Youth compose music they like and know best. They watch Korean soap operas and American movies and can identify with the music they hear in them, Augustine told UCA News. "Our Church songs are inspired by American and Western pop and rock," lamented the man who, like most Mongolians, uses only one name.
"Unfortunately they have sensual tones because they are inspired by a totally secular culture. We cannot just take the rock and pop and adapt the lyrics," he explained. "No matter how godly the words are," he maintained, "if the music is secular and sensual, the message is corrupted."
Youth are an important component of the local Church, because besides the adults who make up a majority of the 520 baptized Catholics, the community comprises mostly catechumens below the age of 20.
Oyuna told UCA News young people "have not been immersed in their native culture very much" due to globalization, cable television and the Internet. Hence, they sometimes do not understand the difference between singing for fun and praying, she said, and missioners need to help them know and understand their own culture better.
One expatriate Catholic in the capital told UCA News, "I really like Mongolian music, especially folk music, but what these kids sing in church is nothing like that. For me, having to hear the hymns at Sunday Mass is like penance," he said.
Another local Catholic, Selenge, pointed out that some Gregorian chants sound very much like huumii, a vocal technique in which the singer vibrates his vocal chords to emit two sounds at once, unique to Mongolia and some Siberian tribes. "I would like Mongolian Church music to include huumii. That would not sound as foreign as these songs we sing nowadays."
Father Giorgio Marengo of the Church liturgical commission plays the limbe, a Mongolian flute, and morin huur, a two-stringed Mongolian instrument that looks like a cello. He suggests the Church use such traditional instruments, as shamans and Buddhists do, to more easily connect with the spirituality of the Mongolian people.
The morin huur has a strong power to move your inner being when appropriate music is played, the Italian Consolata priest told UCA News. But he thinks the matter of appropriate Church music is not a primary concern.
"We should invest more in the quality of faith of our people," he said. "When people develop a taste for sacred music, they will learn to discern if that music is good for praying or not."
Father Marengo said he was preparing to present the status of Mongolian Church music at an upcoming Asian liturgical convention in Sri Lanka. With only 520 baptized Catholics and a mere 16 years of history, the Mongolian Catholic Church has "no Church music tradition to speak of," he pointed out. "I would like to present the situation like that."
Nonetheless, some people involved in the music ministry see the need for sacred traditional music.
"I want to learn what Church music is about, but it takes time," said Maral, who composes hymns, plays the keyboards during Mass and leads the choir at St. Mary's Parish in Ulaanbaatar. He composed the music they use for the Lord's Prayer. Maral said he is going to Korea in August for four years to learn Church music.
Composing hymns, he said, translates his faith into music. "It is all about prayer. If the Lord gives me some music while I pray, I write it down and try to make a song," he told UCA News after receiving his gold medal for best song in the Sacred Music Festival. The Church presented the awards on June 29 in the capital.
Catholic missioners arrived in Mongolia in July 1992 at the invitation of the government, three months after it established diplomatic ties with the Holy See.
