ABSTRACT
The Mongolian film industry was established to fulfil a political agenda and music was needed to accompany and enhance the message of the films. This relationship between politics and film music began as an elder-brother / younger-brother relationship with the Soviet Union and was cultivated for over five decades until the late 1980s, when film composers became the voice of the disillusioned population. Throughout the Socialist era, film music developed in a manner that both fulfilled political obligations and nurtured certain Mongolian traditions. The dual musical background of the majority of state film composers, as well as the subject matter of the films they had to score, were crucial in bringing together tradition and socialist progress in the form of music. Musicians from poor rural backgrounds becoming state-honoured film composers represented the journey of socialist progress the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party (MPRP) wanted Mongolian citizens to follow.
