In this issue: The Unearthly Song of Igor Koshkendey and The Tenores di Bitti
The Julian Bream review was well-received. Judging by my mail, more listmembers were already familiar with his work than with anything else I've reviewed.
Occasional appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, I don't review obscure music out of sheer perversity, but from necessity. I could dig into my collection and review some performance of Beethoven's Fifth or the Beatles' "Revolver," but there wouldn't be much point. Everyone knows this music already
At the same time, I have to admit that I have an unshakable thirst for musical novelty. As a result I almost have a "one of everything" collection. (I'm still waiting for the perfect Zydeco album, in case anyone has any recommendations.) Fortunately, human inventiveness is such that I doubt I'll run out of material any time soon. Case in point: this issue's venture into overtone singing. It does not get much weirder than this. Until next time, that is, when we examine the unclassifiable music of one of the world's most famous miniaturists and buskers, Moodog.
IGOR KOSHKENDEY, MUSIC FROM TUVA, Amiata Records; TENORES DI BITTI, S'AMORE 'E MAMA, RealWorld Records
Igor Koshkendey is from Tuva, which the part of Mongolia that was controlled by the former Soviet Union. The group Tenores di Bitti is from Sardinia, an Italian island in the Mediterranean. What these two have in common is the practice of overtone singing, a practice also shared by the Xosa women of southern Africa as well as some avant-garde and New Age musicians of the West.
Overtone singing is difficult to describe without at least a little background in the physics and perception of sound. When a person sings or an acoustic instrument like a violin or trumpet produces a note, what we actually hear is many tones at once. The lowest, which is normally the loudest, is called the fundamental, and it is the pitch that we hear the whole aggregate as being. The other notes are overtones of the fundamental (also called harmonics), that is, their frequencies are multiples of that of the fundamental. So we hear the first overtone, which is an octave higher (twice the frequency) of the fundamental, the second overtone, which is an octave plus a fifth higher (three times the frequency), and so on, until the overtone series passes the point of human audibility, on average around the sixteenth overtone.
Overtones are the reason why voices and instruments don't sound like synthesizers, which can produce pure tones. They are also one reason why voices and instruments sound different from each other. Because of the qualities of the sound source (vocal chord, string, reed, etc.) as well as those of the resonating cavity (the chest, the body of the guitar or violin, etc.), various overtones are louder than others. We hear the aggregate of the weighted overtone series as a timbre or distinctive voice sounding the fundamental pitch. This is the major source of tone color as discussed in the Julian Bream review.
What an overtone singer does is accentuate - make louder - one or more overtones until they cease to be heard as a mere modification of the fundamental and are heard as distinct tones in their own right. He does this by producing tension in and around the vocal chords and by changing the shape of the sinuses, mouth and chest. This allows one or more overtones to resonate more fully, i.e. to become louder.
There are varieties of overtone singing. The Tuvans have at least five that vary by how low the fundamental is and by which harmonics are emphasized. Some are useful for singing lyrics, others only for producing a wordless tune. The overall effect is eerie to say the least. Sometimes it sounds like a strange growl, almost like Popeye the Sailor Man, sometimes it sounds like a mid-range tone accompanied by a whistling sound, sometimes it sounds a little like several people singing at once.
Overtone singing became widely known in the West in the late 60s when avant-garde composer Karlheinz Stockhausen used it in his piece "Stimmung" ("Voice"). Since then the New Agers have picked up on its alleged celestial healing properties (an idea they got from Tibetan religious chanting) and others have picked up on the sheer fun of it. Interestingly, bluesman John Lee Hooker has used it for decades at the end of his song "Boom Boom." We're not concerned with the mystical uses of overtone singing here. The two groups we're looking at are both solid folk groups.
The more interesting of the two, in my opinion, is Igor Koshkendey. Koshkendey leads a small ensemble of traditional instruments - like the Tuvan lute, fiddle, and my favorite, a rattle made from a bull's scrotum - and is occasionally accompanied by a female singer. She does not do overtone singing, however, because Tuvan society believes it causes sterility! Although most singers seem to specialize in one style, Koshkendey performs the full-range of what the Tuvans call "Khoomei" or throat singing.
After listening to "Music from Tuva" for awhile I started noticing, half-consciously, a similarity to the music of the old American West. There are, surprisingly, a couple of similarities. First is a beat like a horse. The Tuvans are horse-people. They spend a lot of time on horses; they sing about their horses; horses play a role in their shamanistic religion; and they use the rhythm of horses in their music. In the song "Cheler Ojuhm (Dedicated to the Horse)," the fiddle-player does an astonishing imitation of horse whinnying over a galloping beat carried by the lute. Second - and I'm not sure this is really part of the music - is the fact that Tuva is big sky, sheep-herding country, sort of like Montana or Wyoming.
Third is the effect of the small ensemble and unpretentious tunes. Despite the bizarre nature of the singing, Tuvan music is quite accessible. The melodies are straightforward and attractive, quite hummable, in fact. You could easily imagine Western folk music or lullabies set to these tunes. It's not quite "Home on the Range," but it's closer than any music made by an Oriental people absorbed into the Soviet sphere has a right to be.
My favorite tracks are the first two. "Dingildai" (pronounced "dungle-dye") is actually a riddle song. It begins with a creepy strum across a zither-like instrument. The fiddle and lute sound a repetitive, rhythmic figure, and then Koshkendey sings the song. The melody has an almost nursery rhyme-like quality, except that it sounds like a demon from Hell is singing it. Koshkendey displays at least three styles of throat singing in just this one song. The more popular Tuvan group Huun-Huur-Tu performs this song on one of their albums as well. They bring out the humorous element better, but at the cost of some of its magnificence.
The second song is a patriotic number entitled "Tuva Chonum, Ergim Cherim." This song begins with Koshkendey starting at the bottom of his range and sort of chanting his way up punctuated by hiccough sounds. Then a low lute plucks a serious figure, joined by the fiddle and the steady pound of a drum. Koshkendey intones the words in buzzing, slightly ringing style. The effect is very somber indeed.
Despite their presence in the heart of the West, the overtone singers of Sardinia are less well-known - and less is known about them. In legend the practice goes back 5000 years, which I find improbable in the extreme, if only because I doubt that any place in Europe has been occupied by a continuous cultural group for that long.
Be that as it may, the Sardinians are the only bearers of the overtone tradition in the West that I've heard of (except for some scattered groups on continental Italy). Their approach is quite different from the Tuvans. Instead of featuring one (or sometimes two) singers and a few instruments, the Sardinians sing a capella. Typically a tenore group, as they're called, features a solo vocalist who does not sing overtone style, backed by a small chorus (three or more) of overtone singers. This is the pattern followed by the quartet Tenores di Bitti, who hail from the Sardinian town of (you guessed it!) Bitti.
The form of the Tenores' songs varies rather less than that of Koshkendey's. The lead vocalist or "boke" starts a melody and the other three join in; then this pattern repeats. The boke sometimes sings what the chorus sings, but more often chants something different. The boke, in this case, Piero Sanno, sounds like a cross between an American Indian shaman and an Italian priest intoning the liturgy. It's not full-flight singing.
The boke's style stands in deliberate contrast with the chorus'. They do sing - amazingly. If one overtone singer can sound like three people, then three can sound like nine. This is quite an effect. Furthermore, the Sardinians do not employ the wide, weird variety of sounds the Tuvans use. They stick to a sweeter sounding, mid-range style - no guttaral growling, no shrill whistling, no Popeye the Sailor Man. This enables them to create a close harmony that heightens the effect of there being many singers, especially when they sing in a church or other resonant location.
Wherever they sing, however, the chorus has an overwhelming, space-filling power. They're everywhere all at once. And as they slowly shift through chords the effect is mind-wrenching - as if the earth moves. These shifts are punctuated by almost subliminal grunts, as if the syllable "Hoo!" is being squeezed out of them as change gears or close off a phrase.
As impressive as the choral overtone sound is, however, "S'amore 'e Mama (The Mother's Love)" is a bit of a disappointment. The form becomes a bit formulaic; the brain cries out for some variety. The producers wisely vary the acoustic from track to track and include a street sounds track at the end, but this is just not enough. I enjoy the Tenores di Bitti, but I rarely listen to more than three tracks in a row. It's somewhat paradoxical: by the standards of Western art music, the Tenores would probably be judged more developed, but I find Koshkendey far more interesting.
I haven't heard it yet and so cannot recommend it, but a label called World Network has issued an anthology of different tenore groups on one CD, including Tenores di Bitti. This might provide some much needed diversity. I look forward to an opportunity to listen to it.
Now for a couple of thinking points: First, it's interesting that widely separated groups like the Tuvans and the Sardinians developed similar techniques. I suppose that the potential is latent in the human voice everywhere, but I wonder why it was cultivated where it was.
Does the fact that both groups practice shepherding in what many consider a barren land have anything to do with it? The Tuvans are shamanistic and the Sardinians are Catholic, but the Sardinians apparently are inspired by and imitate the sounds of animals (and who knows what religion the original Sardinian overtone singers practiced). Perhaps the closeness to nature has something to do with the parallel development. If you spend a lot of time chasing sheep, on horseback or on foot, you might have nothing better to do than make funny noises, too.
There's an old anthropological tradition that claimed that culture is determined by landscape and climate. This tradition was linked with 19th-century pseudo-scientific racism and may not contain anything salvageable, but it's worth a look.
Second, is the business of the funny noises themselves. While probably no one would go so far as to claim that overtone singing, even in its Tuvan incarnation, was deliberately ugly, a la modern art, it is certainly weird. And it raises the question of the limits of the aesthetic. Can anything be turned into an element of art if placed in an appropriate context? Is beauty, as Ayn Rand suggested, harmony of the parts, and not a matter of the parts themselves? Whether this idea is true or not, it certainly challenges us to reconsider that which we might have found unattractive and to reexamine it for the beauty it might contain on its own strange terms.
To hear Igor Koshkendey at Amazon.com, click here. To hear the Tenores di Bitti at CDNow, click here.