Mongolian Art & Throat Singing Video, 2014 - Torontomulticulturalcalendar.com

CMCC was pleased to meet Ruth Lor Malloy at our Art Exhibition this month and she wrote this wonderful blog post about the event.

Ruth writes: It isn’t often that we hear about a Mongolian event in Toronto. An art exhibition was included in the recent Culture Days weekend. Of course I couldn’t miss it. I love Mongolia. I’ve been there three times — attracted by its big skies, its horses, its music,  boots. I could go on and on about it.

Amai on Skype. Copyright ©2014 Ruth Lor Malloy

The Mongolian art exhibit was in the East Asian Library at the University of Toronto on September 26. The highlight for me was an example of khoomei – Amai, the singer, refused to call it “throat singing”. That of the world-traveling adventurist-author was more profound and spiritual than any of the throat singing I heard in Mongolia. It was short and wonderful, more like what I’ve heard in Tibetan Buddhist monasteries than in tourist shows in Ulan Bator.
Amai sang to us from New York City via Skype. He had been unable to get a visa in time to come to Toronto. Links to a video and to Amai’s interesting website are below.

Video of Amai's Khoomei

Information about Amai

Lkhagva Amarsanaa. Copyright ©2014 Ruth Lor Malloy

I saw two of the three artists present from Mongolia. Lkhagva Amarsanaa was demonstrating Mongolian calligraphy. He was the most popular as he translated the names of attenders into beautiful ancient Mongolian script.   The country currently uses Cyrillic.

Copyright ©2014 Ruth Lor Malloy

These pieces were simple compared to some of his other works. I wasn’t able to get artist Ochirbat Enkhtaivan to stand beside his horse paintings. He was too busy helping Amarsanaa sell the calligraphy to members of the eager audience. But Bolor Sambuu of the Canada Mongolia Chamber of Commerce agreed to pose with one. The Chamber sponsored the event.

Bolor Sambuu, Canada Mongolia Chamber of Commerce with painting by Ochirbat Enktaivan. Copyright ©2014 Ruth Lor Malloy

Click here for full article.

About Ruth Lor Malloy
She is behind TorontoMulticulturalCalendar.com. She is a travel writer and photographer, born in Canada with an obsession to experience the whole world.  She was brought up in a Chinese restaurant family in eastern Ontario, and has lived for extended periods in the U.S., the Philippines, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Kazakhstan, India, Taiwan, and Thailand. She has also lived in Japan,  Mexico and Brasil.  From 1975 to 2002, she published a series of 14 guide books on China. She has also published guide books on Beijing and Hong Kong, and helped with one on Almaty.   Her self-guided, downloadable photo tours on the Calgary Stampede, the Quebec Winter Carnival, The World in Toronto, and Toronto’s Many Chinatowns are available from VisualTravelTours.com.  This company has also published her tours on Botswana, Mongolia and Helsinki.

Ruth’s travel articles have appeared in publications like the Asian Wall St. Journal, Copley News Service, Toronto Star, Toronto Sun, and Globe and Mail. Her aim is to bring people of different backgrounds together as friends with an appreciation of each others’ cultures. She believes one of the ways this can be done in Toronto is to encourage visits to each other’s festivals.  Her calendar lists free or nearly free events that provide such opportunities.

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