ABSTRACT
As we saw in the last chapter, the central institutions play a signifi cant role in maintaining and disseminating the modernist narratives about the horse-head fi ddle. But other historical constructs regarding this instrument persist in Mongolia, primarily at the local and regional levels. As we have seen, the collapse of the centralized, single-party rule in Mongolia led to the relative decline in the past decade in the ability of the centralized institutions to maintain artistic and ideological control over the actions of the more rural institutions. Many of these rural institutions and even performers and scholars have in turn begun to promote alternative histories of the fi ddle that provide a useful new perspective from which to view the modernized and urban national musical traditions. These traditions are “alternative” in the sense that they may not be governed by the same logic of progress and internationalism that shapes the cosmopolitan traditions. Many of these traditions represent older, pre-Revolutionary cultural practices and values that people have managed to maintain in parallel to the modern and urban-based national traditions.
