Teng Ge’er

b. 1960, Inner Mongolia

Pop musician, composer

A musician of Mongolian origin, living in Beijing, famous in China for his powerful and rough voice and for his many pop/rock songs, particularly his songs about Mongolia, many of which he not only performs but also wrote and composed. He has also composed Western-style serious music as well as the music for Xie Fei’s film Love in the Grassland Sky (Ai zai caoyuan de tiankong), in which he also played the leading role.

Teng Ge’er graduated in 1985 from the Tianjin Music Conservatory and joined the Central Nationalities Song and Dance Troupe (Zhongyang minzu gewutuan). Since the late 1980s he has released more than ten solo albums in Chinese and Mongolian and has won numerous prizes in China and abroad. With their references to the stereotypical images of pastoralism and incorporation of elements from traditional Mongolian music, many of Teng Ge’er’s songs conform to the long tradition in the PRC of minority songs that exoticize and idealize the lives of minority people. Nevertheless, several of his songs also challenge this tradition in articulating a nationalistic minority voice that problematizes the life and status of Mongols in the PRC. This is best illustrated in ‘The Land of the Blue Wolf (Canglangdadi), in which he expresses nostalgia for the time when the Mongols dominated China and protest over the loss of Mongolian tradition and land. Other famous songs include The Mongols’ (Mengguren), ‘Paradise’ (Tiantang), and ‘Gadameilin’ (Gadameiren).

See also: minority pop musicians: the new generation; <

Further reading

Baranovitch, Nimrod (2003). China’s New Voices: Popular Music, Ethnicity, Gender, and Politics, 1978–1997. Berkeley: University of California Press, 72–83.

NIMROD BARANOVITCH