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Baigaljav – The Horse Head Fiddle Maker

      The master craftsman welcomes us with open arms. In front of us, stands one of the best and most well-known horse head fiddle makers in Mongolia. I look down the narrow passage to his workshop. Baigaljav invites us to follow him as he first takes us into his office. There, we are safe from the noises of the work going on; hammering, drilling, polishing and the whine of an electric saw. Baigaljav grew up in Odmaa’s hometown. He speaks like Odmaa without any appreciable dialect, as all the residents from the South Gobi. As we start to talk, he tells us very kindly that we can take us much time as we want.

      He says that it was an unusual experience he had as a child that lead him to his calling. It was predestined for him, which is why he can talk of a calling or a vocation. I can just imagine him as a small child, listening to a musician as he played a Morin Khuur. In the vastness and the loneliness of the desert, the sounds of the instrument must have seemed to him to have been a gift sent from heaven.

      Baigaljav trained as an instrument maker in a company run by the socialist state, the only organisation in Mongolia where horse head fiddles were made. In 1989, after the peaceful revolution, he had the chance to set up his own company, Egshiglen Magnai - Musical Instrumental Co. Ltd. It took him two years to make all the preparations but then the founding of the company proceeded as planned, with the active support of his wife. To start with, they made instruments to order for one dealer. Nine years down the line, business is going very well, well enough indeed to open his own shop in Ulaanbaatar. He is now 52 and has a staff of 40 employees.

      Our conversation is punctuated by telephone calls and questions from his workers. Baigaljav wants to remain true to the philosophy of his company and to involve himself in resolving all problems. He checks the quality of the wood used for making the fiddles himself. He travels to the richly forested areas in the north of the country to make the selection in person. The wood is then stored in his yard for three years before it is used. He even sources the tree resin that is needed to play the fiddles from there. The strings of the instrument are lightly coated with the resin in order to give a fuller tone as a result of the increased friction when the bow is drawn across them.

      In 2002, the President of Mongolia passed a resolution stating that each Mongolian family must own a horse head fiddle. Baigaljav now had to develop uniform specifications for the manufacturing of the horse head fiddles. When doing this, he focussed on the musical training rather than on trying to devise manufacturing shortcuts or on mass production. The richness of the craftsmanship, culture and music should be communicated and instilled into the consciousness of the people, through building and learning to play the Morin Khuur. A country of such diverse extremes like Mongolia, needs values that bring people and society together, today and into the future. The proof that his ideas are realistic and can be put into practice successfully is shown in the example of the street children of Ulaanbaatar, who are given the opportunity to learn the Morin Khuur as part of a state-funded project.

      Baigaljav’s wife serves us with milk tea. We don’t begrudge Baigaljav the opportunity to have a welcome break in his story-telling. Our conversation still has some way to go. He leans back in his leather armchair and drinks his tea in small sips. Then he produces an ancient instrument from his collection, probably the oldest example of its type.

      In the early days, the sounding chamber was made of stretched goat leather or leather from young camels. However in the 1960s, following the advice of a Russian musicologist, this technique was changed in favour of using wood to cover the sound box. Using animal skin as the covering had qualitative disadvantages that could impact on the resulting music. For the same reason, polyester is now used to make the strings, rather than horse hair. Already in the past, there were fiddles that lacked the main characteristic, the carved horse’s head. Today, with the exception of a few minor differences, the instruments are all the same size. In the east of Mongolia, they played on very large instruments and the musicians from this region were and still are considered to be the best in the country. In the west, a smaller version of the instrument was widely in use, that was more reminiscent of a basting ladle.

      The Morin Khuur has its roots in a stringed instrument that dates from the era of the Hun and which is known today as the Tovshuur. It is an instrument that is plucked rather than bowed and is shaped like a ladle. The embellishment of the neck of the instrument doesn’t represent a horses head but that of a swan,

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