A Throat Singing Narrative

I believe my first encounter with throat singing was when studying music at CEGEP Saint-Laurent in Montreal. As part of our music history class, we attended a conference on ancient instruments. The lecturer, whose name I unfortunately can't remember, had a massive collection of instruments from across Europe and Asia. At some point, he briefly gave an example of what overtone singing sounded like, pointing that one had to vocalize the sound “IL” to emphasize partials. This little apparté was brief and had little to do with the main topic of the conference, but it captured my imagination. Later, I rented a Smithsonian Folkways CD entitled Tuva – Voices from the Center of Asia in which vernacular names and specific techniques were described in reference to specific tracks. Armed with this collection of field recordings and a very vague practical tip, I began to try to imitate the sounds of khoomei.

During my CEGEP years, I refined my knowledge by occasionally listening to central Asian throat singers and artists. This passive interest eventually led me to realize that throat singing is an umbrella term encompassing several unrelated vocal techniques from around the world. I vaguely understood that throat singing existed in different forms in the Tundra, in Central Asia and on the Tibetan plateau, a trichotomy I would later learn was much more complex. Meanwhile, I was getting a grip on what is often called the ‘European’ overtone singing style, a variant in which overtones are emphasized at the expense of other technical and timbral elements which define Central Asian throat singing. This is the technique that was largely popularized by ethnomusicologist Tran Quang Hai in his research and workshops. Such takes on overtone singing have since been used by various western singers, some pushing it to new extremes of virtuosity.

University was an eye opener for research methodology and rigor. During my first semester, I had the chance to have an introductory course on music traditions from around the world taught by Frédéric Léotar, whose research object happens to be Central Asian throat singing. His course was just an overview of the diversity of musics that exists beyond the commercial framework western audiences have internalized, but it was enough to nuance my understanding of what throat singing is (among other things). For one, it was his course that made me realize khoomei singing is a Central Asian phenomenon, not a strictly Mongolian or Tuvan one. It exists in several regions, such as Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. As the spread of nomadic tribes precede the modern boundaries of these countries, a plethora of similar musical and vocal traditions exist throughout the region. It is said khoomei originally came from Altai, a chain of mountain now divided between Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan and China. The diversity of vernacular names given to these techniques from one local tradition to the next make their definitive classification a challenge. Another thing I discovered is that similar vocal techniques exist in unrelated places, notably Sardinia in the Mediterranean sea.

Travelling yet again contributed to nuance my understanding. In the summer of 2016, I travelled for the first time outside of North America, with my good friend and bandmate Claude. He and I took the plane to Nepal, which felt like the next best thing to travelling to Tibet (which is controlled by China and therefore highly expensive and restricted). While lodging in Pokhara, I visited a nearby village where Tibetan refugees were a majority. In the local temple, I witnessed an hour-long Buddhist ritual in which chanting was heard. However, I heard nothing like what recordings got me used to. Further research highlighted that extremely low chanting is specific to certain monks and lamas and not generalized throughout Tibetan Buddhism. It also became clear to me that there was no such thing as a musical tradition of Tibetan throat singing, as its use is more associated with ritual than entertainment. Musical appreciation and commercialisation of tibetan chanting would thus be a recent phenomenon. This contrasts greatly with Inuit throat singing, which is a secular musical game now often played in competitions. 

(Note the microphones and the stage setting, a clear sign of decontextualisation)

By the time I started to experiment with throat singing in my band Sutrah, I was far from the only metal singer doing so. From Inner Mongolian folk metal to YouTubers filming their vocal folds, many have fomented a link between throat singing techniques and extreme distorsion techniques. A pioneer in that respect is Montreal-based Sébastien Croteau (Necrotic Mutation, ex-Exhult, ex-Globe Glotters) who in the early 2000’s briefly retired from extreme metal to experiment with throat singing and effectively become the first death metal voice actor for video games. This story was sort of a local myth for me, until I decided to look closer into the character and watch Croteau’s 2018 lecture on the subject. I found his reconciliation of death growl—an “urban throat singing style”—with other throat singing traditions highly interesting. So interesting in fact that I felt an urge to push the subject further.

Upon starting my master’s degree, I had an opportunity to write a paper about extreme vocal techniques for the course Acoustics of Musical Instruments. In my research, I chose to start from Sébastien Croteau’s premise, namely that death growl and throat singing have things in common, and develop his argument. On one hand, literature helped me identify some physiological similarities in the way those techniques are produced. On the other hand, spectral analyses of my own voice showed that select techniques from both metal and throat singers produce similar effects on the sound spectrum. For example, pig squeals isolate a narrow frequency range to create a whistling sound that is in fact much higher than the base noise produced the vocalist. This control of partials is like what overtone singers do to create a whistling melody over a drone sound. I had a lot of doubts about my methodology along the way, but my final presentation on the subject was well received and the teacher encouraged me to keep digging the topic. Ethnomusicological research on throat singing is fairly common, and several studies on metal vocal techniques exist, but almost none attempt to make those two worlds collide. In practice, more and more extreme vocalist are getting interested in throat singing. Rock and metal bands hailing from central Asia are also increasing on the international sphere. Seeking and producing data to supplement Sébastien Croteau’s claims seemed natural given such a context. My little project also provided the blueprint for the PhD I intend to do someday.

Spectral analysis of sygit and pig squeel techniques. In both cases, a particular bandwidth is emphasized by shaping the voice box a certain way.

Tying these two worlds together a bit closer was the materialization of the Growlers choir, a vocal ensemble led by my friend Pierre-Luc Sénécal and featuring up to 18 metal vocalists. We premiered what seem to be the first composition for an extreme growl ensemble. The experimental piece featured a wide range of techniques that included, at times, throat singing. several vocalists were already able to do at least some kind throat singing. Instructions told us to produce overtone singing, which was done in European fashion with no regards to how central Asian singers clutch their vocal folds. Terminology-wise, there was, and still is, confusion between the different techniques encompassed in this rather vague term. Tibetan throat singing and central Asian kargyraa have been especially interchangeable in conversation. Truth be told, none of us are well versed in these specific techniques, and the aim of Growlers Choir is not to emulate other traditions as much as exploring timbre. Sébastien Croteau was the singer with the lengthiest relationship with throat singing, sometimes acting as an authority on the subject during our rehearsals. Regardless, everyone involved was confronted with the challenge of testing the boundaries of their vocal range. At a very practical level, this process put throat singing on the spotlight, juxtaposed and fused with growling techniques. Sort of a logical epiphany.

In late 2018, I started planning a student exchange program in Taiwan. My main motivation was to travel back to Asia while pursuing my studies. I realized later that being a graduate exchange student was much less common that being an undergraduate one. Indeed, while in Taiwan, I worked very little on my MA research project (about indonesian gamelan, not throat singing). From September 2019 to mid-january 2020, I focused on learning Mandarin, seeking traditional music, exploring underground music scenes and travelling around the island when I could. However, an underlying mission that I had from the get-go was to travel to Mongolia at the end of my stay in Taiwan. I wanted to study throat singing with a teacher and get some kind of formal training on khoomei. A significant obstacle was that I did not know much about Mongolia, let alone have any clue as to where to look for a throat singer. I didn’t initially have success contacting musicians online to that end. It was a random event that led me to the path of organizing the Mongolia component of my trip. 

 

In late October, I saw a band called Mathias Duplessy and the Violins of the World at the Taiwanese World Music Festival. One of the musicians involved was Naranbaatar Purevdorj, a Mongolian virtuoso of the Morin khuur (horse-head fiddle) who expectedly throat sang. After the event, I found him on facebook and wrote to him explaining my intentions. For a solid two weeks, I did not hear from him. When he finally replied, he explained that he was now living in Germany and could not teach upon my arrival to Mongolia. He enthusiastically referred me to an acquaintance of his who lived in Taiwan and could teach me. I followed his advice and thus began to take lessons with Uuganbayar Altanbulag. We could not communicate, as I didn’t know any Mongolian and he didn’t know any English or Chinese. He had only recently arrived to Taiwan to meet his wife who was studying there. Thus, I took singing lessons every other week with him, his wife Sorkon (who translated everything) and their son in a small piano cubicle at my host ethnomusicology department. This went on for a solid month and a half in which I tried to practice a little bit of throat singing everyday in between lessons. Soon, it was already time for me to leave Taiwan.

If these few lessons were not enough to succeed in mastering even the basics, they taught me that I didn’t know half as much as I thought I did about throat singing. As Uuranbayar soon made me realize, the sounds I produced were only superficially related to Mongolian throat singing. For one, throat singers in Central Asia learn by practicing the 7 vowel sounds of their alphabet: /i/, /e/, /a/, /u/, /ʊ/, /o/, /ɔ/. This is how you internalize the mouth shapes that will in turn emphasize certain overtones in your voice. Also, producing overtones must be preceded by acquiring a gritty drone tone obtained by heavy contraction of the vocal folds and diaphragm. This is what makes overtone singing of Central Asian tradition sound so powerful and loud. It turns out that you must start by mastering that before even trying to play with overtones. My experience in Taiwan also taught me that going further would be hard, and that my two and a half weeks in Mongolia would probably not be enough. All in all, it forced me to recognize that I had no real throat singing experience.

I arrived in Mongolia nervous and without a winter jacket. My soon-to-be teacher Myagumarʐav Mөnkhbat welcomed me at the international airport of one of the coldest places on earth at that time. I based my stay in Mongolia around a regular schedule of lessons and solo practice. Mөnkhbat gave me a total of 8 lessons with the help of a translator (also a musician). This meant that I was mostly confined to the city of Ulaanbaatar. I did however take a side trip to historical Karakorum by myself and Mөnkhbat brought me to Terelj region for a daytrip. Although him and Uuranbayar are friends and of the same generation, their teaching methods differed. For example, they did not emphasize the same pressure points (“locks”) necessary for producing the basic sound of khoomei. This highlighted the lack of standardization of the technique. Indeed, Mongolian khoomei is primarily a solitary musical journey. Individual practice and performance predates khoomei’s integration in ensemble music. Up to quite recently, singers used to accompany themselves with an instrument, rarely performing with other singers. What I took out of the experience was that despite all the rules and tricks learnt, I would still have to find my own voice through trial and error. By the time I felt like I was making progress, COVID-19 was spreading rapidly in East Asia. Neighboring Mongolia changed overnight when the population began to fear an epidemic on their side of the border. I followed the advice of my newly made friends and took an advanced plane from Beijing to Canada, cutting my trip short of a four-day layover in China. I learned on board that it would be the last commercial flight between the two countries until further notice.

In Montreal, the coronavirus seemed like a faraway concern. Life was happening as usual, and by pure coincidence Le centre des musiciens du monde was hosting a four-day khoomei workshop in february. It was not Mongolian khoomei which was on the program, but rather Tuvan khoomei. Tuva is now a republic of modern Russia, but it’s geographically situated in Central Asia nearby the Altai mountain chains where khoomei is said to have emerged. Freshly arrived from Mongolia, I was delighted to have a chance to compare what I’ve learned with what musician Mongun-ool Ondar was teaching. The workshop confirmed that khoomei across Central Asia has striking similarities but also subtle local differences in both technique and terminology. Four days of intensive throat singing practice was a treat, and for a time motivated me to keep practicing as I was getting decent results. Unfortunately, and as the rest of the world knows, march 2019 happened and most countries started shutting down.

I haven’t been practicing khoomei very dilligently since, but neither did I lose the interest. I’ve now seized several opportunities to learn about throat singing techniques, developing a small network in the process. I hope to keep exploring these traditional techniques as well as alternative and newer techniques vocalists are pioneering. The continuum of throat singing techniques, traditional or urban, keeps expanding with techniques such as subharmonic singing. A band like Phurpa from Russia is making drone music akin to Sunn O))) with the musician's amplified voices. Interestingly, extraordinarily deep voices in Russia can be traced to basso profundo oktavist singers. Traditional throat singing technique being largely oral traditions with little standardization (and sometimes little to do with music), it will naturally be misinterpreted, misappropriated and deformed by becoming common in global music creation. Despite my fears of throat singing being misrepresented by practitioners oblivious to the cultures it came from, I am looking forward to the technical developments that it’ll produce. Inuit singer Tanya Tagaq is a leading example of a traditional pactitionner pulling throat singing techniques very far into contemporary music. In the metal world, there is an increasing amount of vocalists pushing the boundaries of extreme vocal techniques, some being fluent in throat singing techniques as well. The future might slowly reveal that these are, acoustically and physiologically speaking, part of a larger spectrum of extended vocal techniques. I hope that research can bring data to validate what many vocalists may feel intuitively and thus raise the discourse around all of these techniques.

 

References 

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Cimon, J. (2018, 7 novembre). Conférence de Sébastien Croteau – La voix, premier instrument de l’homme
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Smialek, E, Depalle, P. et Brackett, D. (2012, septembre). A Spectrographic Analysis of Vocal Techniques in Extreme Metal
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