Huun-Huur-Tu: the music of Tuva
CDNOW, November 29, 2002
From the windblown grasslands of Tuva, a tiny country situated between Mongolia and Siberia, comes the exotic sound of xöömei, or “throat singing.”
A skilled vocalist simultaneously produces two distinct pitches: a fundamental low and guttural note and, high above it, a series of articulated harmonics that actually – and astonishingly – form melodies. The ancient tradition of xöömei has been passed down through generations of Tuva’s nomadic sheep and reindeer herders.
The members of Huun-Huur-Tu – Kaigal-ool Kholvalyg, Anatoly Kuular, Sayan Bapa and Alexei Saryglar – are the most well-known ambassadors of the various styles of Tuvan music. They have toured the West several times and released albums such as 60 Horses in My Herd, The Orphan’s Lament and If I’d Been Born an Eagle. Their most recent effort is Where Young Grass Grows.
The primary subject of Huun-Huur-Tu’s music is the central importance of the horse to their culture. There are entire songs about how strong a particular horse is, or how beautiful, or fast. Scan the lyrics and you get the point pretty quickly.
But what’s surprising is how visceral the music is – how its rhythms capture the experience of riding horses and how the sounds instantly transport you to a distant part of the planet.
That distance is shrinking somewhat. On Where Young Grass Grows, which was recorded in Scotland, Huun-Huur-Tu employs Western musicians and instrument, including synthesizers and various pipes played by Marin Bennett.
CDNOW spoke with Sayan Bapa through interpreter and musicologist Ted Levin, the man who has done perhaps more than anyone to expose the sounds of Tuva to the West.
CDNOW: How would you explain throat singing to someone who has never heard it?
Sayan Bapa: It’s hard to explain. If someone feels it, he feels it. If he doesn’t, what can you do?
CDNOW: There are other styles the group sings besides xöömei. What are they and how do they differ?
Sayan Bapa: You have to understand that xöömei itself is a whole group of styles, or sub-styles. There are different kinds of throat singing and a number of different styles. We have other styles besides xöömei that are sung in a normal voice, and those co-exist with xöömei. People use the xöömei vocal timbre to sing many different kinds of songs.
CDNOW: How do you learn throat singing? How long does it take to master it?
Sayan Bapa: You can learn to do throat singing relatively quickly, but it takes many years to become a master. Anatoly Kuular began when he was very young, and did Kaigal-ool Kholvalyg. I began later, because I had moved away from Tuva and lived in a different part of the Soviet Union. Alexei Saryglar also began when he was older, in his 20s. We’ve been together as a group for seven years.
CDNOW: You use your voices and instruments to imitate the sounds of animals and environmental sounds. Is nature the primary source of inspiration for your music?
Sayan Bapa: Yes, we are expressing the relationships between nature and culture.
CDNOW: Describe some of the instruments you use and how they were made. Do you make your own instruments?
Ted Levin: The primary instruments that are used are the igil, the two-string fiddle, doshpuluur, byzanchi, xomuz, the Jew’s harp. They have a whole array of percussion instruments like the tungur, which is the shaman’s drum.
There are some instruments that the group doesn’t play that are traditional to Tuva. There’s an instrument called the shoor, which is an end-blown flute, which is still played by Tuvans living in Mongolia and China, but it’s no longer played in Tuva itself.
Because it’s the throat singing that is the most dramatic, people often overlook the very rich instrumental tradition, but it’s no less remarkable.
CDNOW: Do they make the instruments themselves?
Ted Levin: There are masters who make these instruments.
Sayan Bapa: But sometimes we make our own, too.
CDNOW: So many of the songs are about horses. Explain their importance in Tuva.
Sayan Bapa: Horses play the same role there as automobiles do in your culture. They’re absolutely the central icon of the culture. And it’s no accident that so many of these songs concern the characteristics of horses. There’s a very specific lexicon that’s connected to horses, to the naming of horses, the description of horses, the gait of horses, and all of this special vocabulary comes out in the songs.
CDNOW: Sayan, do you have a lot of horses?
Sayan Bapa: No, I’m poor [laughs]. Some of the other musicians keep them out in the countryside on special horse farms.
CDNOW: The Soviet Union controlled Tuva for many years. Did the Soviets try to stamp out traditional music?
Sayan Bapa: There were cases where instruments were burned. It was part of the Soviet “fight against the old” as they called it. Nonetheless, the music survived. People continued to play and sing.
CDNOW: Are you surprised by how your music has been received in the West?
Sayan Bapa: I wasn’t surprised, to tell the truth, because I’d heard many different kinds of music from around the world, and I knew that our music was absolutely on the same level, that’s it’s really a masterpiece of world music. And that if people could hear it performed well and hear it as real music rather than simply exotica, that they would understand it, and it would be well received.
CDNOW: You’ve collaborated with Western musicians on various projects and even on your new album. Has Western music become an influence or changed your music in any way?
Sayan Bapa: It’s a question that we debate among ourselves. Some people who are close to us, our manager, says that indeed, Western music has affected us. The way I think about it is that it’s given us more of a liberty in the way we approach our own music. We’re freer in the way that we play our music than we were before, after being exposed to a lot of different kinds of music around the world. But I don’t think it’s really changed the essence of our music.
CDNOW: You’ve toured the West several times now. What are your impressions of the different cultures you’ve seen and what are some of your favorite places?
Sayan Bapa: The West is big [laughs]. Which West? In Europe, for instance, we really like Slovenia. We don’t have a lot of time to look around, though, because we’ve always got a packed tour schedule. Here in the States, it’s interesting for us in those places where we have a lot of friends. Like here in Minnesota.
CDNOW: How did you like Scotland, where you made your most recent album?
Sayan Bapa: Edinburgh was good. There wasn’t a lot of sunlight, but many friends.
CDNOW: Recently the group underwent tests in which tiny cameras were inserted up your noses and down your throats to observe your vocal cords while you were throat singing. What was that experience like?
Sayan Bapa: It was shocking to see my own skull on the TV screen. I didn’t mind seeing inside my chest, but when I saw my skull it was a shock. [Laughs] I’m pretty good-looking.
CDNOW, November 29, 2002
From the windblown grasslands of Tuva, a tiny country situated between Mongolia and Siberia, comes the exotic sound of xöömei, or “throat singing.”
A skilled vocalist simultaneously produces two distinct pitches: a fundamental low and guttural note and, high above it, a series of articulated harmonics that actually – and astonishingly – form melodies. The ancient tradition of xöömei has been passed down through generations of Tuva’s nomadic sheep and reindeer herders.
The members of Huun-Huur-Tu – Kaigal-ool Kholvalyg, Anatoly Kuular, Sayan Bapa and Alexei Saryglar – are the most well-known ambassadors of the various styles of Tuvan music. They have toured the West several times and released albums such as 60 Horses in My Herd, The Orphan’s Lament and If I’d Been Born an Eagle. Their most recent effort is Where Young Grass Grows.
The primary subject of Huun-Huur-Tu’s music is the central importance of the horse to their culture. There are entire songs about how strong a particular horse is, or how beautiful, or fast. Scan the lyrics and you get the point pretty quickly.
But what’s surprising is how visceral the music is – how its rhythms capture the experience of riding horses and how the sounds instantly transport you to a distant part of the planet.
That distance is shrinking somewhat. On Where Young Grass Grows, which was recorded in Scotland, Huun-Huur-Tu employs Western musicians and instrument, including synthesizers and various pipes played by Marin Bennett.
CDNOW spoke with Sayan Bapa through interpreter and musicologist Ted Levin, the man who has done perhaps more than anyone to expose the sounds of Tuva to the West.
CDNOW: How would you explain throat singing to someone who has never heard it?
Sayan Bapa: It’s hard to explain. If someone feels it, he feels it. If he doesn’t, what can you do?
CDNOW: There are other styles the group sings besides xöömei. What are they and how do they differ?
Sayan Bapa: You have to understand that xöömei itself is a whole group of styles, or sub-styles. There are different kinds of throat singing and a number of different styles. We have other styles besides xöömei that are sung in a normal voice, and those co-exist with xöömei. People use the xöömei vocal timbre to sing many different kinds of songs.
CDNOW: How do you learn throat singing? How long does it take to master it?
Sayan Bapa: You can learn to do throat singing relatively quickly, but it takes many years to become a master. Anatoly Kuular began when he was very young, and did Kaigal-ool Kholvalyg. I began later, because I had moved away from Tuva and lived in a different part of the Soviet Union. Alexei Saryglar also began when he was older, in his 20s. We’ve been together as a group for seven years.
CDNOW: You use your voices and instruments to imitate the sounds of animals and environmental sounds. Is nature the primary source of inspiration for your music?
Sayan Bapa: Yes, we are expressing the relationships between nature and culture.
CDNOW: Describe some of the instruments you use and how they were made. Do you make your own instruments?
Ted Levin: The primary instruments that are used are the igil, the two-string fiddle, doshpuluur, byzanchi, xomuz, the Jew’s harp. They have a whole array of percussion instruments like the tungur, which is the shaman’s drum.
There are some instruments that the group doesn’t play that are traditional to Tuva. There’s an instrument called the shoor, which is an end-blown flute, which is still played by Tuvans living in Mongolia and China, but it’s no longer played in Tuva itself.
Because it’s the throat singing that is the most dramatic, people often overlook the very rich instrumental tradition, but it’s no less remarkable.
CDNOW: Do they make the instruments themselves?
Ted Levin: There are masters who make these instruments.
Sayan Bapa: But sometimes we make our own, too.
CDNOW: So many of the songs are about horses. Explain their importance in Tuva.
Sayan Bapa: Horses play the same role there as automobiles do in your culture. They’re absolutely the central icon of the culture. And it’s no accident that so many of these songs concern the characteristics of horses. There’s a very specific lexicon that’s connected to horses, to the naming of horses, the description of horses, the gait of horses, and all of this special vocabulary comes out in the songs.
CDNOW: Sayan, do you have a lot of horses?
Sayan Bapa: No, I’m poor [laughs]. Some of the other musicians keep them out in the countryside on special horse farms.
CDNOW: The Soviet Union controlled Tuva for many years. Did the Soviets try to stamp out traditional music?
Sayan Bapa: There were cases where instruments were burned. It was part of the Soviet “fight against the old” as they called it. Nonetheless, the music survived. People continued to play and sing.
CDNOW: Are you surprised by how your music has been received in the West?
Sayan Bapa: I wasn’t surprised, to tell the truth, because I’d heard many different kinds of music from around the world, and I knew that our music was absolutely on the same level, that’s it’s really a masterpiece of world music. And that if people could hear it performed well and hear it as real music rather than simply exotica, that they would understand it, and it would be well received.
CDNOW: You’ve collaborated with Western musicians on various projects and even on your new album. Has Western music become an influence or changed your music in any way?
Sayan Bapa: It’s a question that we debate among ourselves. Some people who are close to us, our manager, says that indeed, Western music has affected us. The way I think about it is that it’s given us more of a liberty in the way we approach our own music. We’re freer in the way that we play our music than we were before, after being exposed to a lot of different kinds of music around the world. But I don’t think it’s really changed the essence of our music.
CDNOW: You’ve toured the West several times now. What are your impressions of the different cultures you’ve seen and what are some of your favorite places?
Sayan Bapa: The West is big [laughs]. Which West? In Europe, for instance, we really like Slovenia. We don’t have a lot of time to look around, though, because we’ve always got a packed tour schedule. Here in the States, it’s interesting for us in those places where we have a lot of friends. Like here in Minnesota.
CDNOW: How did you like Scotland, where you made your most recent album?
Sayan Bapa: Edinburgh was good. There wasn’t a lot of sunlight, but many friends.
CDNOW: Recently the group underwent tests in which tiny cameras were inserted up your noses and down your throats to observe your vocal cords while you were throat singing. What was that experience like?
Sayan Bapa: It was shocking to see my own skull on the TV screen. I didn’t mind seeing inside my chest, but when I saw my skull it was a shock. [Laughs] I’m pretty good-looking.