Mongolian Long-Song Folk Song

The Mongolian long-song folk song ("urtiin duu") is a vocal genre created by the northern steppe nomads in their herding life, with the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region as its chief nominating region. In 2005 China and Mongolia jointly nominated it onto UNESCO's third proclamation of "Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity," today's Representative List — the first time China had co-nominated an ICH item with another country — and in 2006 it also entered the first national ICH list.

The long song is slow and free in rhythm, its breath stretching far, each phrase-end often graced with the trembling "nogora" ornament, its melody rising and falling like the steppe horizon; the words praise nature, homeland and the fine horse, sung while herding, at weddings, at Nadam and among friends, hailed as a "symphonic poem of the grassland."

The long song carries the Mongolian people's deep feeling for grassland, life and history, a spiritual epic of the nomadic civilisation, of irreplaceable value for studying the music, folklore and social change of the northern peoples.