巴莫曲布嫫

JFR Book Review


Mongolian Music, Dance, and Oral Narrative:
Performing Diverse Identities

By Carole Pegg. 2001. Seattle: University of Washington Press. xvii + 377 pages.
Reviewed by Aaron Tate, Cornell University
[Review length: 623 words • Review posted in 2004]

Carole Pegg is a lecturer in the Department of Social Anthropology and Faculty of Music at the University of Cambridge. Her self-described “ethnography of performance” is a survey of performance traditions found in Mongolian-speaking regions throughout Central Asia. Pegg has clearly absorbed many of the lessons of late-twentieth-century folkloristics and anthropology, for she not only presents a study of Mongolian performance genres but explores them in relation to cultural and political identity, gender relations, and performance theory. Her book, which is eminently readable and handsomely produced, is accompanied by an audio CD.

In the opening section, “Connections,” Pegg introduces the Mongolian situation in the field. She offers a map of genres and their geographic locations and provides a brief survey of the history and borders of Mongolia, including discussion (and song texts) of certain charismatic leaders who themselves entered the oral tradition. Small gems such as her schematization of the nair, or “domestic feast,” appear in this section as well, couched among a detailed survey of vocal repertories and techniques, dance genres, and musical instruments. Pegg approaches all of this with the training of an ethnomusicologist and the discerning eye of a performance-centered anthropologist. Her brief but expert discussion of the Mongolian heroic epic (baatarlag tuul’ or; üliger) provides insight into this living tradition and its modes of transmission, while other pages discuss genres such as incantations (shivshleg üg), well-wishing words (beleg demberliin ügs), wish-prayers, (yerööl) curses (haraal), oral tales based on themes from Chinese novels (bengsen-ü üliger), oral legends (domog), and praise-songs (magtaal). Pegg treats the subjects of dance and instrument construction with equal care. Readers who are interested in learning more about Mongolian overtone-singing (höömii), made famous in the Western world by Tuvan examples but equally widespread among Mongolian-speaking peoples, will not be disappointed: Pegg concludes the third chapter of the section with an informed discussion of the technique and its variants; and she gives numerous textual samples.

Part II, “Embodying Spiritual Landscapes,” addresses relationships among performance styles and spiritual traditions practiced in Mongolian-speaking regions, most notably shamanism and Buddhism. In this section as elsewhere, Pegg discusses the use of instruments, explains different genres, describes vocal styles, and analyzes the relationship between deities and audience. In essence, she has laid bare an ecology of folk-religious traditions and their relation to performance and particular genres. The section offers a provocative point of entry for those interested in the transmission and maintenance of religious practices by means of living traditional performance.

In Part III Pegg investigates the way in which domestic ritual celebrations, public sports, animal husbandry, and hunting practices temporalize and spatialize the realm of social life. She considers attempts made by communist practitioners to alter the meaning and content of these relations, and she pays special attention to the role performance plays in the contestation and perpetuation of ritual meaning and practice. She discusses the place of gender and social status in relation to ritual, and analyzes a wide spectrum of domestic practices ranging from New Year’s celebrations, poetic contests, and weddings, to children’s hair-cutting ceremonies and the specific cultural meanings of food and drink. In each instance fieldwork and corresponding texts (and translations) are offered as evidence for individual claims.

The book concludes, in Part IV, with a long excursus on the transformation of political identities in Mongolia by way of performance traditions, followed by closing thoughts on disjunctions, differences, and diversities within the interstices of Mongolian cultural spaces. Throughout the study, extensive use is made of visual aids, diagrams, and maps. The reader will find the glossary, indices, and extensive bibliography (many of which come from unpublished Mongolian sources and informants) immensely useful, particularly in a book rife with so many linguistic, geographic, and cultural details.


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