As the Huun Huur Tu quartet takes the stage, their brightly colored costumes and unusual instruments may spark curiosity. But it’s when they begin to perform that listeners become mesmerized.
These musicians are the cultural descendants of Central Asian herdsmen who developed a mysterious method of singing.
“Four men with four very simple instruments sat on stage, and filled the theater with the most amazingly rich, sonorous textures,” said Eileen Carr, coordinator of the University of Dayton Arts Series, when recalling the group’s last appearance in the area. Huun Huur Tu returns to UD on Tuesday, Feb. 1, in a concert co-sponsored by Cityfolk.
“One piece literally sounded like bird song, quite delicate,” Carr said.
“Others were so powerful you couldn’t believe the sound was produced by just these four musicians.”
Huun Huur Tu is from Tuva, a mountainous republic in southern Siberia.
Because it is so geographically remote, Tuvan music evolved its own distinct traditions. Performers play string, wind and percussion instruments that are strikingly different from those used in the West.
Tuvans are best known for “throat singing,” a vocal technique that combines low drones with high-pitched whistles, enabling one person to create a duet or trio. The haunting effect mimics the complex layers of sound heard in nature, according to Alexander Bapa, a spokesperson for the group.
“They are the sounds of the mountain, the sounds of the river, of the steppe, of the wind, of the animals,” he said.
Since the 1990s, the members of Huun Huur Tu have been Tuva’s musical ambassadors. They’ve collaborated with artists including Frank Zappa, Ry Cooder and the Kronos Quartet. Their latest release, “Eternal,” blends throat singing with the rhythmic electronics of producer Carmen Rizzo.
There’s nothing unique about Tuvan anatomy that gives them the ability to throat sing, as every vocalist produces secondary tones rather than one pure pitch. But Tuvans have perfected the technique over centuries, perhaps due to the isolation that comes with their nomadic lifestyle. It seems while watching his cattle on the frigid steppes, a man who can sing a duet with himself is never alone.
Whatever the category of "world music" means, it isn't much. It's used, uselessly, to encompass everything from Columbian cumbia to Nigerian highlife to the throat singing of Huun-Huur-Tu, a band from the Republic of Tuva that's been making spectacularly strange music for almost two decades. The bedrock of Huun-Huur-Tu's music is the group's otherworldly vocal technique, which employs very low notes and circular breathing to create tones that sound like electric guitars plugged in and left on the floor to drone. (This explains the healthy subset of metal fans in its audience.) For years, the band used only guitar and Tuvan instruments, gradually opening up to harps and tabla. Eternal, a 2009 collaboration with Carmen Rizzo, was somewhere between placid spa music and rougher, more abstract electonica. Live, though, the band is never a background affair. Still a quartet after 18 years, Huun-Huur-Tu creates a deeply resonant buzz that is simultaneously human and identifiable.
01/26/10
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