Yet another amazing collection has been released by Antonovka Records, now based in Moldova. This collection features a Chinese Muslim ethnic group called the Dungan who live in the passes between Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, and surprisingly, they don’t write in Chinese, but in Cyrillic!
From Antonovka’s Bandcamp site:
“Most of the members of the ensemble Yunchi (“Happiness”) live in two Dungan villages in the Chuy region of Kyrgyzstan – Aleksandrovka and Milyanfan. Aleksandrovka is located in the Moskva district to the west of Bishkek. The village was named after the Emperor Alexander II of Russia, during whose reign the Dungans came here. The name Milyanfan means a place where rice grows in Dungan language. Milyanfan is located in the Ysyk-Ata district northeast of Bishkek, not far from the Kazakhstan border.”
