23 May 2007

Greetings, friends!

We are pleased to be writing you from Colrain, MA as we continue our tour of the United States. When last we wrote we were in the fine state of Ohio, and having made a nice impression there in Columbus at Little Brother's with the help of Paul Volker and the hospitality of aunts, uncles, and cousins of Sean including Judi, Bob, Chris, Don, Patty and Rick. Thank you to the students and faculty of Worthington High School for the warm welcome.

We went on down to Lima, Ohio and visited uncle Mark and Aunt Linda's high school, Perry. The kids at Perry were quite enthusiastic and choir master Bob had great sound "teching" going on. Sean's grandma was there, cousin Lee and little Lou, one of Sean's youngest cousins. It was a real special moment to think about: Here's this lady, who was born not long after WWI, and her grandson just drops in with Siberians one day for Kewpie burgers and to show the Perry kids a good Tuvan time. These kinds of moments really make our work fun and special.

From Columbus, we hit the road on a fine and warm morning and made a good run of it right up into another favorite spot, Vermont. We entered the state via North Bennington, which lies on the New York border in the Green Mountains. There we were greeted by our old friend Matthew Perry at the Vermont Arts Exchange. We'd played there last year, which now seems like a fair while ago, and had a fine time with Matthew and company. We were pleased that continued in this visit. We stayed with Richard and Julie at Miles to Go horse farm. They are very good folks, putting us up there at the farm where we wake up to horses and roosters. We had two concerts at the VAE, including one where we had a lot of kids. We busted out the igil story, and we witnessed an extremely neat piece of sound equipment, which we are still too in awe of to describe further. There was also at the end a fine and intense session of Go-Karting with Matthew and the lads; no quarter was asked nor given. On our last day we also stopped by the Pine Crest School, where Richard and Julia's kids go. We had a fine time in their gym talking about and listening to the music.

Onward from there, we crossed the state to Woodstock, where we again met former and fondly remembered hosts from our inaugural trip through the Open World Program, Sabrina Brown and Fred Haas. Not only did we visit them, but also our dear Sara Widness of the Fan House, who makes lamb soup in the morning. We also went to the Woodstock high school and were hosted around by Sharon Corr. The kids from the school came to the assembly on a volunteer basis, but there was a fair passel of them. At night, we had a concert at the Town Hall, and were honored with the presence of Dr. Ted Levin, who has been an instrumental figure in the history of Tuvan-American musical relations and to whom we all owe a great debt. Back when the musicians of Huun-Huur-Tu were Alash's age, Ted was doing with them what Sean is doing with Alash now. After the concert, we hosted a joint Q & A session with Sean, Dr. Ted and Alash. Ted and Valentina Suzukei of the University of Tuva wrote a fine book on Tuvan music, Where Mountains and Rivers Sing. And Valentina, a mentor, teacher and scholar, has just released a massive work on Tuvan music. The abstract of the book, in an English translation by Ted and Sean, is posted on Tuva Online. We certainly owe a lot to Ted, Valentina, Huun-Huur-Tu, Kongar-ool Ondar, and lots of people who were the first ambassadors and enthusiasts of Tuva and its fine culture and music.

After Woodstock, we traveled into the Southeastern part of Vermont to Springfield, where we went first to Park Street School. The kids were very energetic and we all sang Aa-Shuu-Dekei-oo at the end, and they were very, very enthusiastic applauders. Ditto for Springfield High School the next day, where we were shown the greatest hospitality by band teacher, Dr. Heintzelmann and Russian teacher Ms. Ballou. But the greatest help came from our friends Cynthia Hughes and John Crockett. Cynthia is a librarian at the elementary school and helped us to come there and share the music with the kids. She and her friends and family shared their kindness and their home with us, along with neighbor Kathy P. Sean also got a chance to speak Irish for the first time in a hundred years with a Celtic languages professor. Good Craic! We had concerts in Springfield and Bellows Falls, and they went over well, especially with the crafty sound-operations of Dexter at the Immanuel Church in Bellows Falls. Thanks also to Pastor Crane there.

From there we attempted to leave Vermont, but instead found ourselves so enthralled by its beauty that we were on a mystic quest to Lake Champlain before we knew it. Actually, we went up there to play in the Young Tradition festival, where we got to see some very promising young American performers and got to share the music with a very appreciative audience, although the weather was a bit, well, cold and gray. But hey, the people were very friendly, and we made a visit to the Dobra Tea House to play for the birthday of Andrew there, and enjoyed the intimate setting and fine teas.

By this time we had very much fallen for VT, but it was indeed time to leave. We drove through a pounding rainstorm all the way down to Boston, where we met one of our three most crucial and unheralded people - Johanna K., who runs this site along with Jean B. The snaky streets of Boston were a bit of a change from VT, and you could tell the change in how long we'd been here in the U.S. when Mai-ool remarked on seeing Fenway Stadium: "Isn't that where Manny Ramirez plays?" Alash is indeed catching on to baseball. We played a small concert at the Cambridge YMCA and set down some seeds for our return to Boston at the end of June. We also had a day long of rassling with rental cars which I will not tell you about here. However, at one point Sean may have been heard to say "there's a whole lotta swear words I'm sayin' right now mister, all of em on the inside." But we got things worked out, though we must say that Budget rental car company does not receive high ratings in our opinion. Take that, Budget, you've been web-skewered!

Well, we've gone back out west from Boston and after stopping by to see our friends in North Bennington and a visit to the Graded School there (thanks to Principal Joy) we are now currently settled in at the Round House of Culture in Colrain with our friend Bekki. This place is beyond description, or rather it would take another page to describe and we'll save that for later. We're going to see some more schools tomorrow, and they'll see us, and then we'll have a concert at the community college in the evening. After that, we are on to Nashville on a secret mission before returning to OH and Knoxville, TN.

The current count of miles driven is now some where between seven and eight thousand. That puts us at total miles from Tuva in the vicinity of fifteen to seventeen thousand so far. But we are all in high spirits and are dedicated to the music. We enjoy bringing this music to folks who might not otherwise hear it, especially little kids. It's energizing getting to watch their faces etc. and sometimes coming back the next day and hearing them trying it out in the hallway. So that keeps us going. Though when you are from a place as nice as Tuva, you've got to imagine that you would miss it and your family something fierce, so we just remain dedicated to knowing that we're out here trying to do good work for people both at home and abroad.

That being the case, thanks to everyone who is reading this and has ever come to a concert or bought an album. We're glad you like the music, see you next time.

ALASH