Hanggai is set to play White Heat at Madame Jojo’s, London, Tuesday 9th September, 2008.

Hanggai are a Beijing-based group of Mongolian musicians, some of whom originally hail from China’s Inner Mongolia province.

Their music is based on traditional songs from the inner Mongolian grasslands, and the folkloric sound palette is further enriched by adding unobtrusive electric guitar, bass, banjo, programming and crisply atmospheric percussion.

Two of the members play the morin khuur (horse-hair fiddle), while another plays the tobshuur (a two-stringed lute), and these instruments comprise the foundation of their sound.

Tobshuur-player and bandleader Ilchi was formerly in a Beijing punk group and put this band together after hearing the traditional khoomei throat-singing technique. Enthralled by the sound of this centuries-old singing style, he went to Inner Mongolia to learn it, where he ultimately met fiddle players Hugejiltu and Bagen.

The combination of the group members’ raspy, deep throat-singing with a Western compositional sense of tension, build-up, and release is stunningly dramatic and exhilarating, transcendently powerful music that anyone from anywhere can respond to.

Plus White Heat Djs Matty and Olly.

White Heat
Tuesday 9th September, 2008
Time: 8pm-3am
£7 advance, £8 on the door
Madame Jojo’s, 8–10 Brewer Street, London, W1F 0SE.
Nearest Tube: Piccadilly Circus.
020 7734 3040
Madame Jojo’s
events@madamejojos.com

Hanggai MySpace