Artist Bio:
Landscape often seems to dictates the sounds of a region's music. The traditional sounds of Tuva—a desolate hunk of sparsely populated steppes, mountains and great lakes, backed by the Gobi desert and Mongolia—seem shaped by the rugged landscape. For centuries wandering nomads and shamans used music for everything from calling herds to connecting with spirits. Often, tunes, which were played on gut-stringed fiddles and plucked, banjo-like dombras, were more drone than rhythm. Overtone singing- the art of producing two or three notes at once via amplified harmonics naturally present in the voice- oozed from these drones, giving the endless plateaus their own soundtrack. Even as what had been referred to as Tannu-Tuva became part of the Soviet Union in 1944 and its music relegated to state sponsored ensembles, the old songs never faded away.
Huun-Huur-Tu, a quartet formed in 1992, after communist control of the region crumbled and Tuva became open to foreigners, used the ancient music of this region as their raison d'etre. Yet, the two brothers, Alexander and Sayan Bapa, who formed the band with Kaigal-ool Khovalg and trad/punk outfit Yat-Kha's main man, Albert Kuvezin, infused traditional song form with something decidedly contemporary. Although everyone save Kuvezin had played in Soviet backed psuedo-folk bands, true Tuvan music, like the indigenous music of its central Asian neighbors, had never been performed by an ensemble. But one listen to "Lament of the Igil", a story set to music of the Igil, a wooden two-stringed fiddle with a horses head carved onto its neck, demonstrates just how traditional they are. The tale is a legend in Mongolia and Tuva and Huun-Huur-Tu's version nearly weeps with power. In fact, this tune, and much else recorded for their initial Shanachie disc, 1993's 60 Horses in My Herd, is performed individually, or by duos.
That same year, American ethnomusicologist Ted Levin and music fanatic Richard Leighton brought a group of Tuvan musicians to the U.S., which included members of Huun-Huur-Tu. Here, they collaborated with everyone from Frank Zappa to the Kronos Quartet. The Bapa brothers and Khovalg also appeared on Ry Cooder's film soundtrack album, Geronimo. By 1994, Kuvezin had left to pursue Yat-Kha full-time and he was replaced by Anatoli Kuular for that year's The Orphan's Lament. By their next album, 1997's If I'd Been Born an Eagle, founder member Alexander Bapa had also left to focus on producing. However, with the personnel shifts also came a larger variety of instrumentation and style. For example, newest member, Alexei Saringlar, brought with him a multi-colored pallet of musical devices, including the konguluur and duyug. While Khovalyg's deep throat-singing was still a feature, there was now a growing emphasis on harmony, and on the track, "Dangyna", they came close to sounding like a German pub band.
Oddly enough, it wasn't until 1998 that Huun-Huur-Tu toured as a group, playing a few shows in Kyzil and a few smaller villages in their homeland. Around this same time, founder member Khovalg was American musician Paul Pena's host during the making of the excellent film on the merging of two musical cultures, "Genghis Blues". However, because they are an ensemble and as a result, not technically traditional, it's been easier for them to find audiences away from Tuva. They've made appearances on the Arts and Entertainment network, as well as MTV, and the summer of 2004 found them in Canada performing, perhaps confusingly, at the Ottawa Blues Festival. Considering how quickly they were embraced by western musicians only lends further credence to their reasons for forming in the first place. Clearly westerners are starved for a music that runs deeper, and displays its roots more candidly than what is usually available in their home regions. The fact that Khovalg and newest member, Andrey Mongush, were introduced to the music as children while working as shepherds, lends what they do an authenticity that's extremely rare in an ensemble that criss-crosses the globe as often as they continue to do. —Bruce Miller
