Live From Mongolia by Patricia Sexton

Author:Patricia Sexton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Beaufort Books
Published: 2013-12-07T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 16

As Bold as Breasts

The Mongolian government has decided to enact financial reform in order to reduce budget expenditures. The finance minister tells us that structural changes will need to be undertaken. A special working group has begun to examine the manner in which these reforms can be initiated.

—Lead story, MM Today broadcast

“I am Bold, bold like breasts.”

Back in Ulaanbaatar, Nara made good on her promise to introduce Tobie and me to her husband, Bold, the manager of one of Mongolia’s hottest hip-hop stars, as well as his brother, Quiza, the hip-hop star himself.

“Breasts?” I repeated, confused. With brooding black eyes in a chiseled face with high cheekbones and a square jaw, Boldoo, nicknamed “Bold,” seemed too handsome to have a sense of humor.

“Breasts?” he repeated back to me, an embarrassed shade of pink setting first into his jaw and then climbing into the arched peaks of those cheekbones. “Ha! No!” he quickly retracted. “I am Bold, as bold as brass! Not breasts!” Laughing self-consciously at his misfired joke, he tripped over his words as he explained, apologizing for the mistake. Bold had a good-natured laugh, the easy kind that you find yourself joining. For the first time since I’d met him, Tobie let out an infectious belly laugh of his own.

Brothers in their mid-twenties, Quiza and Bold had a passion for hiphop, and American hip-hop in particular. A decade earlier, they’d both been fans of the Wu Tang Clan, Cypress Hill, and Dr. Dre, and Quiza liked to emulate the various groups’ styles and moves. On a whim as a teenager, he’d recorded a single song to submit to Mongolia’s FM 102.5, a commercial radio station in the capital. The song was an instant hit, and the station played it often. Armed with nods of approval from the general public and the professional DJs, Quiza had earned himself a chance to make it big.

Instead, he went ahead with his family’s plan to send him to the Czech Republic to go to school. At the time he was only sixteen years old and the youngest of eight children; his mother had died long ago. On a government clerk’s salary, his father had supported the family, but money had been tight and the family’s hopes for Quiza had been high. In Prague, he studied agricultural business. Like anyone who’s hanging on to an improbable dream, Quiza snubbed his passion and stuck to what he was supposed to be doing, like his homework.

Until he recorded another song.

With the embers of passion stoked all over again, Quiza began toying with the idea of setting up a band. Through the Internet grapevine, he found a fellow Mongolian musician living in the UK and together they formed a group called the Crew. Quiza quit school and moved to London. Facing the cresting wave of his passion, he left in his wake all those expectations that had been set out for him. Shortly thereafter, Quiza’s brother, Bold, joined him in London. Together, the brothers worked in restaurants to save enough money to make the music they so loved.

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