About Mongolia Art and Culture Traditional Mongolian Music Instruments | Traditional Mongolian Music Instruments |
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Percussion instruments, though, were only played in connection with Shamanism and Buddhism, the origins of which can be found in Tibetan Lamaism, as well as with the "Tsam dance", which was performed in Mongolia for the first time in the 8th century. Nowdays the Mongolians use a wide variety of instruments to perform and accompany their songs and dances, click on "read more" to view some of the very typical instruments.
Traditional Mongolian instruments include:
The morin khuur
 Perhaps the most ancient musical instrument of the Mongols is the "morin-khuur", invented at least a thousand years ago. In Mongolian, morin means horse, and khuur means sound, ryme, melody.This instrument's history is based on a legend of a man who had a beloved, magical horse that could fly. When an evil man killed the horse, the man made an instrument from the horse so that he could remember it. Originally, the handle of the horse-head fiddle was made of horse ribs and its base was horse skin. Today, the long tail hair of a horse ridden since childhood is used for the strings. It is said each tail hair fiber should be processed until it "starts talking". To honor the horse, its head is carved of wood and placed where the scroll would be on a violin. The wooden neck and the sound box of the instrument are sometimes decorated by the five elements and the horoscope animals of the Buddhist 12-year calendar, and the symbol of eternity is depicted on the sides of the box. The tone of the morin khuur is tender and slightly languorous. This instrument is often used to perform pieces which imitate animals' and nature's appearance and behavior, including rivers, stallions, camels, bulls, elks, and especially the horse. In Eastern Mongolia melodies have such names as "The Snake Realm", "The Hawk Strong Stallion", "The Bogdo Khaan's Brown Trotter", "The Gobi's Spotty Trotter", "The Young Male Camel" etc.
The yatga is a half-tube zither with a movable bridge. It is constructed as a box with a convex surface and an end bent towards the ground. The strings are plucked and the sound is very smooth. The instrument was considered to be sacrosanct and playing it was a rite, bound to taboos. The instrument was mainly used at court and in monasteries, since strings symbolised the twelve levels of the palace hierarchy.
 Shepherds were forbidden to play the twelve-stringed zither, but they were allowed to play the ten-stringed zither, which was also used for interludes during recitations of epics.Mongolians traditionally play three types of this zither, differentiated by their resonators or hollow bodies in which the sound is amplified. Designs include the master yatga; ikh gariing yatga, the national yatga; akhun ikh yatga, and the harp, called the bosoo yatga.
Khuuchir (string instrument)
Formerly, the nomads (called "the savages") mainly used the snake skin violin or horsetail violin. The Chinese call it "the Mongol instrument" or "Huk'in". It is tuned in the interval of a fifth and is small or middle sized.  The khuuchir has a small, cylindrical, square or cup-like resonator made of bamboo, wood or copper, covered with a snake skin and open at the bottom. The neck is inserted in the body of the instrument. It usually has four silk strings, of which the first and the third are accorded in unison, whereas the second and fourth are tuned in the upper fifth. The bow is coated with horsetail hair and inseparably interlaced with the string-pairs; in Chinese this is called "sihu", that is "four", also meaning, "having four ears". The smaller instruments have only two strings and are called "erh'hu", that is "two" in Chinese
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The traditional Mongolian Folk music is influenced by the large variety of tribes, having been united for the first time in the 13th century under the rule of Genghis Khan with Turkish tribes in order to establish the Mongolian people. The nomad shepherds in Mongolia, like other nomads in Central Asia, use to play string and wind instruments.
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