This book celebrates the power of music, dance, and oral narrative to create identities by imaginatively connecting performers and audiences with ethnic and political groupings, global and sacred landscapes, histories and heroes, spirits and gods.Three distinct cultural eras of Mongolian society are represented. Many Mongolsare now performing publicly the diverse traditions of Old Mongolia that they practised in private following the communist revolution of 1921; some are perpetuating the Soviet transformations of those traditions introduced prior to 1990; and yet others are dipping their curly-toed boots into new performance arts as they revel in musical encounters on the global stage. By highlighting the sheer variety ofrepertories, this book illustrates the rich diversity of Mongolia's peoples andperformance arts.An accompanying compact disc contains musical examples linked to the text.Carole Pegg is ethnomusicology editor for the New Grove Dictionary of Musicand Musicians and associate lecturer in social anthropology at the University of Cambridge, England. As an ethno-musicologist and musician she has been working with nomadic groups in remote areas of Mongolia and Inner Mongolia, China, and with urban Mongols in both countries since 1987. She has also toured with Mongol musicians in England and Hong Kong.
Delightful rhymes and charming hand-stitched art celebrate the many ways we sleep across the world. Perfect for a baby shower gift and for fans of This Is How We Do It.
From the descendants of the Huns and the mighty warrior, Chinggis Khan (or, as he is known to Westerners, Genghis Khan), and the land of the steppes and the Gobi Desert, come tales of passion, strife, magic, and laughter. This collection of traditional Mongolian folktales, the only one of its kind currently available in English, features more than 60 fascinating stories, ranging from The Legend of the Magic Bone and Seven Brown Mice to The Dreaming Boy and A Fiery Red Khan. The tales are organized in chapters that cover legends, myths, animal tales, magical tales, stories of life conditions, and humor. In addition, the authors provide an introduction to Mongolia, games, recipes, color photos, and notes on the stories. All levels.
Few other nations have undergone as profound a change in their social, political, and cultural life as Mongolia did in the twentieth century. Beginning the century as a largely rural, nomadic, and tradition-oriented society, the nation was transformed by the end of this century into a largely urban, post-industrial, and cosmopolitan one. This study seeks to understand the effects that Western-inspired modernity has had on the nature of cultural tradition in the country, focusing in particular on development of the morin khuur or "horse-head fiddle," a two-stringed bowed folk lute that features a horse’s head carved into its crown. As well as being one of the most popular instruments in the contemporary national musical culture, it has also become an icon of Mongolian national identity and a symbol of the nation’s ancient cultural heritage. In its modern form, however, the horse-head fiddle reflects the values of a modern, cosmopolitan society that put it profoundly at odds with those of the traditional society. In so doing, it also reflects the cosmopolitan nature of the nation’s contemporary national musical culture.