During the winter of 2019-2020, I was the recordist on a small team project headed by Shi Tanding and had set out from our base in Dali, Yunnan, to document traditional Mongolian folk songs throughout the Inner Mongolia region of China. We traveled and recorded in the western peripheries and interior for 70 days until our project was truncated by the Covid-19 situation which ground the entire country to a screeching halt in late January and movement was no longer possible. By that point though, we had been recording for over 2 months, so here are some varied highlights we collected throughout this vast region.

The squeaking animals you hear in one part are camels, numbering about 10,000 in this spot gathered for a sparsely attended camel festival & races in the desert. The ones closest to me were striking up casual conversation I guess.

Most music recordings were done in family homes, in living rooms, a couple in a shop, a classroom, and a few outdoors (it was the dead of winter and extremely cold!) Typically, we'd only get one chance to quickly enter a home, sit for a while and chat over milk tea and Mongolian cheese then set up a simple 1 to 3 mic arrangement and record some songs.

With some cleanup, the recordings here mostly turned out decently I think, though there is one that I simply did not have the right equipment on hand to properly record a 4 piece band as well as I wished I could have. They kept switching positions on me as well. Nonetheless, I think this collection makes for a rather enjoyable listen - I hope you agree!