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About a year ago the Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin visited the tiny Russian republic of Tuva, in Southern Sibera (pop 300,000). His close political ally, Sergei Shoigu, Russia's minister for emergency situations, is a Tuvan, and has established a training base there.
A highlight of the trip was a performance by Huun Huur Tu, the four-man ensemble of Tuvan throat singers. Putin compared their music to the multilayered paintings of the moon by a famous Russian painter, and invited them to accompany him to China, to
play for that country's president.
Huun Huur Tu are taking on a very different audience in Scotland this month. They are one of 11 groups from nine different countries in the Love Music Festival, whose performers are playing to about 10,000 Scottish children aged four to 18, in seven four-day festivals ranging from Stornoway to Banchory. It is backed by a grant of nearly £500,000 from Creative Scotland's Inspire Fund.
If they won over Russia's leader, how will the Tuvans fare with Stornoway schoolchildren? Performing in a line-up that includes an award-winning "beat-boxer" and tuba improv the answer surely is that they will knock their Hebridean socks off.
The Tuvans appeared at the Glasgow City Halls this weekend, as the wide-ranging festival got under way. After the various four-day festivals with performances tailored to different age groups, the whole project climaxes with a final family day, open to the public at the Eden Court Theatre on Sunday 13 November, and featuring all the bands.
They describe throat-singing as a cultural and musical equivalent to bagpiping, or even traditional psalm-singing in western Scotland. The group are no strangers to Scotland; they had an award-winning run on the Fringe in the 1990s, which of course cost their promoter about £50,000 after their venue went bust, and have appeared here on a string of world tours.
Kaigal-ool Khovalyg is the founder, a People's Artist of the Russian Federation. Sayan Bapa was in a Russian jazz-rock band before he returned to his roots. Like them, Radik Tyulyush and Alexei Saryglar live in Kyzyl, Tuva's capital. They play traditional instruments such as the two-string igil, traditionaly made from horse skin.
Throat-singers develop muscles, the so-called "fake vocal chords", that are normally inactive. It allows them to produce "overtones" of multiple pitches with a low bass drone and a higher melody from the tongue. "In Scotland you have pipes," says Sayan. "It's the same. It's from our stomach. It's our pipes." They once had their throats examined by New York otolaryngologists using micro-video cameras.
"I also participated.
It was not that pleasant to have cameras here," says the group's veteran Russian promoter, Alexander Cheparukhin.
"Any attempt of non-Tuvans to imitate Tuvan throat singing is usually not successful," he adds.
Composer Stephen Deazley, who produced the Dream Angus opera with Alexander McCall Smith, and is a veteran of championing children's involvement in music, at the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and elsewhere, came up with the idea for the festival. "They said, 'Give us your big ideas,'" he says.
The Inspire Fund grant appears huge - about half the annual grant funding of a major Scottish theatre, say, or about enough to stage a mainscale opera - but there's little doubt it will make an impression. Five musical "animateurs" have been heading into schools to spend two or three days, prepping teachers and pupils for what they are about to see.
The line-up includes: Hobbit, the 22-year-old "beatboxer" from Cheltenham; Oren Marshall, an London electric tuba virtuoso; a harmonica quartet from Finland; Bulgaria's Eva Quartet of four top young women singers; and equally high-profile, esoteric offerings from France, Canada and elsewhere. "We are bringing stuff that young people wouldn't access on their own," says Deazley. "We are not going classical, we are not doing Scottish traditional, we are not doing contemporary pop, we are doing something different."
Of the Tuvans, he says: "It's the most remarkable sonic experience unlike anyone else in the world. The sound of it is amazing, just so unusual and beguiling. I'm not saying they should love it, but they will be amazed by it."
Tuva's people speak mostly their own language. There are thousands of throat singers, but only a few professional bands, from a society traditionally dominated by nomadic herders. They began performing internationally after the fall of the Soviet Union, brought to Europe by Dutch ethno-musicologists.
A festival spokesman says: "Kids in schools just don't have access to this kind of music. If you're a kid growing up in Stornoway or Shetland or Banchory or wherever, you're probably never ever going to listen to this music let alone meet the musicans and hear them live. It's about opening boundaries, opening minds, opening the world."
Correction
Apologies to Ian Smith. He is the former head of music for the Scottish Arts Council and now leads on music and IP development at Creative Scotland, not Iain Munro, as the diary reported last week. Munro is a director of creative development with the organisation. 11/05/10
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