A study on the cultural characteristics and inheritance of the Mongolian minority’s folk music in China

Folk music is not only a nation’s important resource which could develop their inherent values and world views, but also the core of the innovation of a nation’s culture. Among the various minorities in China, the Mongolian minority’s folk music is unique, and it has been registered by UNESCO as a world intangible cultural heritage in 2006. After People’s Republic of China(or the “new China”) was founded, many pieces of Mongolian minority’s folk music with their innovative era characteristics have been produced, thanks to the composers. The Mongolian traditional music characteristic “long tune”, the most representative Mongolian traditional musical instrument “morin khuur”, and the unique method of singing “Khoomei”, all of them are the center of Mongolian minority’s folk music, and they have been inherited and developed till today. The reason why the Mongolian minority’s folk music has such ear characteristics is due to the vast grassland’s natural environment, the Mongolian minority’s unique life-style and their national customs. This paper will focus on 70 years of the traditional inheritance of Mongolian minority’s folk music since the new China’s foundation in 1949, along with the music’s characteristics which are formed by the new era cultural background, and then analyze and investigate the lyrics, musical instruments and methods of singing. In order to do this, this paper takes the representative resource from 《Research on Mongolian Music of a Hundred Years(book one)》 as its research scope, and also, I visited the University of Inner Mongolia in 2018 and did a survey named 《The Degree of Concern for the Mongolian minority’s folk music》of the Mongolian minority youth, this paper will use the result of this survey as its supplementary resource as well. Through this work, the relationship between Mongolian minority’s musical forms and their national life-style could be explored, and the inheritance relationship between traditional music and new music could be investigated as well, these would be the significance and value of this paper.