Altan Urag

Formed in 2002, Altan Urag is a folk-rock and ethnic band that fuses traditional Mongolian sound with a contemporary influence.

The name Altan Urag can be loosely translated to Khan’s Kin or Golden Blood Line, referring to Chinggis Khan and his ancestors. The band’s vision is to promote Mongolian culture to the world and introduce traditional music to the young people of the Mongolia.

The band has seven members whose skills lie in playing the morin khuur (horse head fiddle), ikh khuur (grand horse head fiddle), percussion, bishguur (traditional horn) and yaichin. The vocalists are throat singers and long song singers and all were trained in traditional and classical Mongolian music.

The band has released six albums, Foals’ Been Born an ethnic contemporary album (2004), and Made in Altan Urag, a folk-rock album (Sonor Records 2006). Four new albums were released in early 2009, marking a culmination in a prolific phase in Altan Urag’s work. Blood (folk rock), Hypnotism (contemporary), Once Upon a Time in Mongolia (ethnic) and Nation (traditional folk) use the artists’ incredible skills to explore different genres of Altan Urag’s music and demonstrate their powerful and soulful sound.

The band has produced music videos for Surf (Foals’ Been Born, Desoft Studio), Mother Mongolia (Made in Altan Urag, Zaya’sh Studio) and Abroad (Made in Altan Urag, Khasui Entertainment). Abroad featured guitarist Andrew Colwell on the track and video. Recent music videos are Requiem, Wave, The Blue Marked Nation, Rah2 and the Beast.

Altan Urag’s first international tour was to Russia in 2004. Since then they have visited several countries for tours, festivals, special concerts and for recording purposes including Vietnam, Thailand, Uzbekistan and the USA. In 2008 Altan Urag played at the Biennale Bern Arts Festival of Switzerland, Riddu Riddu National Music Festival of Norway and the 18th Macau International Arts Festival. They also featured in the Euroasia film awards in Kazakastan for the closing ceremony, performing Ochigdor l the official soundtrack from Mongol.

Altan Urag has produced the soundtrack for two international movies. The first soundtrack Mother Mongolia was produced for the movie Khadak (2006) directed by Peter Brosens and Jessica Woodworth and the second was Blue Marked Nation for the movie Mongol (2008) directed by Sergei Bodrov.

Khadak and Mother Mongolia have been nominated and won several film awards including the Luigi De Laurentiis Award at the Venice Film Festival (2006), Silver Medal at the Spirit of Fire Russian International Film Festival and awards at Bratislava, Flanders, Oslo and Washington DC (Environmental Film) festivals.

Mother Mongolia won Best Music at the 2007 Cyprus International Film Festival and Khadak is currently nominated at the following places and festivals: Sao Paulo, Thessaloniki, Mar del Plata, Leeds, Hong Kong, Jerusalem, Bangkok, Moscow (German Film Event), Vilnius, Warsaw, Istanbul, Innsbruck and Rome (Desert Nights).

Mongol was released in 2008 and has been nominated for several awards including best foreign language film for the 2007 Academy Awards. Mongol swept the Nika awards (2008) with six awards, won Best Sound Design at the Golden Eagle Awards (Russia), the Best Foreign Language Film at the National Board of Review (USA) was nominated at the European Film Awards (2008) and Image Awards (2009).

Of Altan Urag’s music Sergei Bodrov says “… their distinctive vocal rhythms lend a sense of otherworldly strength to several scenes … I just fell in love with them. They have an amazing energy.” (Bodrov, www.mongolmovie.com)

Altan Urag featured on the official soundtrack, and music was in collaboration with Finnish composer Tuomas Kantelinen. The recording of this soundtrack took place in St. Petersburg, Russia along with the St. Petersburg Symphony Orchestra.

Altan Urag can be seen at their permanent gig at Ikh Mongol and continues to live and work in Ulaan Baatar, the capital of Mongolia to expose young people to the beauty and majesty of Mongolian music.

We play folk rock music and our band was formed in May, 2002. That same year we performed our first time gig at the “Roaring Hooves” international ethnic, contemporary music festival in Mongolia .

In 2004 the first album of the band was released under the name “Foal's Been Born”.

The album had various traditional music influences and came out as a folk, contemporary album. Second album “Made in Altan Urag” has 11 tracks of folk rock music and songs and it was released from Sonor records in December 2006. Band members are professional musicians who graduated music colleges and actual same class colleagues.