A friend of mine watched this documentary called Genghis Blues. It’s about this blind blues player going to Tuva and he learned Tuvan Throat Singing. I got it at the library and watched it. It was very good.
Throat singing seems kinda neat and fun but it seems a little intimidating ’cause it seems hard to do the rough throaty thing and whistling. It sounds like something elite and that you need to be born with the voice or something but actually, after watching the movie, it was inspiring ’cause I saw all the kids ‘n all doing it (which makes it seem not as hard). Another neat thing about it is even if you can’t speak Tuvan, you can just go “oooooohh.” I hear Japanese singing, Greek singing, etc and it’d be neat to sing it but it sure is hard if you can’t speak the language. But Tuvan, you can just go “oooohhhaaahoooeee,” you know. The whole Tuvan genre seems just like western music and even the simple “people music.” you know, the non-proffesional music that everybody can play. Why? Well, apperantly, Throat singing is not as hard as it seems, there isn’t complex chord changes and the instruments seem pretty simple. Plus, the melodies seem related to western old time bluegrass. Of course, it doesn’t sound like any Bluegrass song I know but there is the same feeling in the songs.
After watching it, I decided to look online for some online overtone Khoomei singing and found a guy selling proffesional throat singing lessons for 30 a pop. Well, after looking some more, I saw another guy who had MP3’s on how to learn basic Khoomei (throat singing) for free. I heard a bit of the lesson just now and he said that your voice doesn’t have to be special and it doesn’t hurt. It could be pretty fun.
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