“To produce music by ourselves is difficult,” said MC Svhbater, who like most of the other members of the Legion has received no professional music training. Yet despite their lack of formal training and support, all three groups that make up the Legion have managed to produce original music.
Many of the Legion’s members now make a living by rapping professionally in night clubs and bars in Inner Mongolia. Yet the money they receive is a far cry from the glamorous fortunes enjoyed by some of their Western counterparts. “When I was first hired by a night club to rap, the salary was only 800 yuan (US118) per month.” MC Svhbater told NewsChina. “Then as our group became gradually more famous in Inner Mongolia, it rose to 3,000 (US441).”
The Legion has been performing together since 2006. “We are intimate friends in life and we are always together,” said BD, “It is the type of relationship words alone cannot describe.”
This sense of intimate brotherhood encouraged a strong bond between the three groups, leading to the growth of their now trademark “rhythmic” exchanges on stage.
At MAKO, while the nine-person Legion made a group appearance during the first song, for the most part, the three groups performed separately. Such a division by no means lessened the group’s impact, and the natural quick-fire bounce and dark combative rhyming style of MNT and TST quickly had the crowd rocking in appreciation.
Yet it wasn’t until PTS took the stage that the venue really began to shake. Named “Partisan” to indicate their status as underground musicians, the group combined more melodic Mongolian elements with reggae-style beats. The unique infusion of styles left many in the crowd cheering for more. The inevitable encore saw PTS joined by the remaining members of the legion to form an explosive nine-person hip-hop chorus. For non-hip-hop aficionados, the effect can only be described as a scatter-gun burst of explosive verse, as the nine stylistically distinct rappers jostled and competed with one another before breaking out into a chorus of pitch perfect traditional harmonies.
The Prairie’s Modern Voice
The Legion first met around 2005 in Hohhot, the capital of Inner Mongolia while still at college. Before coming together, they had grown up in wildly different parts of the vast prairie region, with many of them born on the grassland itself. “I was born in a tent,” said EB, who grew up in a family of herdsmen. As a child EB would often accompany his father to herd sheep, or hunt wild animals.
Such memories have left a permanent imprint in the minds of these young rappers. Yet these memories are likely to be among the last. Since the 1980s Mongolia’s traditional nomadic lifestyle has been gradually replaced by a more settled life, with the pasture being divided into grids and separated by railings, a policy enacted in the name of “protecting the grassland.” Rapid urbanization and industrialization has also contributed to an increase in the number of herdsman families, such as EB’s, that have resettled in one of Inner Mongolia’s rapidly expanding cities. However, many of these new arrivals have found life in the city difficult, while the policy of permanent settlement has done little to protect the grassland. Instead, the environment has worsened. With the subsequent development of mining and chemical industries, strong winds and sand storms have become frequent.
“I miss the flowers and wild animals on the grassland,” said EB. The grassland also formed the bedrock of Mongolia’s musical heritage. “Everyone sang on the pasture.” EB recalled. “Whenever there was a gathering, people would just drink and sing, at least for a whole day. For a wedding in the tent, they could drink and sing for three days uninterrupted.”
Gradually, however, all of the Legion’s members moved into cities, a process which led to an increasing awareness of the modern world. Inner Mongolia’s urbanization meant that for the first time, cultures other than their own were now accessible to the group’s members. “I was listening to American country music in high school,” recalled MC Svhbater. “Then later heavy metal bands like Metallica and Rammstein.” Many of his friends were also rock fans. “80 percent of boys in our school listened to rock,” EB told NewsChina. EB went on to cite bands such as Guns N’ Roses, Nirvana and Slipknot as among his group’s earliest inspirations.
Change, both environmental and cultural, looms large, regularly showing up in the group’s lyrics. Love is also a theme, as is modern social reality. “One of ours songs narrates the life of a poor Mongolian boy who becomes a thief,” said MC Svhbater.
After several years of hard work, all the three groups that make up the Legion are now able to enjoy a certain level of fame in Inner Mongolia. However, throughout China as a whole, their influence remains limited. “I never thought that in Inner Mongolia, of all places, there would be a group of modern rappers,” said Jin Yan, the organizer of the MAKO gig, “So when I encountered them last year at a rock festival in Inner Mongolia, I was totally shocked.”
The Legion, like their notorious ancestors before them, has ambitious plans to expand the group’s influence throughout China. “As far as south as we can go,” said BD. But they also realize that their choice of language might yet prove to be a block among non-Mongolian Chinese speakers. Not that it concerns them: “We won’t change,” said BD, “We’ll stick to our mother tongue.”
October 2010
