In high school, I used to listen to a rock radio station out of Wausau, Wisconsin called, “Rock 94.7.” Around 2018, they were playing a few songs by a Mongolian metal band called, “The Hu.” The Hu fused elements of traditional Mongolian music and contemporary metal music to create an interesting quality of music that exposed people to traditional Mongolian music techniques, but making them palatable for modern audiences.
In the song “Wolf Totem”, we hear these elements being used. Introductions and constant sounds of horse-head fiddles that are very common in the Mongolian tradition are a cornerstone of the band and song as well as being extremely recognizable for the East Asia region altogether. The vocal techniques are sung, spoken, and chanted which is common in nearly all world traditions. However, The Hu commonly utilize the traditional technique of Mongolian throat-singing in their songs which adds an entirely different timbre. In this piece specifically, it really adds to the distorted sounds of metal music and emphasizes the groove-like sections of the piece where there are no distinguishing lyrics. This guttural throat-singing is essential to the band, this specific song, and the Mongolian tradition as a whole. This piece starts as what seems to be a traditional Mongolian song, and then morphs into a modern metal tune that is truly quite catchy.
Other instruments heard here are the aforementioned Horse-head Fiddle, the Tovshuur (which is a Mongolian guitar), the Tumor Khuur (jaw-harp), and drums/cymbals. This helps to make the piece start as a traditional sounding Mongolian song and then work into a groove-based metal piece that is very recognizable as such to all audiences. The translation of the lyrics in this piece is very aggressive music about defending the homeland of Mongolia against who, or whatever may come their way.
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