Of Mongolians, Moral Dilemmas and Other Inane Items

So I was up in nearby Lake Placid the other night for a special concert presented by my friend Dan Plumley, who runs the Totem Project (Just a note, that website seems to be under permanent construction, so don’t expect to be blown away) The performance was by native Mongolian musical and singing group called Uragsha, which is part of the much larger Yara Arts Group.
I’ll admit that I didn’t know quite what to expect, but this group blew me away. I’m not one to be impressed with vocal performances, but the four performers, three men and one woman, native Buryats from eastern Siberia, were extraordinary. Each of them had a vocal range and dexterity that I had never heard, in either a live or recorded performance. In the unlikely event that their North American tour takes them to your area, I would heartily recommend attending. Truly it’s a unique, traditional performance from a part of the world that doesn’t get much attention.
And on a similar, but much more troubling note, I recently received a package from my Aunt Patricia in Phoenix. Included in it was a new musical CD that my cousin, Ryan, had spent over a year producing. He’s the frontman of his group, playing acoustic guitar, backed up by two of friends playing the acoustic bass and drums. Admittedly it’s not the sort of music I usually enjoy, but I put it on to give it a whirl nonetheless.
Well, after the initial serviceable guitar work, Ryan started singing, and to my genuine horror, he was awful. His voice was pretty weak to begin with, almost apologetic and frequently out of tune, and the pedestrian lyrics were no help, but further on when he tried to sustain a note, or even worse, go up or down a third on a sustain, I had to turn to CD off, stunned.
I later played it for my mother, who, within ten minutes, said, “he really needs voice lessons, doesn’t he?” (Putting it on me, of course. My mother’s a lot craftier than I give her credit)
Being a writer, I can appreciate how much time and effort he and his friends must have put into the CD, which makes me all the more aghast. I know my Aunt’s going to call me up sometime soon, and invariably the conversation will turn to my opinion of his work. To this day, I’m still not sure what I’ll say, but for now I’m leaning toward manufacturing some big news on my end so the issue never arises. I may be the first man in the history of the world to get engaged just to avoid brutally panning a relative’s creative work.
Of course, I could just be honest but so appalling in my presentation that the message gets lost in the disarray.
“Well, I’m sure it got him a lot of [chicks], Pat, which was probably the whole point of that endeavor in the first place.”
I’m doomed.