious Moscow Film Institute grad named Pasha intently studying the instruction manual on his brand-new Canon DV; and his buddy Vladik, the shorter of the Mutt & Jeff team festooned with a variety of still cameras and lenses, whose long blond hair and big dark sunglasses are constantly getting in the way of his focus. Everybody is smoking furiously.

Some of us are still toasted from last night’s all-nighter which began at a club called 16 Tons (“…and what do you get, another day older and deeper in debt”). Lu was backing up Geoffrey Oryema, the Paris-based Ugandan singer-songwriter (http://www.myspace.com/geoffreyoryema ).

Oryema’s guitarist had somehow failed to show up for the gig, so Lu sat in. Joined by a local blues harmonica enthusiast, they rocked a packed house. After the triumph, we taxied across town to a club whose habitués reputedly included a mix of Russia’s top oligarch billionaires and avant garde artistes. Located in a warehouse district, the joint was unfortunately not exactly jumping. The action consisted mainly of scantily clad cigarette girls jiving to the deafening techno offering fistfuls of some new brand, and laid back pot-heads puffing away in the rear garden. We decamped to the nearby flat of the club’s owner, a yuong Russian artist who used to live in LA and is sort of on the lam here after he was caught up in the great Stone Canyon pot bust a few years back. We spent the remaining hours until dawn drinking tea, discussing music, Malevich and Constructivism like a bunch of 1920’s Bolsheviks – just as I’ve always imagined life in Moscow.

But now the sun is coming up over the pine-fringed ridges and as we head down the road southeast toward the Sayan mountains, Kaigal-ool begins to hum a tune in a melodious vibrato, a confluence of notes and tones known as throat-singing. In five or six hours we will be in Tuva on the other side of those mountains and home for Huun Huur Tu.

FIRST NIGHT IN TUVA

2008-12-23T12:00:00.000-08:00

Saturday, June 30, 2007
I’m living in a yurt! Okay, so it’s not a real Siberian yak herder’s yurt. That one’s up the road. Mine is in a tourist encampment of yurts assembled on a bend in the rock-strewn Bii-khem River, a tributary of the mighty Yenesee rushing northward to the Arctic Circle. We're only a few miles outside of Kyzyl, capital city of the Republic of Tuva and at least a 30-point Scrabble word if you hit it right.

The arduous all-day drive from Abakan took us through endless landscapes of stunning Siberian beauty. But it was hot, we were beat and the Huun Huur Tu group eager to get home. The Mutt & Jeff film crew, however, insisted on stopping every few miles to set up their tripods and arty angles to shoot this forest and that mountain and various rivers until we were pleading with them to get back in the car. I'm afraid I got very cranky with the lads but it's Siberia and I can say what I want, dammit.

At long last, descending from the high ridges and pine taiga of Khakasija we halted at a checkpoint for a document inspection before crossing into Tuva. We traversed the rolling green expanse of the Valley of the Kings, where Scythian royalty still lie undisturbed in countless burial mounds and arrived in Kyzyl at dusk, pulling over by a Buddhist shrine on the city outskirts. Summoned by cell phones, which actually function in this farthest of far-off places in the geographical center of Central Asia, HHT’s homeboys showed up and spirited them away for a little homecoming celebration.

The homeboys returned with Kaigal-ool and Sayan to the yurt camp. They assembled in my yurt as the sun was going down, all of sitting in a circle. I brought out a pint of Cazadores Tequila and dedicated it to my new friends. Passing it around, each of the Tuvans first dipped a finger in the liquor and solemnly flicked a few drops in the air before taking a swig. They seemed to like the stuff, which most had heard of but never before tried. One of the homeboys later said, "I always wanted to taste the juice of the cactus before I died."

My first night in the yurt, I slept like a stone, only to be roused by a huge crash. I stumbled outside to see a thunderstorm hovering over the peaks of the Sayan range, pulsing with intermittent lightning. The sky to the south was clear, illuminated by the fullest roundest moon. While standing there in the warm embrace of a humid breeze whispering off the river it was possible to hear the wild notes of those same songs that Kaigal-ool was throat-singing in the car on the way to this incredible place.

MAGICAL DAYS IN TUVA - July 1 - 3

2008-12-23T11:00:00.000-08:00

Tuesday, July 3, 2007 - We visited several Arzhans, the sacred springs that flow from the steppes and are marked by shamanic offerings. The mineral waters are supposed to heal whatever ails you.

All I know for sure is that the weather was hot in Tuva and the cold stuff felt good on my face. I think it may have eased a slight ache in my left foot, too. The herders let me ride one of their horses.
With Huun Huur Tu we paid a visit to the Chief Shaman of Tuva, one of the most powerful shamans in all of Siberia. The shaman performed a ritual and then requested a command performance at the Kyzyl Museum for him and his wife and friends. The guys put on an inspired show. Afterward, the shaman called for a group photo. Then we all received a special guided tour of the museum...
...including a look at a collection of ancient stone figures that are kept hidden from most visitors because some locals still regard them as sacred. The mouths of the figures are stained by the milk and butter offerings that worshippers ritually feed them.

LAST DAYS IN TUVA

2008-12-23T10:00:00.000-08:00

Wednesday, July 4, 2007
On location with Huun Huur Tu, playing in the hills overlooking the valleys northeast of Kyzyl, as the evening breeze swept over the steppe and the lowering sun touched everything with a golden glow.

Their homeboys came along and despite their menacing appearance, they turned out to be a sweet bunch of guys to hang out with... and strangely familiar, too, as if I'd known them back in the small upstate New York town where I grew up. On our last day in Tuva, we all drove out to village of herders where the film crew shot Huun Huur Tu playing in a field of galloping horses. Afterward, we feasted on boiled lamb and fermented mare's milk, a traditional alcoholic beverage of the Siberian steppe - a little something different from the beer you're probably drinking on this Fourth July.

Now, back on the long road over the Sayan Range to the Sayan Ring Festival...

SAYAN RING FESTIVAL, JULY 5 - 8

2007-07-09T14:52:00.000-07:00

The Festival was great - like a Siberian Woodstock.Huun Huur Tu played two magnificent sets...And I had a lot of fun... and so did a few of the girls I met! I did a bit of dancing, they tell me. My memory is a little blurry, but here is graphic evidence:

This distinguished lady was the chief Shaman of the island where the festival was held. I gave her a brass bell to add to the other bells hanging on her outfit. She said "Whenever this bell rings, it will send you blessings across the sea." I believe it!

You can read about the whole crazy thing in my article in the October 2007 issue of Rolling Stone Italia (if you read italian): http://www.rollingstonemagazine.it/page.php?ID=1839

Dosvedonya!

BRUNCH WITH HUUN HUUR TU

2007-06-27T12:30:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-26T05:00:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-06-24T00:07:00.000-07:00

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!