Chasing the Singers: Transition of the Mongolian Long-Song (Urtiin-Duu) in Post-Socialist Mongolia

December 10th, 2009, 5pm Room 305, Building No. 5 NUM

Sunmin Yoon

The name “long-song” is derived not from the length of the song, but by an elongating of vowels in the lyrics, resulting in a variety of musical ornamentations. As everyday music, it accompanied pastoral Mongolians as they herded and traveled along the lonesome roads. During the socialist regime however, this genre was diminished through selective governmental promotion. When the socialist government ultimately collapsed in 1990, this genre became newly “imagined” and accepted as a “new national symbol” for the country to utilize in seeking a new national, collective identity. Subsequently, numerous individual musicians in Ulaanbaatar and the countryside have responded in various ways to this genre. This presentation will illustrate the music and stories of long-song singers of various backgrounds and lives, providing a rare case study of these changes.

Sunmin Yoon is a Ph.D. Candidate in Ethnomusicology at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is in Mongolia from 2009-2010 on an Anne Wylie dissertation Fellowship to conduct interviews and collect data from the countryside for her dissertation research, which is the topic of this seminar. She is a performing artist as well as a researcher and instructor at her university.