Otherworldly sounds and harmonics

By Susie Davidson

CORRESPONDENT

“Testing the limits of vocal ingenuity, throat-singers can create sounds unlike anything in ordinary speech and song - carrying two musical lines simultaneously, say, or harmonizing with a waterfall,” wrote Central Asian musicologist Theodore C. Levin, the first American allowed to study Tuvan music, and collaborator/composer Michael E. Edgerton, postdoctoral fellow at the University of Wisconsin Vocal Function Laboratory.

The four-member Tuvan ensemble Huun Huur Tu, who has, since its 1999 Australian debut, extensively toured the United States, Europe and Japan, will appear at the Somerville Theater this Friday at 8 p.m. in a World Music production. It will be their first Boston appearance since February, 1999.

Expert cowboys and horsemen reside on the Siberian steppe in Tuva, an autonomous republic of Russia located on the Mongolian border. Their indigenous musical form, throat singing, reflects an intimate relationship with the beauty and harmony of the natural world. The sounds of various animals, hunter's calls, blessings for their bear hunt, shamanic healing rituals, funeral laments, lullabies and hymns can be discerned within their distinctive, highly singular vocal technique.

“For the seminomadic herders who call Tuva home, the soundscape inspires a form of music that mingles with these ambient murmurings,” said Levin and Edgerton. “Ringed by mountains, far from major trade routes and overwhelmingly rural, Tuva is like a musical Olduvai Gorge - a living record of a protomusical world, where natural and human-made sounds blend.”

Huun Huur Tu, which, according to World Music marketing assistant Mary Curtin means "sun propeller," are accompanied by traditional Tuvan steppe string and percussion instruments. These, she said, include the igil (vertical fiddle), doshpulur (a banjo-like lute), byzaanchi (a cello-like bowed instrument) and khomuz (the Tuvan jaw-harp). Additional instruments include a frame drum customarily used in shamanic rituals, and a rattle fashioned from a bull's scrotum.

“Their name connotes the vertical separation of light rays that often occurs just after sunrise or just before sunset,” she explained. “For the members of Huun Huur Tu, the refraction of light that produces these rays seems analogous to the ‘refraction’ of sound that produces articulated harmonics in Tuvan throat-singing.”

The "overtone singing" Tuvan style, called Khoomei, is created by a single vocalist emitting two or three notes simultaneously. “A key requirement to understanding Khoomei is to fully appreciate the term ‘throat-singing’,” explained American throat singer Steve Sklar, who heads the Minneapolis-based International Association for Harmonic Singing (IAHS). “It is not possible to sing Khoomei using only mouth-lip-pharyngeal techniques,” he stressed.

Although Huun Huur Tu authentically reflects and preserves their heritage, they have branched out a bit to collaborate with artists and groups who have included the Bulgarian Women's Choir Angelite and Scottish-Canadian artist Niall MacAulay.

Huun Huur Tu’s most recent album, 2001’s Best * Live, was released on the German label Jaro Records. Their most recent U.S. release is 1999’s Where Young Grass Grows, on the Shanachie label.

World Music is funded in part by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency which also receives support from the National Endowment for the Arts.

World Music presents Huun Huur Tu, the Throat Singers of Tuva, on Friday, March 14 at 8 p.m. at the Somerville Theater, 55 Davis Sq., Somerville. Tickets, $25 and $20, are available at the Somerville Theater box office and all TicketMaster outlets. To charge tickets or for more information, please call World Music at 617-876-4275 or TicketMaster at 617-931-2787.