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AnDa Union

From China (Peoples Republic)

Preserving the music of the Mongolian grasslands

AnDa Union certainly don't lack ambition. Rather than - as tradition in their particular musical corner would have it - concentrating their efforts on just one style of music, this ten-strong acoustic group from Inner Mongolia keenly cast their net rather wider. Their inquisitiveness goes unhidden. "There is a wealth of folk music for us to learn," they explain. "So far our repertoire of songs is like a drop in the ocean." AnDa Union are helped in this endeavour by hailing from several different ethnic backgrounds, allowing them to draw with conviction from musical styles across all the Mongol tribes unified by Genghis Khan. And, anxious to awaken Mongol youth to endangered cultural traditions, they proudly brandish the instruments of their forebears - the morin khuur (a horse-hair fiddle), the maodun chaoer (a three-hole flute) and Mongol variations of the lute and the mouth harp. "Our culture is broken and needs to be mended."

(Biography written by Nige Tassell 2011)

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