Yat-Kha
Vsevolod Pudovkin's 1928 silent film masterpiece, Storm Over Asia, is, among other things, a brilliant piece of propaganda. Set in Mongolia, circa 1918, during a British occupation, the film bounces brilliantly from breathtaking scenery to tight narrative and intense drama. Yet, until 2001, when England's Film Preservation Associates and BFI collections restored it to its original 128 minutes, only butchered video copies could be found. So it made perfect sense when the film, on its 13-city U.S. tour, was supported by the live accompaniment of Tuvan avant-traditional misfits, Yat-Kha.
The tour was the group's first-ever visit to the States, and their music was a revelation. Because of the semi-improvisatory nature of Yat-Kha's accompaniment, the soundtrack gave them the opportunity to roam sonically over the terrain near their own homeland, cranking out stormy, rumbling drones of overtone singing and occasionally slipping into guitar driven snippets of "In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida", or whatever other western rock anthem they felt appropriate. In so doing, they espoused a revolution in Central Asian music to match the politics of the film.
Yat-Kha, which is the traditional name for a large Tuvan zither, was formed in the late eighties by vocalist, guitarist and yat-kha player Albert Kuvezin, who was also a founder member of traditional Tuvan music heavyweights, Huun-Huur-Tu. In fact, Kuvezin, is the centerpiece for what has been a revolving collective of musicians that once included Lu Edmonds from 3 Mustaphas 3 infamy. Kuvezin grew up singing kargyraa, the particular type of overtone- or throat- singing identified with the howling winds of winter. A recording Kuvezin did in the early nineties with Russian electronics musician Ivan Sokolovsky is an excellent example of what the desolate tundra of Yat-Kha's homeland actually sounds like. Kuvezin's singing stays in the lower registers, while Sokolovsky stirs up a torrent of whooshes and scrapes behind him, ultimately sounding like a fast approaching storm. While the piece, titled "Tundra's Ghosts/Wanderer's Charm", relies heavily on a singing tradition centuries old, the end result is an avant-garde sound event that nestles alongside such electronics pioneers as Alvin Lucier or Brian Eno.
In fact, it was Eno who, while in the position of international judge at Kazakhstan's 1990 "Voices of Asia" festival, brought Yat-Kha to larger recognition. This early attention allowed for wider touring and recording opportunities. Their earliest known release, a cassette from 1993 entitled Khanparty gave them an aural document, and two years later, their first CD, Yenisei Punk, proved how powerful an influence rock and roll had been on Kuvezin while he was a teenager playing football. Here, his guttural singing is flanked by percussion, tungur, trumpet and guitar for a series of heavy, dirge-like drones that might be compared to Black Sabbath, had they been from Central Asia.
But it wasn't until a 1998 signing with Paddy Maloney's (of Chieftains fame) Wicklow label and the subsequent Dalai Beldiri CD that anything like real momentum occurred. The disc won the 1999 German critic's prize and Yat-Kha spent the next three years touring Europe and eventually, the USA, where, aside from backing Storm Over Asia, they found themselves sharing stages with the Chieftains. By the end of 2001, they'd won a BBC3 Radio Award for World Music, and, in a fantastic full-circle of recognition, that award was presented to them by Brian Eno.
Group members came and went, and by the end of 2001, the teenaged Sailyk Ommun brought her wavering, almost bluesy vocals to the band. The tours and album releases continued as well, including "bootleg series" discs from 2001 and 2005, while 2003's Tuva.rock found them dabbling with English and perhaps hinting at the concept found on their current release, Re-Covers. This disc finds Kuvezin and crew digging into the western rock that they initially listened to on illegal pressings in a formerly Communist controlled Tuva. Included are all but unrecognizable versions of songs by artists ranging from Captain Beefheart to Joy Division, The Rolling Stones to Hank Williams. —Bruce Miller