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Throat Singing in the Blue Ridge - An International Cultural Exchange

Beginning October 5, Galax, Virginia , will be host to an unusual international exchange. A group of 8 musicians and throat singers from the remote mountains of the Altai Republic in Central Asia will spend a week in Galax and nearby communities, meeting Virginia mountain musicians, performing, visiting musical instrument makers, and learning how Virginia counties and communities cooperated in creating a Crooked Road organization to represent their musical communities.

A highlight of their visit will be a public performance on October 7 at the Blue Ridge Music Center , located at Milepost 213 on the Blue Ridge Parkway . The afternoon performance will feature musical exchanges with Virginia musicians, and is sponsored by the Blue Ridge Music Center and the Arts of Council of the Twin Counties.

The visitors are members of a well known performing group, Altai Kai, consisting of the finest musicians in their region performing the traditional “throat singing” of Central Asia. They also perform on handmade string musical instruments and native flutes.

The troupe has won numerous competitions and is famous in Asia and Eastern Europe . In 2005 they won a UNESCO international competition for world music. Their nation, the Altai Republic , has established a site devoted to their music on the World Wide Web, and a Czech site allows the downloading of their music (Google Altai Kai for a sampling of these sites and a dozen others created by fans of these musicians.)

Throat singing has become a favorite world music style in recent years, knowledge of it spread by the cult movie “Genghis Blues”, the touring of the Silk Road ensembles of Yo-Yo Ma, by troupes of Tibetan Monks, and by singers from Tuva, a region that borders Altai. The style is also found in Mongolia , but many of the finest singers have always been from the Altai Mountains .

Throat singing differs from other singing in that a single singer produces two or three distinct tones at the same time. This is accomplished by creating audible overtones. All tones produce overtones, resonate notes far up the sonic ladder from the fundamental tone. These usually cannot be heard, as the fundamental tone is louder. But the Altai learned to make the overtone as loud as the fundamental tone that produces it by altering the shape of resonate cavities in the mouth, larynx, and pharynx. It is an eerily beautiful effect, one of the greatest virtuosic skills in the music of the world.

There are some 200,000 people in Altai, living in villages scattered among mountains, lakes, and taiga. Their language is Altianan, an ancient Turkic tongue, and their closest neighbors are the Tuvans and Uigurs of middle Asia . Altai is one of the cradles of ancient civilization, and the Scythians left many monuments there. Other ancient people passed by, among them the Huns and the White Horde that galloped out of Asia to challenge the Romans.

It is a place of stunning beauty, with snowy mountains peaks that reach 13,500 feet, and crystal lakes and glaciers. It is far north, and has challenging weather; summer temperatures may reach 100 degrees, but may dive to 80 below zero in winter. It is bordered by Mongolia , Kazakhstan , China , and Tibet . The Altai are herders of sheep, and yaks, and are much devoted to horsemanship.

Penelope Moseley
Executive Director
Arts Council of the Twin Counties
www.artsculturalcouncil.org
(276)238-1217

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