ARTE Distribution

The Mongolian name for this two-stringed instrument is "morin-xuur" or horsehead violin. Covered in gold and multicoloured-coloured decorations and adorned with the sculpted heads of horses and dragons. They are 1 metre 20 centimetres long and probably date back about a hundred years.

The "morin xuur" comes from the banks of the Onon, the second longest river in Mongolia, which is still famous for its makers and players of "morin-xuur".
The Mongolian nation is made up of some two million people scattered over the steppes of Inner and Outer Mongolia. The Mongolians breed and hunt animals for their fur, and horses are a central theme in their culture.
The legend of the "morin-xuur" tells how a mortal maiden who was in love with a star-prince could no longer bear to see her beloved disappear every morning on his winged horse, so one night she cut off the horse's wings. As the prince wept and stroked the dead animal, the strands of its tail began to vibrate like the strings of an instrument, and the lamentations of the star-prince were transformed into a song.
Like a shaman calling up the spirits, the minstrel begins his long-song, an epic chant consisting of a continuous deep drone, a guttural melody and, from time to time, onomatopoeic cries imitating natural sounds such as bird-calls, the roar of the rutting stag and the whistling of the wind. In the strange atmosphere created by this chant and its accompaniment on the "morin-xuur", the horsehead violin, the world of gravity is left behind and contact is made with the invisible forces to whom the song is really addressed.