By Zach Collier
Deep in the heart of Mongolia lies Ulaanbaatar – an almost 400-year-old city with a deeply spiritual past. Originally founded as a nomadic Buddhist monastic center in 1639, it found its permanent location by 1778 and became the capital of Mongolia by 1924. Despite being a bustling metropolis that’s home to nearly half of Mongolia’s population, echoes of that early spiritual heritage are still felt today in its architecture, in its people, and particularly in its music.
Margad Ganzorig is a Mongolian pop musician and resident of Ulaanbaatar who writes and performs under the name Magnet Brain. She grew up with that traditional spiritual influence in her home and in her earliest musical experiences.
I got to chat with Margad for about an hour on a recent Sunday morning. For someone who grew up and spent most of her life in Mongolia, her American accent is nearly flawless. Some have said that the Pacific Northwest region in the United States has the most neutral accent in the English language, and she easily sounds like she could be from Portland or Seattle.
‘As a singer, you get good at imitating,’ she laughs as we get to know each other and show each other our dogs over Zoom. The only giveaway that she’s not a native speaker is her lack of vocabulary.
‘I only know enough words to communicate, but not enough to express myself the way I would like to.’ Her fluent sister is present to help translate when vocabulary fails. When that happens, it’s fascinating to watch Margad completely relax and come to life. You can tell she’s passionate, articulate, and full of big ideas. In English she comes across as a cool, quiet indie girl. But when speaking excitedly to her sister in Mongolian, she’s a force to be reckoned with.
She tells me that in her youth she studied the Mongolian traditional music Urtiin Duu, otherwise known as Mongolian long song. Hallmarks of the form are lengthy melodies and complex ornamentation, with each syllable of text extended for a long duration. Some four-minute songs only consist of ten words or so, and some lengthier songs can last as long as 30 minutes.
Learning long song at a young age helped Margad prepare for her professional pop career as Magnet Brain – both functionally and spiritually. Functionally, singing long song helped her to learn proper breath support, and it also helped her to get acquainted with the power of her voice. The closest western musical analog to long song is intense opera – so from her early days she was trained to sing in a very professional and formal way.
Spiritually, long song helped train her mind. ‘Every time I sing a long song, I get goosebumps and feel like I’m alive again,’ she says. ‘I get energized. It’s like a very specific form of meditation that requires a lot of patience and requires belief in yourself.’ Every time Margad sings a long song or hears one, it evokes a tranquil vision of nature inside of her. ‘Long songs help to connect me with the world.’
This connection and mental focus has given her grit, drive, and determination. In 2018, she qualified as one of 16 finalists of the quarter finals for The Voice in Mongolia. This was a formative experience for her, and gave her both the confidence and the fanbase she needed to move forward with a pop career.
‘Before the show, I was very locked or trapped in my thoughts,’ she explains. ‘I was an introvert. Shy. But one experience forced me to come alive – to come out of my shell.’
The day before a major performance on the show, she came down with a sore throat. ‘This is the end,’ she remembers thinking. ‘I’m screwed.’
It was then and there that she was forced to accept fate. She could either quit the show and not try, or she could go out and leave everything on the stage with no regrets. ‘It was like: brain empty, I’m just going to exist. I’m good. Whatever happens happens. Let’s go. Let’s do this,’ she says. She went out and put on one of the strongest performances of her career.
Margad spends a lot of time quieting her thoughts and connecting through her heart. With quieter thoughts, she explains, she can connect deeply with the people and the world around her and ensure that she’s only attracting good things for her and her associates
After that defining moment, she became Magnet Brain. The name has reference to the law of attraction: the idea that what you think about ultimately manifests in your life. An eastern metaphysical concept, it teaches that the mental energy you expend and send out into the world ultimately creates patterns that return to you.
She believes that mediation and mental focus are crucial. Whether it’s 3 minutes or 4 minutes here and there throughout the day, she focuses and meditates. Intentionality is very important to Margad. ‘You can focus and meditate in the taxi, when you’re eating lunch, when you’re talking to people,’ she explains, emphasizing the last point. ‘When you talk to people, when you really focus on them and what they’re truly saying, it’s like you’re diving into their life. It’s like you’re walking with them, like you’re living a bit of their life. If you really focus on others, it can be a really deep focus on that one person and you can appreciate the whole person. Having no thoughts is a big part of meditation. You shouldn’t talk to people with your mind. You should talk to people with your heart. You should talk to yourself with your heart.’
Singing is a living meditative experience for Margad. ‘It requires all of you and putting your whole self into the performance,’ she says. ‘Your whole focus is on that one thing. If you sing with your heart, you can walk the life of everyone in the room and they can feel that too.’
Discussion of this philosophy can seem very tranquil, very passive, and for readers unacquainted with Magnet Brain it may lead them to think that Magnet Brain’s music is slow, sleepy – boring even. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Take one listen to ‘Soul Mantra’ and you’ll understand.
It’s a dancy, brooding pop anthem that simmers with determination and swagger. ‘If I say mine, it’s already mine,’ Margad sings fiercely.
This isn’t the Margad that loves to read quietly on the sofa with her dogs or go for quiet walks. This is Magnet Brain – pop diva and ruler of her destiny. She’s in control. She can have the world. You can feel it when she sings, and she sings so powerfully that you believe it to be true for yourself as well.
Margad explains, ‘The song is important to me. The whole thing is my actual mantra and what I want. Initially I wrote the song only for myself.’ The melody of the chorus is something she’d sing to psych herself up for a performance backstage. As she told the story of the first few times singing it to herself, she broke into song half way through to demonstrate. Her voice, just over Zoom, almost knocked me off my feet. In a split second, she slipped into some of the most phenomenal vocals I’ve ever heard. Then she resumed conversation like nothing had happened.
‘So I would sing this to myself,’ she laughs. ‘I didn’t expect it to blow up. It was a personal hype anthem, but now it makes others feel the same way. Now it feels like my entire soul to me. From the very beginning the song felt like my whole parts.’
After participating in The Voice, Margad’s newfound confidence moved her from just performing to becoming a music producer, a music video director, and an editor. She comes up with the concepts for all of her music videos, and edits them all herself in CapCut. With every song she writes, she can see a strong image of a central character. Videos are a crucial element of her self expression and serve as powerful companion pieces to the music she writes.
‘They’re not named characters, but embodiments of my feelings,’ she says. ‘They’re fiction based on little pieces of conversations and words from other people.’ These characters may be fantasy, but boy are they memorable. Magnet Brain has an eye for the powerful, the inspiring, and the mystical.
Listeners and viewers are taking notice. To date, Magnet Brain has over 60,000 YouTube subscribers and counting. ‘Soul Mantra’ alone has generated 13 million YouTube views in only 8 months. There’s no doubt that continued effort, focus, and energy will attract success to Magnet Brain.
Regardless of where music takes her, Margad will continue to stay mindful and grounded. When she was a kid, her grandpa taught her a long song called Khuurkhun Khaliun, and she still sings it to this day. ‘I have a very, very valuable and precious memory connected to that song,’ she says. Margad sings it now and then to stay connected to what truly matters.