Mongolian Long-Song Folk Singing

Mongolian long-song folk singing is a vocal art born of the nomadic life of the Mongols, with a long history across the Inner Mongolian steppe. Jointly nominated by China and Mongolia, it was inscribed on UNESCO's "Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity" in 2005 and is also on China's national ICH list, with the Darhan Muming'an grasslands around Baotou among its important places of transmission.

Long-song melodies are drawn-out and unhurried, the breath stretching far, with many ornaments and florid sustained passages on each line; the words often depict the steppe, mountains, horses and family affection, and singers express their personal style through deep breath control and improvised ornament, often accompanied by the horse-head fiddle.

Hailed as the "symphony of the steppe," the long song is the artistic distillation of Mongolian feeling and the Mongolian view of nature, carrying the spiritual world and historical memory of a nomadic people, and holding significant musicological and ethnological value.