History
The musicians of Alash are Bady-Dorzhu Ondar, Ayan-ool Sam, and Ayan Shirizhik. Originally called Changy-Xaya, the group was formed at Kyzyl Arts College in 1999 and became the resident traditional ensemble. The outgrowth of this musical exploration is the ensemble Alash, which is named for the Alash River that flows through the musicians' home region of Tuva. Since its inception, Alash has undergone several personnel changes. In 2004, Alash won first prize at the International Xöömei (throat singing) Symposium competition.
Alash toured the United States in 2006 at the invitation of the Open World Leadership Center at the Library of Congress with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. Their trip was organized by CEC ArtsLink, an organization that orchestrates cross-cultural arts exchanges and grants between the US and Central Europe, Russia, and Eurasia.
Alash has toured the United States every year since, playing at a variety of venues. They also conduct workshops at schools and colleges to share their music and culture with American young people. In December 2008, December 2009 and December 2010, Alash toured with the American group Béla Fleck and the Flecktones to promote the Flecktones' Grammy winning album Jingle All the Way , which features Alash as guest artists.
In August 2007, the group performed for President Vladimir Putin while he was on holiday in Tuva.
Overtone singing, also known as overtone chanting, harmonic singing, polyphonic overtone singing, or diphonic singing, is a set of singing techniques in which the vocalist manipulates the resonances of the vocal tract to arouse the perception of additional separate notes beyond the fundamental frequency that is being produced.
Béla Fleck and the Flecktones is an American band that combines jazz and bluegrass music.
Béla Anton Leoš Fleck is an American banjo player. An acclaimed virtuoso, he is an innovative and technically proficient pioneer and ambassador of the banjo, playing music from bluegrass, jazz, classical, rock and various world music genres. He is best known for his work with the bands New Grass Revival and Béla Fleck and the Flecktones. Fleck has won 17 Grammy Awards and been nominated 39 times.
The Tuvans or Tyvans are a Turkic ethnic group indigenous to Siberia who live in Russia (Tuva), Mongolia, and China. They speak Tuvan, a Siberian Turkic language. In Mongolia they are regarded as one of the Uriankhai people groups.
The igil is a two-stringed Tuvan musical instrument, played by bowing the strings. The neck and lute-shaped sound box are usually made of a solid piece of pine or larch. The top of the sound box may be covered with skin or a thin wooden plate. The strings, and those of the bow, are traditionally made of hair from a horse's tail, but may also be made of nylon. Like the morin khuur of Mongolia, the igil typically features a carved horse's head at the top of the neck above the tuning pegs, and both instruments are known as the horsehead fiddle.
Paul Jerrod Pena was an American singer, songwriter and guitarist of Cape Verdean descent.
Kongar-ool Borisovich Ondar was a master Soviet and Russian Tuvan throat singer and a member of the Great Khural of Tuva.
Tuva is a part of Russia, inhabited by a Turkic people. Tuvans are known abroad for khoomei (xöömej), a kind of overtone singing.
Huun-Huur-Tu are a music group from Tuva, a Russian federative republic situated on the Mongolia–Russia border. Their music includes throat singing, in which the singers sing both a note and its overtones, thus producing two or three notes simultaneously. The overtone may sound like a flute, whistle or bird, but is solely a product of the human voice.
Sainkho Namtchylak is a singer originally from Tuva, an autonomous republic in the Russian Federation just north of Mongolia. She is known for her Tuvan throat singing or Khöömei.
Throat singing refers to several vocal practices found in different cultures worldwide. These vocal practices are generally associated with a certain type of guttural voice that contrasts with the most common types of voices employed in singing, which are usually represented by chest (modal) and head registers. Throat singing is often described as producing the sensation of more than one pitch at a time, meaning that the listener perceives two or more distinct musical notes while the singer is producing a single vocalization.
Chirgilchin, meaning "dance of the air in the heat of the day" or "miracle" in Tuvan, is a group of Tuvan musicians performing traditional Tuvan music. It was established in 1996.
Alash may be a transliteration from various Turkic languages into English of the following terms:
Mongol-Tuvan throat singing, the main technique of which is known as khoomei, is a style of singing practiced by people in Tuva and Mongolia. It is noted for including overtone singing. In 2009, it was included in the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity of UNESCO. The term hömey / kömey means throat and larynx in different Turkic languages. That could be borrowed from Mongolian khooloi, which means throat as well, driven from Proto-Mongolian word *koɣul-aj.
Theodore Craig Levin is an American ethnomusicologist. He is a professor of music at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire and earned his undergraduate degree at Amherst College and obtained his Ph.D. from Princeton University. Levin has focused his research on the people of the Balkans, Siberia, and Central Asia. His recordings from these regions have been released on various labels.
The Tuvan National Orchestra reflects the complex history of the Republic of Tuva, a federal subject of Russia which sits at the southern edge of Siberia, with Mongolia to its south. Over the centuries, Tuva has been part of Chinese and Mongolian empires, and shares many cultural ties with Mongolia. In 1944 it joined the Soviet Union, and Tuva is now a constituent republic of the Russian Federation.
K-Space are a British-Siberian experimental electroacoustic improvisation music ensemble comprising Scottish percussionist Ken Hyder, English multi-instrumentalist Tim Hodgkinson, and Siberian percussionist and throat singer Gendos Chamzyryn. The trio was formed in Tuva, Siberia in 1996. They have played in concerts in Asia and Europe, and released four CDs, including Infinity (2008), which was a new type of CD that is different every time it is played.
Jingle All the Way is a Christmas album and the thirteenth album overall by Béla Fleck and the Flecktones. Released in 2008 under Rounder, it marks the band's first record since their departure from Columbia. Jingle All the Way reached #1 on the Top Contemporary Jazz chart, the group's first album to do so since 1991. It also won the 2009 Grammy Award for Best Pop Instrumental Album.
Soriah is an American overtone singer, performance artist, multi-instrumentalist, and shamanic ritualist headquartered in Portland, Oregon and The Tuvan Republic. His music is a synthesis of traditional forms such as Tuvan throat singing, Shamanic music, Raga, and pre-Columbian Mexica music and language; with avant garde musical styles like Industrial, Ambient, Noise, and Goth. Likewise, his live performance is a fusion of costume and ritual from Tuva, Mexico, North American Native cultures, and Western Ceremonial Magic traditions; as well as chaos magic, butoh, and modern primitive movements of the 20th century. His lyrics, when there are any, are often written in the Nahuatl or traditional Tuvan languages. He won the title of "Best Foreigner" at the 2008 Ustuu-Khuree Festival in Chadanaa Tuva, and in that same year placed as "Third Laureate" at The International Throat Singing Symposium, which remains the highest award given to a non-Tuvan in the history of the Symposium. He also won 2nd Place in the Tuvan Nation Kargyraa Competition in 2014, was given a special award as "Great innovator of the art of Tuvan Throat Singing" in 2016, and won Best Kargyraa Performance at the Khoomei in the Center of Asia Festival 2019. As a solo artist, and with various collaborators and musical ensembles, Soriah has toured throughout the United States, Europe, Asia, and Mexico. He is considered the highest-ranked non-native practitioner of Tuvan throat singing.
