The Horse-head Fiddle and the Cosmopolitan Reimagination of Tradition in Mongolia

This study seeks to understand the effects that Western-inspired modernity has had on the nature of cultural tradition in Mongolia, focusing in particular on the development of the horse-head fiddle--an instrument that encapsulates the cosmopolitan nature of the nation's contemporary national musical culture.

Peter K. Marsh is Assistant Professor of Music at California State University, East Bay. He has written extensively on issues related to musical tradition and modernity in Mongolia, including "Global Hip-Hop and Youth Cultural Politics in Urban Mongolia," in Mongolian Culture and Society in the Age of Globalization, edited by Henry G. Schwarz (Bellingham: Western Washington University Press, 2006).

List of Figures. Preface. Introduction 1. Two-Stringed Fiddle Traditions in Pre-Revolutionary Mongolian Society 2. Building a National Music Culture in Mongolia 3. Soviet Modernism and Cosmopolitan Nationalism 4. N. Jantsannorow and the Reshaping of Mongolian Musical Nationalism 5. The Folk "Revival" and the Reimagination of the Horse-head Fiddle 6. The Persistence of Alternative Music Histories. List of Interviews Notes. Bibliography. Index