Music I Like – Throat Singing

It’s funny. I don’t really think of throat singing as something I like. But whenever I stumble on a musician who does it, I find myself intrigued, and often it turns out to be music I like.

Genghis Blues

I suspect that my interest in throat singing started when I saw the movie Genghis Blues at the Seattle International Film Festival. In that movie San Francisco bluesman and composer Paul Peña makes a musical pilgrimage to Tuva. For a long time after that, I thought Tuva was the only place where the technique was used. I’m sure there’s a soundtrack out there somewhere.

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Tanya Tagaq

My next experience with throat singing was when music writer Kim Kelly started to champion the music of Canadian First Nations artist Tanya Tagaq. (Actually, I had heard her earlier on Bjork’s album Medúlla, but didn’t know what I was hearing.) Her latest album is the brilliantly named Toothsayer.

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Silla + Rise

I wrote about them recently in a post on indigenous artists.

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Nytt Land

I wrote about these guys before. Inspired by the traditional music of the indigenous peoples of Siberia, Old Icelandic epics, and the atmosphere of classic Norwegian black metal, Nytt Land is multiple flavors of my catnip. They make their own traditional instruments and you guessed, they also include throat singing. Check out their latest full album, Odal.

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Alvin Curran

Canti Illuminati by Alvin Curran is a modern classical work that incorporates throat singing. It lacks the immediacy of more traditional presentations but it’s interesting as a recontextualization of ancient techniques.

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Nine Treasures

Nine Treasures is so good. To be honest, I don’t really hear the throat singing on Wisdom Eyes. But it’s tagged “mongolian throat singing” and I’ll take any excuse to talk about this band. Blues, heavy metal, Mongolian folk melodies and instrumentation. You can’t go wrong with this.