Rest In Peace, Great Singer

Just a few days ago, we blogged about Aldyn-ool Sevek, the Tuvan master khoomeizhi ("throat singer"). Today, the New Research of Tuva published sad news: Aldyn-ool Sevek passed away after a long struggle against illness.

He was able to spend his last days in his native home at the Mongun-Taiga, the "sacred wilderness" of Tuvinian nomads.

A dated, but still unique and fascinating documentary about this region was produced in 1989, just at the end of the Soviet era.

The Greatest Khoomeizhi

As regular readers of The New Research of Tuva, we were delighted to discover this article about the master throat singer (khoomeizhi) Aldyn-ool Sevek by Valentina Suzukei, complete with this Chirayliq-friendly quote:

It was not only on a single occasion that women, both in Russia and in countries abroad told me that after listening to Aldyn-ool Sevek's recordings, they fell in love with all Tuvan men, unconditionally and sight unseen, because kargyraa is such a beautiful and vivid expression of male essence, that is very difficult to resist. "No matter how many times I heard this mighty, masculine sound, at the same time full of masculine nobility and dignity, every time it reaches into such depths of my soul, and every time it touches me to tears," - one of my colleagues-anthropologists told me, who dreams of marrying a Tuvan khoomeizhi, regardless of the fact that she is much taller than average, something that she even finds a bit embarrassing.

Kargyraa is a deep, growling double sound created with the vocal as well as the vestibular folds (more details). Here is an example of this technique:

Eduard Ondar

Tuvan actor Eduard Ondar recently visited Kazan during the all-Turkic Nauruz festival. Ondar starred in Yakut director Andrei Borisov's epic movie By the Will of Chingis Khan (2009), and his next great project is a Kazakh production where he plays a Dzungarian warlord. In an interview for Tuvinskaya Pravda, Ondar tells about the unexpected troubles that the role of the greatest warlord in Asian history brought him:

"Before, in my time off, just like most of my colleagues, I used to moonlight as a cab driver with my ancient Honda, to make a few extra kopeks. Genghis Khaan deprived me of this possibility. One day some elderly passenger that I was driving somewhere even complained to my bosses – how is this possible, the Khan himself, and he has sunk to driving a riksha? That is unsuitable."

See also: Preview of the new Kazakh movie.

Blog Tip!

Moscow Through Brown Eyes is a blog by "Buster", a graduate student and former Moscow resident, who combines experiences as an African-American in Russia with a broad interest in culture, society, literature, history and much more, which naturally results in a Chirayliq-heavy mix (as evident in the collection of attractive faces - Langston Hughes and W. E. B. Du Bois among others* - in the blog's title image).

Like Tinet, Buster has written a lot about migrant workers in Russia and other issues of social concern, but my favourite feature on MTBE is the recurring Russian Rap Friday. The last two videos have been especially sweet:



Rapper Huligan, Russian from Kazakhstan, gets to the roots with «Я провинциален» ("I'm Country").



Rapper-throatsinger Ondar sings for Tuva in Vladivostok, and Buster finds lots of yummy clips of Yul Brynner (Siberian-born Russian-Swiss-Mongolian-Roma, whom we probably should write about more) as side dishes to the main course.

*) Both Hughes and Du Bois, as well as many other African-American intellectuals, visited the USSR in the 1920's and 1930's. Hughes even travelled extensively in Central Asia in 1932, and visited China and Japan. Here's an article about how Langston Hughes' poetry survives in the school curriculum in Turkmenistan. It's also a very interesting re-telling of the chance meeting and ensuing companionship between Hughes and Arthur Koestler in the heart of Central Asia. There's also an incredible twist at the end of the story...

Throat-singing

Throat-singing (overtone singing) is practised in many parts of Central Asia, most famously perhaps in Tuva.

Two Tuvan singers, who are not identified by name on YouTube, perform the song Kombu. (This is likely an excerpt from Werner Herzog's documentary film "Glocken aus der Tiefe", about "faith and superstition in Russia".)



Yat-Kha mixes throat-singing with rock. This video, for the song Dyngyldai, was awarded the first prize for "low budget clip" at the MIDEM'97 in Cannes:

Don't miss Yat-Kha's covers of classic rock songs on his album Re-Covers ...

At the bottom of the Wikipedia article, there are several links to tutorials on throat-singing. Here is another one that's kind of cute.

...

By the way, these videos on YouTube always seem to provoke ardent discussions about what's "Turkish" and what's "Mongolian". Turkic and Mongolic peoples have been living together and mixing for hundreds of years, but there are apparently people on both sides who don't want to accept this.