"Huun-Huur-Tu come from the former Soviet Autonomous Republic of Tuva, a sparsely settled region of grasslands, boreal forests, and mountain ridges that lies 2,500 miles east of Moscow Russia, situated at the center of Asia, north of Mongolia. This indigenous music highlights rare instruments and preserves what is arguably some of the world's oldest form of music making. The best known genre of Tuvan music, xöömei (throat-singing), comprises what one might call a lexicon of musical onomatopoeia in which natural sounds are mimetically transformed into musical representations."
"Just think - they played this music 5000 years ago. When something lasts that long, it becomes more... real, doesn't it?" - A.
thanks Gusiu!;*
"Just think - they played this music 5000 years ago. When something lasts that long, it becomes more... real, doesn't it?" - A.
thanks Gusiu!;*
I'm not sure about that 5000, but it's daaaaamn old :) these people are one of the few in this world who still practise shamanism! their culture is priceless!
ReplyDeleteYou should check out the movie "Genghis Blues"... it is a documentary about a blind American blues-singer who teaches himself how to do throat-singing from the short-wave radio, and then ends up travelling to Tuva to participate in a throat-singing contest.
ReplyDeleteIt is terrific, and when I saw it here in SF, Kongar-Ol (one of the "big names" in Tuvan throat singing, I guess, and a major part of the movie) was there and perfomed. It is absolutely unworldly sounding in person, I mean, it is really hard to believe that that sound is emerging from a human being and not a synthesizer or something like that.