Mamer

Mamer is a Kazakh singer, songwriter and dombra player from Xinjiang in northwestern China, born in Qitai County, where he grew up with folk songs and the dombra. He combines traditional Kazakh music with Western folk, and is best known for Eagle, his 2009 album for Real World Records. Mamer first played guitar in rock bands in Urumqi before moving to Beijing in the early 2000s, where he formed IZ, a group that played new arrangements of traditional Kazakh songs. On Eagle he used open-tuned guitar to echo the sound of the dombra.