“We were so nervous about those gay scenes and the reaction to them”
Exclusive interview with fresh new music talent ‘Kush & Oyuka’ on their debut album and bold music video.
Well from 2005-2006 we started just casually performing together when we were studying. We started our gigs together with just the two of us playing ballads, pop, from 90s, from 70s and that was the actual start.
But not until last year did we officially establish our band so actually we say we founded our band last year in September.
-Who inspired your style of music?
Actually we started with the inspiration of Frank Sinatra, some standard jazz, more popish jazz and we are really getting drawn to the real jazz and we wanted to grab from those things as we are professional musicians but not jazz musicians. She’s a classically trained pianist and I’m a Morin Khuur player. So there is a local NGO called Giant Steppes of Jazz which organizes an annual international festival of Jazz so that really inspired us and really pushed us to do something here. So as we are professionals, we’d like to be developing all the time, not only for the pleasure do we want to do this but it’s also beneficial for us to do jazz music. We just started from the standard jazz and just wanted to learn how it feels, how it goes, so yeah, also at the same time we want to express ourselves to the audience because we really felt that Ulaanbaatar needs Jazz venues or constant jazz concerts because there’s nothing really in terms of gigs.
So in order to develop Jazz we have to play and play and play all the time so that was our aim to start our concerts. So far we’ve organized three cover concerts. We would say it was good but we at least tried and we were happy about that. It was a pretty good amount of people who came. At each concert we had at least 150 people and up to 300 people. (Did you do a lot of advertising for that or did you just use word of mouth?) Well of course management is vital for musicians and artists. So then we wanted to have more and we started with Facebook, especially in events.
Oyuka: And some posters and we used some local TV. (Do you have a Manager?)
Kush: Well to introduce ourselves, Oyuka is our pianist and is also producing and supervising our music and I am a singer and I actually do the management. So actually we divide our roles and times to various different things. It’s a lot of work but we actually enjoy it.
-Do you think that soon you want to get a manager or get some more people involved behind the scenes in the Kush-Oyuka team?
Well good question but speaking of management in Mongolian arts and culture it’s a difficult issue because traditionally we didn’t have any management system in arts. For instance we didn’t have any lesson for doing the management stuff. But from 1990 the education system was expanded and with a new system coming in but even from twenty years on we still we don’t have any perfect or experienced management. It’s still growing and we are learning ourselves. Actually for me I’ve been involved with that Jazz NGO for the last four years as an events manager so I had a little experience of how to organize our events and promotions which really helped us.
-What was it like making the music video?
Oyuka: I composed the song and then let the others listen to it and then they got the idea to do that music video and we gave them the full charge too and they just organized everything, the actors, the faces, the colour and the style and we just followed it. One thing we really value is we really want to gather young talented people together and do something new in Mongolia in the Mongolian music industry. We have other really good and talented friends and they make video, a photographer, a designer, they’re all very good at their work. So they had a general idea about the whole video.
Kush: Well two of the guys from Multiverse Movie Studio, one is the photographer and the other one is his girlfriend who’s the stylist of us and they actually had an experience in working with us when taking our photos so we asked them to do something with us in video so it was a first experience to have video shooting and we involved some other people that we needed like the editor and other assistants so we really believe that the team is good, they knew about our feeling and about our style. So we just gave them the choice to do that.
-In the video there’s some quite provocative scenes. Why did you want to put them in?
Oyuka: As I already said when the team heard the music they had the idea. All the ideas came out from the music and when they heard it they thought and they imagined those scenes. The song is all about pure love, it’s about how people should value love and how people should really fall in love and respect each other. But the Director of the video thought that we should do the exact opposite of the song because it would be really interesting. Our song is obviously professional and so we only do it professionally but it is a bit sexually orientated and in young people’s lives that’s always included but not many people will talk about it and put it into the light. The Director said ‘let’s be brave’ and if you just represent the exact meaning it would be really boring because it’s all just obvious because the song is all about love and the video would be all about love but they wanted to do something different so we wanted them to do whatever they wanted and we happily followed.
-And what’s the reaction been to the video?
Kush: It’s quite early to make an opinion about the video so far the majority of reactions are quite positive about it and quite supportive about it because it really is new seeing in a Mongolian video that there is gay scenes, there is sailors in it, because we never have sailors in Ulaanbaatar so we were to be honest so nervous about those gay scenes and the reaction to them. The reaction was good but some of them were not really. We control our Youtube channel and our Facebook page. On Facebook they can’t say that it’s bad or that it’s nasty but on Youtube there are a couple of bad comments about that.
Oyuka: There’s not many really but we’re so sensitive about them because we are all alert because we know people are going to react and say like stop you’re doing something really bad but this is an art form, this is all about art and this is music and this is how people make music videos, they want to do something interesting so that people can see something completely different. If everything is the same then there’s nothing interesting to watch. When we spoke with our director about confronting the reactions and how to deal with it he said just tell them that they’re are a lot of different forms of love in the world, all of them are different, it doesn’t just have to be between male and female. People just have to see that it’s an open culture and Mongolia is only just at the start.
-Do you feel people here are ready to see that?
Oyuka: It’s not about changing Mongolia’s perspective, we’re just here to sing and play music. For me I only concentrate on my composition. It’s my priority and I don’t have other time to think about people’s reaction or people’s perspective about other communities. I would just stay honest and that if they want to show up and bully me about my video then I would say that this is an art form and you just have to relax and you don’t have to accept the message. But we’re not intentionally trying to give a message but this is just like, as the Director said, this is the direct opposite of the song. So we’re just trying to clarify that.
-Do you think that using that kind of video will allow the song to become more popular more quickly?
Kush: Oh yes, we already had that expectation of what would happen in the future. We were quite a bit nervous but I think like we’re pretty good with the video, it’s about doing it professionally.
(Would you agree it is quite clever to use it for a marketing tool?)
Oyuka: That’s what I told Kush that this is like marketing stuff, its not necessarily about gay or lesbian people it’s just about drawing attention from people, this is good for our career because people will really remember it.
-So what is happening with the album?
Kush: Well it is not ready yet but it will be released in 1-2 months time. It’s an LP album that includes five songs all composed by Oyuka and the lyrics by both me and her.
-The Single ‘Say it Now’ has both Mongolian and some English lyrics. How do you actually choose between the languages for the choice of lyrics?
Oyuka: Actually I supervise the lyrics too and I don’t really write the whole lyrics but I gather words from Kush and myself and I always come up with music in the beginning and I have to just insert the words into the music. And in the chorus of the ‘Say it Now’ song the Mongolians words were not working and the line was just wrong so I thought I’d put some English words in the chorus section and it’s not really something that’s hard for Mongolians to understand. ‘Say it Now’, these three words are not exactly too hard to understand.
Kush: We are secretly planning to have, once we have the album, to have the other Mongolian songs made with English versions.
-Shakira said in an interview once that whilst she’s Colombian and speaks Spanish, a lot of her most popular songs are in English and when she was young her management team said that by singing songs in English she would be more successful. Do you feel that in some way?
Kush: Yeah maybe.
Oyuka: You do?
Kush: Yeah maybe I do, it really helps for instance there is a blues rock female singer who used to sing in Mongolian and English but basically more in Mongolian. She newly released her album in five different languages, in Japanese, Chinese, Russian, English and Mongolian. And it was a big marketing ploy and was a huge sensation, that’s why she was introduced into a big Chinese radio station in Beijing because she did it in Chinese as well. So why don’t we have something like that but the most valuable thing for us is the quality of the music so we are really trying to aim for that because we really rarely see in our culture at the moment so it’s like our duty to do it.
-Well I think your sound and style is more similar to Michael Buble.
Kush: Oh, really?
Oyuka: Yeah maybe, well because we play a lot of his stuff, a lot of Diana Krall and Jamie Cullum the British singer.
Kush: And we did cover concerts of their music too. But from the beginning when we started doing cover songs, she had an idea already how to compose and supervise music. For instance, our first concert name was ‘Frank Sinatra & Diana Krall’, the second one was Christmas concert and the third one was a ‘Michael Buble & Jamie Cullum’ concert.
Oyuka: Because we started work on our album we gave some idea to the people here of what is the jazz standards. What is contemporary jazz and what is more classic jazz. And we’re aware that a lot of people listen to Jazz but they don’t have enough artists who will perform in front of them and play live concerts in Ulaanbaatar because otherwise they have to fly somewhere else like Thailand or Singapore. But why can’t we do it here, we have the ability to play the instruments and try it. So that’s where the initial idea came from.
And last summer we started with the covers.
Kush: Also, firstly, our biggest project was the album but we couldn’t do the album because of the budget, we didn’t have enough money we just wanted to have some sponsorship throughout these concerts. So actually now we have.
Oyuka: So now yeah we are funded.
Kush: We made a deal with two companies in UB. But only one deal is contracted so far and one is not yet but hopefully very soon.
-Which companies are they?
Kush: One is SantAsar, which is a building that is a hotel, a restaurant and a piano and jazz lounge. The owner is willing to support us and the other company is an alcohol company which is one of the biggest local alcohol companies. We do have regular gigs in the Piano and Sports Lounge, we have a contract for six months for every Friday night and the other one is The Ivy Restaurant once every two weeks. The other one is next to Sukhbaatar Square in Broadway Restaurant. That’s on Saturday.
-Where’s your favorite place to play?
Oyuka: Piano and Sports Lounge.
Kush: Piano and Sports Lounge because we do have a whole back up band of musicians there whereas the others are only us two.
-So what’s next on the radar?
Kush: We’re going to have the CD release which will include concerts and events of the album songs in the end of the summer so after that we are planning to have cover concert number four. In October there will be an International Jazz Festival which we are really looking forward to.
Oyuka: Yeah at the Jazz Festival we will have a lot to learn. We’re gonna be able to jam together with others finally.
Kush: And maybe we might repeat our Christmas song and Christmas concert in December but we don’t know.
-You’re being played on many local TV stations but are you being played on Radio yet?
Kush: (laughs) To be honest it hasn’t yet but I’m waiting on various responses and once I have that and I will distribute throughout local radio stations. But believe it or not we played in America through an internet radio station called Jango Radio station. And it’s been player over 100 times now.
Oyuka: It’s not really that big, it’s small but we’re excited and every little success or every little achievement is so big and it hits big too.
Kush: And one new thing we did in that ‘Say it Now’ single is that we’ve started International sales through Amazon, Itunes and other online music sites.
Oyuka: We only started end of last year and here we are releasing our debut album, it’s so exciting and we got funded, this is really beyond our imaginations.
-How do you feel you will cope with getting better known and more popular? Is celebrity status something you would like to have?
Oyuka: It’s not our top priority but for the album sales it’s good, it means people will get to listen to our music more and that’s our purpose and we want to our absolute best performances into that album and if people listen to it, appreciate it and suggest to their friends then feel the music and have fun then that’s the magic, that’s everything. But getting popular and walking down the street, this is not, I would rather remain the same and just go to shops, that’s who we are. Our personalities are more introvert. But music is always our dream and we love it when people who like what they hear give us feedback, then we really appreciate it.
‘Say it Now’ is available to download from Itunes and Amazon.
0 Response to "“We were so nervous about those gay scenes and the reaction to them”"
Post a Comment