A Musical Journey to Mongolia

 

In this blog, I will be exploring a less mainstream style of music from an eastern culture, namely Mongolia. Throat singing is a peculiar style of music discovered by various Mongolian tribes, or sects in the Mongolian culture as well as by other indigenous tribes around the world such as in Canada and South Africa, but Tuvan throat singing is the most well known. It is unknown when Mongolian throat singing was developed, but it has its roots in the ancient tradition of sound mimicry, commonly used among herders and hunters alike. It imitates the sound of the mountains, rivers, and nature in general. Until the last few decades, it was used exclusively by the men as a form of communication with animals and spirits, while in the other cultures mentioned above, it was used primarily by women and girls as a way to soothe children.

There are several different styles of throat singing depending on what elements are brought out and how the music is physically produced. Part of what makes this type of music so peculiar is that one human is able to split his voice into two parts and harmonize. A type of this harmonizing that is more like a whistling tone is showcased in the video below. The video was produced in 2020 by Batzorig Vaanchig at his home in Mongolia. Here, throat singing is used as an accompaniment to a traditional song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAua3u3DXfU

People of the more western cultures are so used to only hearing one "voice" from a singer that it is very strange to hear a throat singer harmonize, but to them, it used to be almost as natural as speaking. I say that it used to be because in the first half of the 1900's, the Soviet Union banned this singing due to its religious connotations. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Mongolian throat singing began making a comeback and is now becoming popular around the world with the rise of music as an industry and bands such as the highly acclaimed "The Hu". The Hu, a band founded in 2016 in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia uses the traditional Mongolian instruments and throat techniques to write music that would best qualify as rock. They combine traditional music with modern sound to add a unique flavor to the rock genre. One of their most popular songs is linked below. This video was produced by the Hu in 2018 in Mongolia.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4xZUr0BEfE

When I first heard this music a couple years ago, I thought the low buzzing of the human voice was very strange and I dismissed it as "not my style". The more I listen to it now, though, I've started to notice the way that the singers are able to separate their voice into a drone and harmonize to a melody and I can see why it is so special to the Mongolian culture. It has a soothing, earthy feel, especially with the more-or-less pentatonic range of the melody and deep drone. It is similar to the didgeridoo of the Aboriginal tradition. On top of the unique sound, there are tons of research papers on the physics and biology behind throat singing, and just looking over some of them makes me so much more appreciative of how incredible the human body was created to be. We have so much more potential than we know!

Sources: 

Pegg, Carole. "throat-singing". Encyclopedia Britannica, 15 Dec. 2015, https://www.britannica.com/art/throat-singing. Accessed 20 March 2024.

Thehuofficial.com. The Hu, 2024, https://www.thehuofficial.com/about-1. Accessed 20 March 2024.

Levin, Theodore C., and Michael E. Edgerton. “THE THROAT SINGERS OF TUVA.” Scientific American, vol. 281, no. 3, 1999, pp. 80–87. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/26058408. Accessed 20 Mar. 2024.