Anda Union : From The Steppes To The City

Description

The music of traditional Mongolian group Anda Union can be exquisitely plaintive, or as raucous as the wild horses of the steppes. It is often beguiling and melodious like a Celtic song, delivered with heart-breaking purity or with disarmingly powerful resonance. The music describes love and life on the steppes, swirling winds and laughing horses, and is performed by ten brilliant singers, fiddlers and percussionists, dressed in traditional clothes, before international audiences that number in their thousands.

The feature documentary Anda Union: From the Steppes to the City, directed by Marc Tiley, Sophie Lascelles and Tim Pearce, follows this group of young musicians as they take a 10,000km odyssey through the grasslands of Inner Mongolia to discover the roots of their hauntingly beautiful music.

The film is a celebration of their culture; from wild alcohol-fuelled parties to moving stories of sacrifice, from the intimacies of pastoral life to the harsh realities of the city, from performing to a handful of goatherders in the Grasslands to over 2000 people in the capital city of Hohhot.

Like all nomads the Mongols have an oral culture, passed on from generation to generation in stories, music and songs.

In this film Anda Union sing their history.