Anda Union

“Anda Union, multi-award winners and festival headliners – who wowed us all in their previous appearances in the UK and became one of the most talked about bands at Womad. A nine-piece band from ‘Inner’ Mongolia in northern China, they are proud ambassadors of Mongolian musical heritage, helping to raise its profile in difficult times while exciting and embracing us with it.” Carol Pegg, Froots magazine In the dim light of a New York night club, in a cavernous church in Oxford or in any secluded corner of the globe, the nine musicians of Anda Union recreate the open skies of the Central Asian grasslands. Through traditional vocals, overtone (throat) singing and Mongolian long song, playing horsehead fiddles, lutes, flutes and drums, they tell stories of herds and heroes, of lands and families. The driving forces on Homeland, their second album, are nostalgia and a passion to preserve the essence of a nomadic culture threatened by urbanization. The band has the same magical effect when playing at full throttle or in spare arrangements. The full palette of the band’s stunning vocal and instrumental agility appears in Jangar—an epic folk song once performed by traveling bards—about a hero and his warriors. The mood turns melancholy in the emblematic Hometown and in The Mother Song, while the joy is infectious in The Drinking Song. Wherever they go, spiritually and musically the band mates of Anda Union are always in steppe. - Alan Tigay