Peter K. Marsh's investigation of the effects of twentieth-century political change on the Mongolian morin khuur and its music is a welcome addition to a sparse body of Western research. The Horse-Head Fiddle and the Cosmopolitan Reimagination of Tradition in Mongolia spans three historical periods: prerevolutionary Mongolia with its multiple two-stringed fiddle traditions; the ebbs and flows of Soviet-period cultural policy and nation building; and post-Soviet attempts to reconnect with different Mongolian identities. Along the way, we get fascinating glimpses of the experiences of differently placed musicians (e.g., the early twentieth-century Khorchin epic bard Sangrup), intellectuals (e.g., Buryat Zhamtsarano and Mongolian B. Rinchin), music researchers (e.g., J. Badraa), composers and musicologists (e.g., Natsagiin Jantsannorow, also a politician), and foreign researchers (e.g., Henning [not “Henny,” as in the text] Haslund-Christensen).

The thrust of the book, though, is to map continuities between the Soviet and contemporary periods. Marsh sees this in the “new music” that was created by the gradual syncretization or Europeanization of Mongolian traditional (ugsaatny, “roots”) music, which necessitated the redesign of instruments, the retraining of musicians, and the introduction of Western notation. Created in the capital of Ulaanbaatar, this music continues to flourish there, but is having problems in rural areas.

In the central, most lengthy section of the book, Marsh implies that Mongolian politicians and musicians participated in a voluntary strategic process during the Soviet period (chapters 2–4). The key concept is “cosmopolitanism,” which he defines as “the imagined connection that people sense they have with a broader trans-local or international community, but which manifest in distinctly local ways” (p. 7). Mongolian leaders, then, were not party ideologues but “cosmopolitan nationalists,” wishing to broaden their experiences while at the same time maintaining national independence. Local officials were not “apparatchiks” but simply disinterested in local, past-oriented musical traditions (p. 5). The new urban professional musicians saw syncretization as a musical “flowering” despite the increasing submission to centralization and censorship. Changes in the horse-head fiddle's construction, albeit by a Soviet violinmaker, and teaching methods (e.g., introducing performance techniques similar to those of the cello and arpeggio and scalar exercises from notation) are part of “modernization” and “development.” The grip of the Mongolian Composers' Union on who should compose, what should be composed, and the content of musical programs is glossed over as “ensuring the quality of compositions” with a possibly unintentional centralization of control (p. 63). There is no questioning of the underlying Soviet assumption that these processes were beneficial.

This creates tensions in the book, in addition to those brought on by the use of the Geertzian opposition between “essentialism” (indigenous way of life) and “epochalism” (spirit of the age). For instance, Marsh's suggestion that during the 1960s and 1970s, the Mongols expressed a new “cosmopolitan identity” that was both national and international (p. 74) jars with the explanation that the aim of the 1960 constitution was “supra-ethnic” cultural assimilation of Mongolia into the language and culture of the Soviet Union (pp. 73–74); and his assertion that training received from Soviet and Soviet-trained teachers “gave the Mongolians a much greater awareness and understanding of the outside world” (p. 91; reviewer's emphasis) fails to recognize that the “outside” world lay beyond “the family of nations defined by Soviet internationalism” (p. 78).

During my own Mongolian fieldwork (see Mongolian Music, Dance and Oral Narrative: Performing Diverse Identities [Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001]), which spanned the late 1980s perestroika period, local cultural officials tried to prevent my research among ordinary herders in rural areas. With the help of musician friends, I dodged them and so learned of the many musicians, lamas, and intellectuals who had been “liquidated” (murdered) and imprisoned during the 1930s and 1940s, how Chinggis Khan and other leaders had been eradicated from Mongolian history, and how, in a multiethnic society, they were tired of being forced to listen to and create sanitized Khalkha music. I suspect that the argument that the politicians were simply engaging in “cosmopolitan nationalism” (p. 79) would not have gone down too well.

Chapters covering the post-Soviet period are less contentious and more intriguing. “The Folk ‘Revival’ and the Reimagination of the Horse-Head Fiddle” assesses imaginative attempts to reconnect with the “deep past” of the pre-Soviet period. This involves reinterpreting myths and legends of the instrument's origin and historical players, as well as reclaiming and reinventing ancient rituals. Importantly, we learn that other fiddle traditions continue to be maintained and even expanded in Mongolia, especially in the rural areas.

In the final, too-short chapter, “The Persistence of Alternative Music Histories,” we discover the existence of alternative histories that do not involve “progress” and “internationalism,” do not appreciate Europeanized horse-head fiddle music with its mass-produced instruments and massed ensembles, and do not want the horse-head fiddle to sound like the violin or cello. It tells of a yearning—despite economic difficulties—to reconnect with a more diverse, non-European time and to recreate sounds that express Mongolians' own multiple ethnic identities. Bring it on!