Tatarin i Evrei

It's a gloomy time of the year, so we need something cheerful to brighten the day. Here are the molodtsy (good boys) of boy band Kazan Egetläre, singing about the very special friendship between Tatars and Jews - featuring klezmer band Simha.
One of my future projects is to dig up all possible cultural and historical connections between minority peoples in Eurasia, and explore the interaction, positive and negative, between them. Research focuses often on the relation between majority and minority, and other dynamics are forgotten. There are certainly many Russian jokes about Tatars and Jews being rivals (both are stereotypically depicted as shrewd businessmen preying on simple but honest Russians), as in the joke: "When the Tatar was born, the Jew wept".
Cheers to Kazan Egetlere for celebrating, instead of hating!

Camel polo!

Winter is coming closer. Mongolia has very fierce winters, but they have fun games for the winter to warm you (and your camels) up ...

We have previously covered the sport Ulak tartysh, or "goat grabbing", which is the original form of polo. There is a newer Mongolian variation of polo - Camel polo, in Mongolian Тэмээн поло or Тэмээн бeмбeг (camel-ball). Basically it's polo on camels. The Mongolian Camel Polo Association developed this game in the early 2000's, not least with the aim to help protect the two-humped Bactrian camel, which is becoming very rare. Today only 1,4 million of the world's about 20 million camels are two-humped. The wild Bactrian camel is officially classified as critically endangered - there are only less than a thousand of them. The rest are domesticated, and are used for transportation, wool, milk and meat. And now, also polo!

Flickr user mongolbob are, as far as I can tell, a husband and wife who are English teachers far out in Western Mongolia. Their photos are really fascinating, and they have a few pictures of camel polo.


Camel polo team, originally uploaded by mongolbob


Champion camel herder, originally uploaded by mongolbob


What a handsome pair!, originally uploaded by mongolbob

Also check out SamboJambo's set of photos from a Camel polo game in Dalanzadgad - there are some very nice photos there.
The Siam polo news actually reported about that very game in Dalanzadgad (a bit below the middle of this page):

"The temperature was -18*C, and there was blowing snow and sand as the tournament opened. Over two days, 32 games (64 chukkas) were played on two adjoining sand fields for a spectacular show of Camel Polo. [...] You whip the camel to go very fast and call out the word "Chuu." There are 4 people on a team, and there are no fouls -- anything goes."


This photo is from e-mongol.com, who organise individual tailored trips to Mongolia. I'm sure they can arrange special Camel polo winter trips!

Finally, a photo from the Mongol News Group:, taken by T. Chimgee:

Chuuu!

Mehmet Kurtuluş

The eternal German Krimi-series Tatort has finally broken a barrier: Turkish-German actor Mehmet Kurtuluş plays Cenk Batu, police detective in undercover operations in Hamburg. The first episode is broadcast tonight at 20:15 on NDR. And here's an article at Stern.de: Der erste Türke als Tatort-Kommissar (sensitive readers be warned: the journalists at Stern are not ashamed to use provocative language and make a big deal of the "first token Turk" at Tatort. Spiegel, too, deems it somehow necessary to point out that this is "the end of the döner-cliché". Well, Kurtuluş still plays an integrated Turk going undercover as an unintegrated criminal in order to infiltrate a Turkish "clan", so I don't see how the producers have tried to avoid the clichés...)

Cenk wins the trust of Deniz, nephew of an ambitious greengrocer/clan leader (played by Burak Yigit).
I found these photos on Spiegel.de. ARD has a nice gallery, too.

Cenk meets a seductive estate agent, played by Nursel Köse.
By the way: "Kurtuluş" means liberation.

Kazakhs vs. Turkmens!

Faceoff scene from the Kazakh movie Kek (Vengeance, 2006). The Kazakh tribe Aday and the Turkmen tribe Yomut are locked in a vicious circle of blood revenge. There's a love story, too, if you look closely...
Some more clips with spoilers: A summary of key scenes, and a dramatic dombra moment. The film takes up some important motifs in the Kazakh storytelling tradition: the Turkic legend about the mankurt, and the importance of the dombra for (especially masculine) identity, memory and tradition.
Pity about the Russian dub, though...

Communication

Communication, originally uploaded by floridapfe.

As seen on our previous miniseries "Georgians with pets" (#1 & #2), there's nothing better than handsome men who also take good care of little animals. This photo was taken at the Everland zoo in South Korea, and the little furry creature is a fennec fox.

KINO

1980's... back in the USSR. (All photos from Last.fm)





The guy with the eyebrows on the far right is Yuri Kasparian, currently guitarist in the band U-Piter (Ю-Питер).




We need more Viktor Tsoi. But let's give the other guys in the band a chance, too...



Random Kino facts:
- they started as Garin i giperboloidy in 1981 (named after a 1920's science fiction novel)
- all songs were written by Tsoi, including "Mother Anarchy"
- the band was so popular that after Tsoi's death in 1990, the words “Цой жив!” ("Tsoi is alive!") and “КИНО” spread as graffitti throughout the crumbling Soviet Union
- they were inspired by The Smiths, The Clash, Depeche Mode, Joy Division, Duran Duran, and Vladimir Vysotsky (what, you can see that yourself?!)

Here's an interview with journalist Artem Troitsky about the underground rock scene in the last decades before the fall of the Soviet Union, and what went wrong in the 1990's (in German).
I also found a nice blog about Soviet and post-Soviet underground rock and punk bands: Soveticus. Here's an interview with the guy who keeps the blog. He plays in a punk band himself, tells about anti-fa activism in Russia (almost never mentioned in Western media), and even mentions Swedish "proggare"!

Aziz, 19 years old: The future of Germany

The future of Germany
Originally uploaded by dis-clay-muh

The German Ministry for Education and Research is promoting the new BAföG ("Federal Training Assistance Act", i.e. student loan system). One of their ads features Aziz, 19 years old, who states: "The future of Germany needs perspectives: Mine."

Tinet goes: YES!!!!

Indulgent photographer: Ilan Katin.

P.S. Aziz means "sweet" "dear, beloved". Aww.