Tuvan Throat Singing

Tuvan throat singing produces two or more pitches simultaneously from a single throat — a low fundamental plus selectively reinforced overtones, separated enough that the upper partial sounds like a separate flute or whistle riding above the drone. Major styles include khoomei (the basic technique), sygyt (a piercing high whistle), kargyraa (a deep, growling sub-fundamental), borbangnadyr and ezengileer. The sound vocabulary often imitates horses, wind and water — the natural soundscape of the Tuvan steppes.

Tuva is an autonomous republic of the Russian Federation in southern Siberia, bordering Mongolia, with a Turkic-speaking nomadic culture organised around horse herding. Throat singing developed in this context as solitary vocal practice — songs to ride to, sing to oneself with — drawing on the surrounding acoustic environment. Through the late twentieth century, Tuvan throat singing entered the international world-music circuit, with groups like Huun-Huur-Tu and Yat-Kha touring widely. UNESCO inscribed it on the Representative List in 2009.

Track the upper overtone — once the ear catches the second pitch above the fundamental, the music's logic snaps into place. On Huun-Huur-Tu's Kongurey (1993), the horse-hoof rhythm in the accompaniment is overt; the overtones float above it.

Huun-Huur-Tu's Kongurey is the most accessible entry. Then explore Yat-Kha for harder-edged contemporary versions.

Western awareness of Tuvan throat singing largely dates to the late 1970s, when the physicist and amateur musicologist Richard Feynman became obsessed with travelling to Tuva — a journey he never completed before his death in 1988, though it spawned a documentary and several recordings.