Best of What's Next: Mamer

Photos by Mu Quian

Hometown: Xinjiang Province, China
Album: Eagle
For Fans Of: IZ, Nickel Creek, Abigail Washburn & the Sparrow Quartet

When singer/songwriter Mamer plucks the strings of the eons-old, long-necked lute known as the dombra, the world stirs. With his deep, baritone voice, he tells stories of a distant land where the delicate balance of man and nature is upheld and the footsteps of nomadic shepherds can still be heard. And his debut solo album Eagle (released last year on Peter Gabriel’s Real World Records) leaves impressions strong enough to transport to you the Chinese grasslands he grew up in—even if you don’t understand Kazakh, the language in which he sings.

“I believe that wherever I am, as long as I can adjust myself, I am able to make music,” Mamer recently told Paste through a translator. It was his upbringing in the cultural melting pot of Xinjiang Province that has most shaped his unconventional style, which in turn has influenced the Chinese music scene for years; until recently, Mamer led the band IZ, often credited with sparking China’s alt-country movement. With his dombra in hand (and a brief stint in art school and a ’90s love affair with the electric guitar under his belt) Mamer has long breathed new life into folk songs, making them digestible for Western audiences while capturing the rich essence of his homeland. “Our music is in band form,” he says, “and more suitable for contemporary ears.”

On Eagle, his first album without IZ, Mamer gets help from a few modern influences in updating the ancient music of his homeland, including a duet with Grammy-winning banjo player Béla Fleck and a Hector Zazou Remix of “Mountain Wind,” a somber, rhythmic song about returning home to nature. While many of the tracks bleed into each other, “Kargashai” is a pleasant surprise, introducing instruments like the jaw harp and electric guitar until Mamer’s bottomless voice sings in Kazakh: “Let’s get to know each other, darling, and have tea with milk and sugar to taste the sweet things of life.”

Currently on in the U.K, Mamer’s personal tastes are quite different from the kind of art he makes: King Crimson, John Zorn and Plastic People of the Universe are just some of the musicians who inspire him spiritually, he says. As for the modern artists his own music has influenced, he knows it’s been a mixed bag: “Some groups got disbanded because the members learned dombra from me and didn’t want to continue with electric guitar and their rock music,” he says. “You can say I contributed to hybridization of music in China.”