Batzorig Vaanchig & The Kiffness – In Praise of Genghis Khan (The Kiffness Remix)
2021
123K Likes
Best comments
1.“I made my dog listen to this song. Now he's a horse.”
More comments
- 2.“I made my cat listen to this. Now he's a khat.”
- 3.“I made my mom listen to this. Now she's Mongolian.”
The story
Batzorig Vaanchig grew up herding livestock in Mongolia's Bayankhongor province. His mother taught him the morin khuur, the horsehead fiddle, and he taught himself khoomei, Mongolian throat singing. In 2008 he founded the folk band Khusugtun. Then a video his wife shot of him singing Chinggis Khaanii Magtaal (In Praise of Genghis Khan) spread across YouTube, and his own upload alone has passed 39 million views. It got him invited onto big stages around the world.
It also made him a meme. Batzorig has said he worried at first that people were making fun of him, then decided it was all love and thanked the meme makers for pointing the world at Mongolian music.
Enter The Kiffness, Cape Town musician David Scott, who built a career turning viral clips into full songs. His big break came in late 2020 with a remix of Turkish musician Bilal Göregen's Ievan Polkka, a clip that had gone viral after someone added a bobbing vibe cat. In April 2021 he gave Batzorig the same treatment, building a new track around the original performance, and split the video's ad money equally with him. A horsehead fiddle, a Mongol emperor and a Cape Town beatmaker. Sometimes the internet works.
