Kevin's Watch

Mongolian Throat Singers.

I don't have the exact quotes, but when some of the singers in the Land sung, it sounded as though they were about to 'expand into three or more singers.' It sounded as if more than one person was singing at one time.

Well, that is what Mongolain Throat Singers do:

"Throat singers have an extraordinary style of vocal projection.

"They somehow squeeze their body, their throat and not only their throats but something lower, deeper," Mr Cheparukin says.

The technique, called kumay, allows singers to produce two or three voices at the same time. "

You know I had no idea such things even existed in the real world.

Wow. I would love to hear one of them sing. Maybe in the future some anthropologist will record them then set it up on their university website so you could play it back with real player or etc.

Overtone singing is practiced in several countries, including Tuva and Tibet. The recorded examples I've heard are all sung by men. (On a music retreat once, I heard an American woman replicate the effect; surprisingly, it works with low alto voices as well as with bass ones, and is even more spine-tingling in person. Maybe that's what Atiaran and the singer of "Lord Kevin's Lament" sounded like.)

Check on your favorite music-dealer website for a Tuvan band called Huun-Huur-Tu. There are also various albums of Tibetan monastery music; the one I own is by the Gyuto Monks.

Somehow I don't quite imagine the Haruchai doing throat singing, although I do imagine that they had a vocal (maybe choral) music tradition. And that many individuals had perfect pitch, which is more common among speakers of tonal languages than other language groups.