Huun Huur Tu Tuvan Throat Singers

In 1992, Huun-Huur-Tu was founded by Sasha Bapa, his brother Sayan, and two other musicians, Kaigal-ool Khovalyg and Albert Kuvezin. Ever since, they have tried to focus on the performance of “old and forgotten songs”, as Sasha put it. Sasha, Sayan, and Kaigal-ool were refugees of one of the large state-managed song and dance ensembles that became fixed institutions of the public cultural life during the Soviet era. For decades, these ensembles with their glitzy performances offered the only possibility for young musicians to play indigenous music for a living. Throughout the privatization of the music business in the former Soviet Union, many musicians decided to abandon these state ensembles and form their own groups.

Sasha Bapa explained the meaning of ‘Huun-Huur-Tu’ as the vertical separation of light rays that one often see out on the grasslands just after sunrise or just before sunset. It seems to be a metaphor for the band’s key element– throat-singing that “consists of producing a deep tone in such a way as to create one or two substantial harmonics. The first harmonic is a humming sound in the mid-range, and on top is a loud whistling tone that the singer raises and lowers to create a weird sort of melody by varying the embouchure” (Jon Sobel, Blogcritics Magazine).

Through their heavy touring, Huur-Tu can truly be seen as a leading force in popularizing throat singing or khöömei in the past 25 years.