Longtime reader and friend of the blog Dire Badger had a very good musical recommendation to add to my epic Monday linkage and videos post, in the form of a new musical project called THE HU.
Now, as far as I can tell, this is not a pun based on the name of one of the greatest rock bands of all time.
In actual fact, their name is derived from the Mongolian root word for “human”.
Yeah, look, I don’t get it either.
What I do get, in spades, is the fact that their music is awesome.
It’s sort of like what happens when you mix one part throat-singing with two parts of Yo-yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble in with a decent dose of heavy metal. You kind of have to see the results to believe them.
You can start with probably their best song so far – “The Wolf Totem”, with English translations of the lyrics (if you watch on YouTube directly and enable subtitles):
That song is badass. They have channeled the spirit of the ancient Mongol warriors of the Great Khan, Chinghis himself, into a war chant that makes you want to go kill, maim, and burn. Khorne would approve.
The next song’s title means something like “How Strange”, and as far as I can tell, it is what happens when Mongolians learn how to sing the blues. The aspect ratio on YouTube is a bit stupid, but that’s another matter:
And here’s one more in the same vein:
On a side note, it is rather interesting for me to see the Mongolian language rendered in written form in the third video.
Now, from what I understand – and it isn’t much – the “Mongolian” language isn’t actually one language at all, but a whole bunch of dialects that share common ancestry. And the dialect used in those videos is Khalkha, the most common language in Mongolia proper.
They use the Cyrillic alphabet when writing in Khalkha, with certain non-Slavic letter forms. What is interesting to me is the fact that I can read the Mongol script and hear the words, because I can read and understand some amount of Russian – and I can tell immediately that the vowel/consonant sounds are pretty faithful to the actual letters, in a way that I have thus far seen only with Russian.
Granted, my experience with Slavic languages is largely limited to Russian itself; I haven’t listened to or spoken or read very much Ukrainian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Chechen, Georgian, or Azerbaijani, for instance. But I’ve been around enough speakers of “Caucasian” languages – like the aforementioned Azerbaijani – to know that those languages sound very different from what the lettering would suggest to anyone who knows how to read Cyrillic. And I’ve listened to Bulgarians speaking their language; to an ear trained to listen to the very beautiful and flowing Russian language, it sounds weird, as do most non-Russian Slavic forms.
I’ve heard people claim that Ukrainian is much more mellifluous than Russian. I’ll have to see it to believe it. I do think those same people are onto something when they say that Ukrainian women are the most beautiful in the world – though I’ll wager that the women of Nizhny Novgorod and Omsk could give them a run for their money any day.
(Actually, it might surprise you to learn that of the various Slavic languages, in terms of linguistic distance, Serbian and Bulgarian are far closer to Russian than Ukrainian is – this, despite the fact that Ukraine is literally Russia’s border. As far as I know, the historical meaning of the word Украина was actually “border” in Russian – and that’s how the Russkies think of the Ukrainians.)
I realise that this sort of thing is interesting only to nerds and pointy-headed types, like me. But it’s neat to be able to listen to the lyrics and see them up close, and realise that with a bit of practice – all right, a HUGE amount of practice – I could probably pronounce the words myself.
Before we leave off, here’s one last song from a different musical outfit with similar sentiments:
I still wouldn’t have the foggiest notion what the hell the words mean – other than that they sound like exactly the sort of words to chant before going off to experience what the Great Khan himself considered the best thing in life:
The greatest joy a man can know is to conquer his enemies and drive them before him. To ride their horses and take away their possessions, to see the faces of those who were dear to them bedewed with tears, and to clasp their wives and daughters in his arms.
Personally I think that Conan the Barbarian put it better, perhaps. But it’s still a badass quote from a badass man who came from a badass culture. It is obvious that the Mongols have never forgotten that they were once masters of the entire known world, who created the largest land empire ever seen until that point, and whose very name made their enemies tremble with fear. They have never forgotten the legacy left to them by their Great Khan, and long for the day when they will ride forth from their steppes again into battle to fight in the name of their king.
My sincere thanks to Dire Badger for bringing that awesomeness to my attention. As always, if y’all have similar things to share, send ’em over.
3 Comments
To be fair, The Mongols were not great warriors. They were mediocre warriors, and when they met with European cavalry and even with their infantry, they tended to get smashed on a ten to one basis.
Their genius, however, was in their morale. Sure, they couldn't take a European soldier in anything even close to a fair fight… But they would raid the town first, slaughter everyone but the women and children, and then drive the dependents into the teeth of their own fathers and husbands.
they would create mountains of skulls and betray anyone that surrendered, and they dodn't 'conquer' cities, they utterly razed them, then threw their young men into their 'horde' and used the survivors as slave labor. Terror was their only effective weapon, and by the time they started hitting the more heavily defended northern European cities, they had swelled their armies to a thousand times their original size… after all, the 'whites' making out their infantry were valueless, and they could afford to spend them a HUNDRED to one on their next victory.
There is a very interesting story that used to be told around Germany, about a heavily-armed merchant convoy that was confronted by a mongol.
The Mongol demanded that they surrender, and the Merchant immediately complied and gestured for his Guardsmen to stand down. The Mongol then ordered them to line up and kneel before him.
He started beheading the guards, one by one. An injured Knight who had been riding in the wagon stepped out, saw what was happening, and noticed that three guards had already been killed. He yelled "What the hell is going on?".
The Guardsman that was closest to him turned his head and hissed, "Shut up, Man, do you want to piss him off?"
The Knight, of course, strode over and beat the Mongol to death with his crutch.
They were not… skilled warriors, comparatively. Their deeds were spoken of with awe by Generals and Leaders who would never admit losing to an inferior foe, and built their mystique and terror until trained warriors would foul themselves and the first sighting. It was an empire built on Propaganda, which is why it fell apart 5 years after Ghengis' death.
But boy, did it work for them.
Don't get me wrong, I admire their accomplishments, if not their ethos. They met foolishness with fearless determination and an utter ruthlessness, if not with any sort of skill or tactical genius.
All fair points. My understanding of their cavalry tactics is that they followed a very rote playbook. They would send out light cavalry to engage the enemy forces, inflict light damage, and then ride away at just sufficient speed to get the enemy to chase them. They would then have much heavier cavalry and infantry waiting, usually behind some sort of visual screen, to stop the enemy advance cold. And then they would advance and slaughter all before them. They didn't concern themselves with siege tactics or supply lines or logistical complexities until they really established their empire, and only incorporated more advanced tactics and strategies once they had conquered more sophisticated but slower enemies.
The history of the Mongols shows that they were not, in fact, invincible. They were defeated quite badly by the Persian Khwarezmi at one point. So they could be beaten, and were, several times – but they only really stopped advancing when their Khans kicked the bucket.