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 Mongols are now performing publicly the diverse traditions of Old Mongolia that they practiced 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 of repertories, this book illustrates the rich diversity of Mongolia’s peoples and performance arts.

An accompanying compact disc contains musical examples linked to the text.