Voices From The Grassland: A Cultural Treasury

In 1979, The Ministry of Culture of the People's Republic of China and the Chinese Musicians Association started a project to compile and publish "the Compilation of Anthology of Chinese Folksongs.Volume on Inner Mongolia"(herein after referred to as "Integration"). It started a big upsurge of collection and coordination works, which involved 30 provinces all over the country. Because of its huge number of participators, wide scope and the most songs collected, it can be called a "big event" in Chinese culture history.The Volume on Inner Mongolia is a very important part of the Compilation of Anthology of Chinese Folksongs. Inner Mongolia Provincial Department of Culture and Inner Mongolia Federation of literary and Art Circles act as the leader of this project. Participators selected 1262 songs elaborately that come from Mongolia, Han, Daur, Ewenki, Oroqen. For the first time they used the map of Inner Mongolia and folk songs distributing maps to sort all of these songs. Word count of The Volume on Inner Mongolia is 3,5 million,that contains 89 pictures. It is a multi languages (Mongolia, Chinese and International Phonetic) version. It is a thorough, systemic and embedded investigation and protection work.Context is mainly focus on The Volume on Inner Mongolia. I used historical ethnomusicology method and interviewed some participators and combined special historical background to make some comment on it and discuss its important meaning to current Chinese music history and the protection of Chinese traditional culture.