Iran, Mongolia foreign ministers arrive in Delhi www.sify.com

[India], Jan 8 (ANI): Mohammad Javad Zarif, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Republic of Iran and Damdin Tsogtbaatar, the Foreign Minister of Mongolia arrived here on Monday. The two are expected to attend the fourth edition of the Raisina Dialogue which will begin on Tuesday. The inaugural address will be delivered by the Prime Minister of Norway, Erna Solberg. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is also expected to attend the inaugural session of the event. Several Foreign Ministers are attending the three-day conference on geo-politics and geo-economics, co-hosted by the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) and the Observer Research Foundation (ORF). The speakers at the event include Foreign Ministers of Spain, Iran, Australia, Mongolia and Nepal, besides India's Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj. Other global leaders taking part in the conference include former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, former Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni, former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt and former Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai. Malaysian leader Anwar Ibrahim, who is tipped to succeed incumbent Mahathir Bin Mohamad, will deliver the valedictory address. Ministers and leaders from Africa, West Asia, U.S., Europe and Russia are among the speakers at the Dialogue. India's Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale, Chief of Army Staff, General Bipin Rawat and Chief of Naval Staff, Admiral Sunil Lanba will also speak at the conference. (ANI)

Ownership of Asgat silver deposit to be transferred to Erdenes Mongol LLC www.montsame.mn

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/. Chief of the Cabinet Secretariat of Government G.Zandanshatar received the executives of Mineral Resources and Petroleum Authority, Erdenes Mongol LLC and Mongolrostsvetmet LLC.

Mongolian engineers earned MNT 11 billion from aircraft maintenance www.montsame.mn

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/ Aircraft Maintenance Department of MIAT Mongolian Airlines obtained a revenue of MNT 11 billion in 2018. The department repaired 12 foreign airplanes last year. Chief of the Production Planning Division at MIAT J.Chuluunjav noted that the company provided aircraft maintenance services to 62 foreign airplanes since 2014.

Metal Mania From Mongolia Invades YouTube With Guitar Riffs, Guttural Singing www.sputniknews.com

Centuries after Genghis Khan raged across Eurasia, Mongolians have launched a new kind of offensive, which might outshine the conquests of their ancestors. The band Hu, mixing rock music with traditional themes, has found inspiration in their country’s long history, making nomadic life great again.

Michael S.Klecheski appointed as Ambassador of the USA to Mongolia www.montsame.mn

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/ The United States House of Representatives confirmed the nomination of to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the US to Mongolia Michael S.Klecheski on January 2.

Cabinet ratifies President-initiated bill on dissolving Parliament www.zgm.mn

Chief of Staff to the President of Mongolia Enkhbold Zandaakhuu submitted a draft bill on Amendment to the Law on the Procedure of the Plenary Session of the Parliament to Speaker Enkhbold Miyegombo last week. The bill was then approved by the Cabinet.

New railway for coal transport opens in north China www.en.silkroad.news.cn

TAIYUAN, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- A new railway for coal transport has opened in north China, according to China Railway Taiyuan Group.

Mongolia’s coal exports hit all-time high in 2018 www.daily-sun.com

ULAN BATOR: Mongolia's coal exports hit an all-time high in 2018, the country's finance ministry said Friday.

Share of Renewable Energy in Mongolia Reaches Record High www.financialtribune.com

The share of renewable energy in Mongolia's total electricity production has reached a record high in 2018, local media reported Monday.

How A Mongolian Heavy Metal Band Got Millions Of YouTube Views www.npr.org

A band from Mongolia that blends the screaming guitars of heavy metal and traditional Mongolian guttural singing has picked up 7 million views for its two videos.

Leather jackets, skull rings and bandanas alongside intricately carved Mongolian horsehead fiddles are just some of the images in the first two music videos the Mongolian band The Hu released on YouTube this fall. Excited listeners from around the globe have posted comments like "This makes me want to ride a horse and shoot people with a bow" and "This sounds like ancient mongol rock of 1000 b.c. Really badass!" (sic)

And yet what The Hu is doing, while new, comes out of a tradition that began several decades ago when Mongolia transitioned from a satellite of the Soviet Union to a democracy.

As the Soviet Union crumbled and Western influence flooded in during the late 1980s and early 1990s, Mongolian musicians chose to preserve Mongolian culture while also adapting new influences, explains University of Chicago ethnomusicology Ph.D. student Thalea Stokes.

It is something they continue to do today, says Stokes, who spoke via Skype from Inner Mongolia where she is studying Mongolian hip-hop. The hip-hop scene she studies has a similar background. Although hip-hop is a relatively new import, Mongolians have rapidly adapted it, mixing "fierce ethnic pride and adventurous dancing" with social and political critique, according to Stokes' research.

"Mongolians are not just taking elements from Western music and just copying and pasting," says Stokes. Instead, they're actually using some of these elements and making their own authentic music.

"So it's not rock music performed by Mongolians. It's Mongolian rock music," she says.

To Fight Pollution, He's Reinventing The Mongolian Tent
Mongolian rock combines traditional Mongolian instruments, like a horsehead fiddle (morin khuur), Jew's harp (tumur khuur) and Mongolian guitar (tovshuur) with the pounding bass and drums of rock.

It also involves singing in a guttural way known as throat singing while throwing heads back and forth reminiscent of the head banging of '80s heavy metal bands like Metallica. Those who study Mongolian music believe one reason The Hu has proved so popular with outsiders is this combining of modern and historical and Eastern and Western elements.

The Hu call their style "Hunnu rock" — from the Mongolian root word for human being: "Hu." The band spent seven years putting together their first album, which they expect to release this spring. They plan to call it "Gereg," the name for a diplomatic passport used during the time of Genghis Khan. For the album, the idea was to find, study and incorporate as much of Mongolia's musical culture as they could into a rock style, says the band's 52-year-old producer and songwriter, B. Dashdong who goes by "Dashka."

Mongolian musical culture is tied up with their pastoral way of life. The two-stringed horsehead fiddle is shaped to resemble a horse and includes the carving of a horse head and strings and bow made of horsehair. It produces a sound similar to a violin and can be used to imitate the sound of a herd of horses. In throat singing, associated with pastoral herders in Central Asia, the singer produces a low constant sort of drone at the same time as a series of higher tones.

"We wanted to come up with our own thing that we can offer to this big music family. Make something new," says Dashka, who spoke through a translator via Skype.

It is not just their instruments that incorporate traditional elements. In the band's first song, "Yuve Yuve Yu" (What's going on?), they mention Genghis Khan and how he was fated to bring nations together. The video begins with images of people inside playing video games, watching television and looking at their phones. A door is opened and the band's four members step into different natural settings: cliffs, desert, forest and lake. The message they hope to convey through their lyrics and imagery is that people need to pay attention to nature and their history and culture, explains lead singer TS. Galbadrakh, known as "Gala," 29.

It is a familiar message to Kip Hutchins, a Ph.D. student in cultural anthropology at the University of Wisconsin. Lines about neglecting their ancestors — like "taking our great Mongol ancestors names in vain" — are almost exactly what was sung in the late 1980s during the transition to democracy, says Hutchins. It was then that rock became popular as a form of political protest. Soon after, Mongolians started to form folk rock and folk jazz ensembles. Band members tended to be trained in conservatories on traditional instruments.

The four members of The Hu all learned to play traditional Mongolian instruments at the Mongolian State Conservatory. The oldest in the group, G. Nyamjantsan, who goes by "Jaya," 35, still teaches at the conservatory. N. Temuulen aka "Temka," 28, who plays the Mongolian guitar, says their international popularity was something they expected — but not in the millions.

"When we do this, we try to spiritually express this beautiful thing about Mongolian music. We think we will talk to everyone's soul through our music," says Temka through a translator. "But we didn't expect this fast, people just popping up everywhere."

They aren't quite sure how it happened. Hutchins has an idea. He believes part of the appeal of bands like The Hu is the way he believes the story of Mongolia has been written in the West. Nomadism and horse culture has been romanticized, and the emphasis on freedom and heroes tends to appeal to the stereotypical male heavy metal fan.

"There is a kind of exoticism to Mongolia," says Hutchins. Mongolia "is at once a community and a culture that is part of Asia and Europe at the same time."

The Hu is not the only Mongolian band that has attracted recent international attention. There is the folk rock band Altan Urag, whose music was featured in the 2007 film Mongol and in the Netflix show Marco Polo, and the Inner Mongolian Hanggai Band.

Ethnomusicologist Charlotte D'Evelyn sees The Hu as trying to bring back traditions while also modernizing. For her it is as if the band is saying, "We're still modern and we're living in the modern world. But we're using this music to revive some kind of nationalistic cultural identity."

Hutchins puts it another way.

"The Hu is obviously interested in teaching a global community about Mongolian culture as much as they're interested in creating something Mongol."

Katya Cengel is the author of Exiled: From the Killing Fields of Cambodia to California and Back. She reported from Mongolia in 2017 on a fellowship from the International Reporting Project (IRP). You can find her on twitter @kcengel