The Denver Zoo commissioned a new 4D Theatre building to bring new opportunities for supplemental sales as well as attract new audiences. The theater is in the Mongolian section of the Zoo, and, since movies are stories, the building is themed with Mongolian folk stories. The murals on the building are of the Mongolian folk stories, “Four Harmonious Animals,” and “The Tale of Cuckoo Namjil.” The theatre architecture itself is based on the architecture of a Mongolian monastery. Mongolian artist Tsogo Mijid was commissioned to design and paint traditional Mongolian design patterns and large scale murals around the theatre building.

Mongolian folk music plays throughout the attraction, with loudspeakers hidden in the landscaping beds. The music volume adjusts itself based on the volume of the crowd in the queue for the theater. This was also the first project that I implemented a new parkwide digital audio signal processing standard, which enables parkwide paging over the network in the event of an evacuation or other emergency.

Perhaps the most exotic bowed string instrument in the world is the Mongolian horsehead fiddle, with the headpiece made in a shape of a horse’s head, and an unusually deep and rich sound that sounds almost like a horse neighing. For many years, the nomadic Mongolian people did not have a written language. Stories were passed down through generations of oral storytelling. Keeping stories alive is important to Mongolians. Stories are used to build relationships, preserve culture and as verbal art. One of the most famous legends of the origin of the horsehead fiddle is “The Tale of Cuckoo Namjil.” The story goes like this:

Once upon a time, a horse herder Namjil from the eastern outskirts of Mongolia was drafted into an army and began to serve on the westernmost border of Mongolia. He sang so beautiful that people called him Namjil the Cuckoo. During the years of military service, he fell in love with the daughter of a local prince. When the period of military service ended, Namjil’s beloved gave him a magic winged horse, which made it possible for him to travel to be with her. Namjil secretly flew to his beloved on his winged horse almost every night. But one night, a jealous woman from a rich family in his neighborhood cut off the wings of his horse after he fell sleep. When Namjil woke up, his magic horse was dead. In his grief, he made a fiddle from his horse’s skin and tail, and used it to play poignant songs about his horse and his beloved.

I devised a solution for the actual horsehead fiddle from Mongolia, that sits on the wall of the building, to magically play traditional “long songs” as guests pass by the building to take their seats in the theater. The horsehead fiddle music complements the traditional folk music along the pathway, and draws guests’ attention to the mural of the “Tale of Cuckoo Namjil” beside it.

Denver Zoo - 4D Theater

Matt Eckstein sound design