Researching Inner Mongolia’s Musical Traditions: Collaboration, Repatriation, Publishing, Performance
Carole Pegg (Mongolia & Inner Asia Studies Unit, University of Cambridge)
Dr Carole Pegg has initiated a 5-year project to repatriate and make accessible to local, regional and global researchers the audio-visual field materials she recorded in Inner Mongolia and Mongolia from 1987-1998. This seminar focusses on Inner Mongolia, in which she undertook her first Mongolian fieldwork in 1987, and is presented by the collaborative team working on this first stage of the project. MIASU is pleased to welcome Professor Bötölt, Director of the Centre for Research and Digital Application of Oral-Musical Heritage at the Inner Mongolia Normal University, Huhhot; Horchin performer of üliger tales Jingang; and Dr. Xiaoshi Wei, Director of the China Database for Traditional Music, who have travelled from Inner Mongolia and China respectively. The contributions of each participant are as follows:
Dr Carole Pegg is a social anthropologist specializing in music and performance among nomadic Inner Asian peoples. She is a Senior Research Scholar affiliated to MIASU in which she was based during this post-doctoral research. She is the author of Mongolian Music, Dance & Oral Narrative: Performing Diverse Identities (Washington University Press, 2001) and Drones, Tones & Timbres: Sounding Place among Nomads of the Inner Asian Mountain-Steppes (Illinois University Press, 2024). Carole begins the seminar by contextualizing and illustrating her 1987 audio-visual recordings. From Xilingol region, she includes chogur-un daguu (pronounced chooryn duu), a genre in which a long-song (urtu-iin daguu, pr. urtyn duu) is performed above a timbral drone provided by one or more vocalists. From Ordos region, she plays super 8 film extracts of rituals performed to Chinggis [Genghis] Khan at private altars, and an extract from a male herder’s performance of a narrative tale accompanied by the 4-stringed fiddle (qugur-un üliger pr. huurun ülger).
Professor Bötölt, who has been recording the musical traditions of Inner Mongolia for 30 years, specializes in Inner Mongolian epics and tales. He has established a research unit and audio-visual archive in the Normal University in Huhhot. Professor Bötölt will introduce the scope of his research and explain how Carole Pegg’s recordings fit into the current scholarly landscape of Inner Mongolia. His presentation will be assisted by Horchin Mongolian performer Jingang, who performs a range of traditional Mongolian vocal genres including tales of the many-headed monster Mangus (mangsin ülger), improvised verses (holboo), tales accompanied by the fiddle chooryn ülger and tales with song (ülgert duu). Jingang accompanies himself on 2- and 4-stringed Mongolian fiddles.
Dr Xiaoshi Wei, a former Newton International Fellow at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, is a sound archivist and researcher who has a PhD in Ethnomusicology and BA from the University of Electronic Science and Technology, China. He will describe the institutions in Inner Mongolia, China and the UK that will make available Carole Pegg’s original and digitized audio-visual recordings that, together with the physical products produced, will reach a range of researchers and audiences.
This seminar and broader project will contribute to contemporary anthropological and ethnomusicological debates on the value of anthropological fieldwork and accessibility of its findings, the ethical merits of repatriation, and the power relations involved in the ownership and development of Intangible Cultural Heritage.
N.B. This seminar will be rescheduled to Michaelmas term 2025