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The singing of songs amongst the Altai Urianghai in Duut district, Hovd Province, Mongolia, forms a powerful, emotionally evocative and performative act. As noted elsewhere in Mongolia, it is often in song texts that bittersweet emotions of loss or longing are expressed2-emotions that are not normally displayed in other forms of sociality. In this paper, I discuss the particular poetic encapsulation of longing and loss contained in a well-known song amongst the Altai Urianghai people in Hovd Province, Mongolia. The performance of this particular song of longing and loss is a multivalent phenomenon that occurs in a context of cultural redefinition and rediscovery. In post-socialist Mongolia, song forms and performers themselves have been shaped by the experiences of past socialist cultural policies and post-socialist relaxations in public cultural practice. A close look at this particular song reveals this multi-layered history of social and political change. Evocative song lyrics can express emotional states of being whilst simultaneously articulating 'ethnic' delineation, cultural change and perceptions of cultural continuity. The Altai Urianghai short 'folk' song (bogino ardyn duuf entitled 'Hoyer Nutgiin Erh', or 'The Power of Two Homelands', is one such song. Popular amongst Altai Urianghai people in both Hovd and Bayan Olgii provinces, it simultaneously reveals the use of textual poetic devices that evoke a strong sense of longing and loss over a geographical distance. At the same time, it embodies a delineation of Altai Urianghai identity in post-socialist Mongolia on melodic and performative levels.This paper draws from 14 months of doctoral fieldwork in Mongolia spanning 2009, 2010 and 2012. During this time, I largely conducted research in the rural district of Duut Sum, Hovd Province, Mongolia. Duut Sum is home to 12874 Altai Urianghai5 people, an ethnic group within Mongolia.6 It is an area of carefully demarcated herding rangeland, with a central village, or sum centre [sumyn tov), located roughly in the north-east of the district. During my fieldwork, I lived primarily in the district centre where I assisted my host family with daily activities, visited musicians, took music lessons and attended concerts. By living in the district for an extended period, I was able to participate in a wide range of activities and ceremonies through which I was able to learn about the differing forms of musical engagement undertaken by a wide sector of the population. I also travelled with my friends to the provincial capital of Hovd City, to other areas in western Mongolia and to Ulaanbaatar, following people in this mobile environment.My doctoral research explores the significance of musical engagement in the ongoing post-socialist context amongst this group of Altai Urianghai. Since the fall of communism in 1990, Mongolia has been a fertile scene for an ongoing rediscovery and rearticulation of Mongolian cultural and spiritual practices, and historical origin.7 Certain Altai Urianghai musical genres are now being included in this cultural veneration as genres that link Mongolia to an ancient past.8 In my doctoral research, I focus on how Altai Urianghai people in and from Duut Sum negotiate this musical notoriety in different ways, and I draw from an in-depth ethnographic focus on how musical engagement forms a fundamental part of ongoing sociality between people within Duut Sum. In doing so, I aim to build upon contributions previously made to the scholarship of music in Mongolia. The nature of the particular place-based ethnographic focus of my doctoral research builds upon the work of Pegg,9 whose encompassing study presented a detailed depiction of Mongolian music from across Mongolia at the end of communism. My work also builds upon the work of Marsh,10 who focused upon the correlations and continuity between socialist and post-socialist musical experiences in Mongolia through the prism of a detailed study of the morin huur or horse-head fiddle. …

‘The Power of Two Homelands’: Musical continuity and change, the evocation of longing and an Altai Urianghai song