Contemporary trends in the Mongolian folksong tradition of urtyn duu

In 2009, three young singers, who had met at the conservatory and had studied a traditional folksong genre called urtyn duu (long-song), created a folk pop-group. Like the pictures provided in the liner notes, which were unusually commercialized for a traditional folk genre music, their music was unexpected and provocative for the majority of the Mongolian folk music audience. This new direction was unusual not so much because of the melding of Western instruments such as piano and synthesizer with a traditional vocal genre, but rather because of their unique acoustic ‘harmonizing’ of independent, ornamented and melismatic vocal solos, while retaining the traditional singing style and improvisation, and using mostly traditional songs.

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