Mongolian man on a musical mission

Bodee Borjigin will continue his study in Berklee College of Music after playing the matouqin for nine years. Provided to China Daily

"My father let me try to play it, and I remember I just couldn't stop playing it for the whole night."

Since that heady introduction to playing the ancient matouqin, or horse-head fiddle, nine years ago, when Bodee Borjigin was 9 years old, his infatuation for the most important musical instrument of the Mongolian ethnic group never seems to have waned.

"I'm never tired of the matouqin," he says. "For me it's an instrument on which you can play any kind of music, ancient or contemporary."

Borjigin has just returned from Ulan Bator, the Mongolian capital, to Hohhot after performing with the Wild Horse Ensemble, a group from the Inner Mongolia autonomous region founded by the established contemporary matouqin player Chiborag nearly 30 years ago. The ensemble is made up of a dozen of Mongolian ethnic musicians, including Onelltu, the band's chief player.

The ensemble, celebrating Mongolia's summer festival known as Naadam, performed three works, including Chiborag's popular composition Thousands of Horses Galloping, in an event in Chinggis Square in downtown Ulan Bator on July 13.

"Many other artists performed at the festival, including hip-hop groups and pop and rock singers," Borjigin says. "I can feel that the sounds of the matouqin are part of all of us."

Even if Borjigin's recollection of the first time he played the instrument is crystal clear, he says he cannot recall exactly when he first encountered it because almost everyone in his family plays the instrument in their spare time.

He grew up listening to Khoomei (Mongolian throat singing) and Mongolian long song, a traditional style of singing in which performers take huge, deep breaths to sustain loud, extended phrases. He began to study playing the matouqin soon after that first highly memorable hands-on encounter with the instrument.