Khoomei-Taiko Project

Last night Baatar Hero witnessed an awesome and rare performance.

We went to a World Affairs Council Global Classroom event at Town Hall to learn a little more about Mongolia, and my expectations were blown away.  Our evening began with a presentation for local teachers by Dwight Gee, President of the Arts Council of Mongolia, and Pat Burleson, Director of Japanese Connections (a high school study tour program to Japan).  Both presentations were informative and inspiring.  We were even invited to get up and say a few words about the RoamGreen and the Mongol Rally which was very cool, but the best part was meeting Dwight and watching the presentations…

Dwight was nice enough to chat with us before the presentation. He has a wealth of info, knows pretty much everybody in the local Mongolian community and offered to introduce us! His presentation reinforced a lot of what I’ve been reading about the economic and cultural challenges the country faces, but it was so compelling to hear it directly from somebody who is working there to preserve the art and culture.  One particularly interesting project he told us about involves gathering oral histories from the few remaining survivors of the purges of the 1930’s to preserve the pre-communist Buddhist culture for younger generations to connect to.

Pat’s presentation on the blending of old and new traditions in Japan was fascinating, especially this video of the Yoshida Brother’s mixing up the traditional shamisen with contemporary music:

After the presentations the Khoomei-Taiko Project rocked Town Hall with an awesome performance of Mongolian morin khuur horse-head fiddle, khoomei throat singing, Japanese flute, koto, and taiko drums. Khoomei-Taiko is a cross cultural ensemble of Mongolian and Japanese musicians incorporating American improvisational techniques into their pieces.  This wasn’t really anything like traditional Japanese or Mongolian music I’d heard before… it was somehow familiar, but they have created something really new and compelling.  We were a little sad to hear that not only were they temporarily formed as an ensemble and last night was their last performance together, but they don’t really have any studio recordings of the group together!  We talked to Kaoru Watanabe after the performance to express support for a future project like this, or a recording of the group.  The blending of these instruments was really unique, and the khoomei throat singing is something everybody should experience (especially LIVE, it’s other worldly… you can search YouTube but it doesn’t really convey the experience).

We talked to some local musicians who we are hoping we can get involved with one of our events.  I’d love for you all to be able to hear this music.

Here are some links to the individual artists for you to check out:

Kaoru Watanabe

Kaoru & Shoji Kameda

Kaoru & Shinetsog Dorjnyam

If you ever get an opportunity to see any of these artists, TAKE IT.  They were amazing and deserve your support.

The Pitch

I sent this email out today to launch the site and announce to friends and family that we are participating in the Mongol Rally.

The time has come again when Kim and I set about taking another long and far flung journey around the world.  And this time we are taking you along for the ride! Literally.

…

Over the past several months we have gone from just knowing we wanted to go to Mongolia, to finding out about this event called the Mongol Rally, to registering for 2 teams to participate.

And we want you to be involved!

Here’s the basic idea:
* next summer (July/August) we will drive 2 small cars (what the Adventurists call “unsuitable”, but I don’t really understand all their British slang) from London to Ulaan Baatar.
* Raise at least $2000 per car for Mercy Corps in Mongolia.
* Donate the vehicles to the charity when (if) you arrive in Mongolia.

We have set a few extra “rules” for ourselves as well:
* make the trip sustainable by reducing our impact (vehicle fuel efficiency, reducing air travel where possible, purifying our own drinking water, using solar power, etc)
* additionally donate the gear for the trip rather than shipping it home (tents, sleeping bags, camping supplies)…
* We are forming a non-profit organization dedicated to advocating for sustainable travel, so we plan on making this adventure the first of many similar endeavors.

How are we taking you along?
We are literally taking some of you with us!  We have 2 teams registered, which means a caravan of 2 cars. We have already sought the help and advice of some friends and family to make sure we complete this journey safely. There is potentially (limited) space for more people to join our team. If you are interested, please contact me for more details.

Obviously not everybody can join us in the cars, but we would be thrilled to have you involved by possibly meeting us along our route. We’ll be traveling through Eastern Europe, Turkey, Central Asia, Russia, and of course Mongolia. There will be many opportunities to make your own journeys coincide with ours.

Of course traveling is also not an option for everybody. We will be filming this adventure and documenting it in as real time as possible with audio, video and photo blogs along the way.  We would love for you to virtually join the trip from the other side of the world.

You can also be part of our home based team if you would like to help us with fundraising or have any advice (logistical, vehicular, etc) for us.

Why are we doing this?
I could write another whole email about why we chose Mongolia (look for that in a future blog post).  Instead I’ll focus on why we are doing the rally.   We have been reading all about Mongolia’s compelling history (I highly recommend Stanley Stewart and Jasper Becker’s books) to prepare for this trip.  Nearly 70 years of communist control followed by a rapid fall have been chaotic and destructive to the economy and culture.

The last 20 years have seen some of the fastest growth of a young democracy and economy ever, but it has left most Mongolians behind.  With their indigenous herding culture disrupted by the Russians and lacking the knowledge and experience to operate most of the industries that are growing now, many Mongolians are unemployed and extremely poor.  Some families are so unable to provide for their children that they are forced into homelessness.  Mongolia has a wealth of natural resources, but they are managed by foreign operations that know how to extract them (and most of the profits are thus sent elsewhere).

We’d like to see these resources managed by Mongolians who will use them responsibly and preserve their land to restore their indigenous herding culture. Mercy Corps directly addresses these problems by giving homeless children shelter, building schools to educate them, and finding employment opportunities to stimulate a sustainable locally owned economy.

We want to see the beauty of Mongolia for ourselves while we help to preserve the land and the culture for future generations… and if a little adventure is involved there is no harm in that.

Fundraising
All of this of course requires a lot of time, planning, and money to organize.  Everybody on our team has committed a lot of time and money already to this adventure, but we can not do this all ourselves.  We can take care of our own plane tickets and travel expenses (we do not expect anybody to send us on vacation), but we still need to raise money for the vehicles and equipment, all of which will be donated, that will be required to complete the 10,000 mile drive, in addition to the direct contributions to Mercy Corps.

We really need your help to raise this money.  I know that everybody’s budget is tighter right now, but remember that even as our own economy starts to rebound, Mongolia’s commodity based economy is suffering the delayed effects of falling prices around the world.  The smallest amount we can give will go very far to help a child there develop the skills they need to build a thriving economy of their own.

We can also reach our goal by spreading the word to as many people as possible. If we can each only give small amounts, but reach enough people we can raise more than enough to make this happen. Please consider giving even just $5 or $10 to help us reach our goal. No amount is too small. If you are able to give more or to make a monthly contribution then we can reach our goal that much sooner.

If your employer matches charitable contributions, Mercy Corps is a tax exempt 501(c)3, and we are also currently registering for our own non-profit status (we’ll update you when this is complete). Over the next year we will be organizing several exciting fund raising events for you to attend, so stay tuned for more info! In the meantime there are 3 ways to contribute  here .

I hope you can be part of this journey with us in one way or another.
Please visit our site http://rally.roamgreen.org
Join our Facebook group
Follow us on Twitter
And spread the word to everybody you know.

Thank you!

–
Brian Shrader
http://roam.autarken.net
http://rally.roamgreen.org
http://twitter.com/baatarhero
http://facebook.com/baatarhero

Website Complete

It’s taken a while to get the fundraising widget set up and put the finishing touches on this site.  There is actually quite a bit still to work on, but I think we’re ready (enough) to launch this thing!

Meet The Griswolds

Not even a full week after we registered and we got our first message from another team! The Griswolds are two guys (so far) from Detroit, and happened to be passing through Seattle. One of them is applying to the UW MBA program and came to check out the campus and city.  They hit up Bumbershoot over the weekend, and then tonight we met them for drinks at a local watering hole. They have also been to Tibet, so we had a lot to reminisce about on that common front. We also shared a lot of the same questions & thoughts on the rally. It will be fun to catch up with them in London and possibly other spots on our route to commiserate as the rally progresses.

We Are Registered!

Kim and I just registered for two cars to participate in next summer’s Mongol Rally!

Starting around some time late last year we knew that we wanted our next big trip to be Mongolia, but when we started planning we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into.  Our original plan was to take the Trans-Siberian Railroad across Russia and trek by horseback over the Mongolian steppe.  We also wanted to be involved with some kind of volunteer opportunity during part of the trip.  After a few months, in the course of my research, I discovered this video of the Mongol Rally.  Adventure. Culture. A good cause. It took us about 2 seconds to decide this was how we were going to Mongolia.

…

Little did we know that we had just scratched the surface of such an epic undertaking.  We’d have to raise thousands of dollars for Mercy Corps; arrange visas and permits; acquire a vehicle; outfit said vehicle for a 10,000 mile journey over mountains, desert and Siberian tundra from London, UK to Ulaan Baatar, Mongolia; and all of this before we’re even out of the starting gate.  We soon learned that all of this would be moot if we couldn’t even get into the event.  Apparently there is quite a queue just to register.  Last year all of the available spots filled up in just a few minutes.  So we joined the mailing list and waited to find out more details from The Adventurists about when to register.

The summer crept by, and we watched this year’s rally unfold. We planned a mini-rally of our own through the American West.  This was in part a way to get to my cousin’s wedding in New Mexico, in part a vacation to parts of the US we had never seen, and finally, partly a test of our endurance.  A 3,800 mile drive (granted, over well paved roads) in 7 days would surely test our ability to log long hours in the car together and start memorizing whole episodes of This American Life. Also of course this would provide for us our first obstacle: word came down from The Adventurists, registration would be on the 2nd to last day of our road trip… at 6am PST no less.  So it was that we had to make sure we stopped at a hotel in Salt Lake City, UT with a reliable internet connection and wake up  at 5am this morning to register.  We had a feeling that we would want to assemble a team larger than could fit into 1 car, so we registered 2 for the event.  This meant we had 2 laptops hitting their website as it slowed to a crawl under the traffic that bombarded it from would be adventurers around the globe.  Kim and I both thought at several points in time we were getting frozen out before we could complete the registration, but we somehow were both successful before all the slots filled up.  Before we could celebrate, we packed ourselves up, jumped in the car, and I drove over 900 miles in 14.5 hours from Salt Lake City to Seattle, if for no other reason than to somehow prepare myself for this crazy journey.

Now we are back home, and the reality of what we’ve undertaken is setting in.  Now the planning really begins.  We must finish forming our team, Baatar Hero! We need to start fund raising.  We need some cars…

First step down… about 9,999 more to go.

Mongol Rally 2010

Baatar Hero is a team of five intrepid adventurers from Seattle, embarking on the Mongol Rally in July 2010.

The Mongol Rally is an annual 10,000 mile drive from London, England to Ulaan Baatar, Mongolia whose participants raise money for charity as they travel unmapped roads from eastern Europe to the steppes of central Asia. Upon arrival teams donate their vehicles and the cash they’ve raised to charitable organizations working in Mongolia, such as Baatar Hero’s chosen charity, Mercy Corps.

You have found our website and taken the first step in joining us on this journey! Bookmark it, subscribe to our RSS feed, join our Facebook group, follow us on Twitter, and follow our blog below as we make our way to Mongolia!