The Tuvans live primarily in an eponymous autonomous republic, Tuva (officially known as Republic of Tyva), and in the late 1990s numbered slightly more than 200,000. Considerably smaller groups of Tuvans live in western Mongolia and in the extreme north-west of China's Xinjiang Autonomous Region. Most Tuvans speak their own language, Tuvan, which a standard fourfold scheme for classifying Turkic languages places within the Northeast group. Tuvans residing in Tuva are typically conversant in Russian (see also Russian federation, §III).
Tuvan music includes a variety of instrumental and vocal genres which range from onomatopoeic sounds and signals to formalized songs and tunes. No Tuvan word covers the same semantic field as ‘music’ (xögzhüm, a loan word from Mongolian, means broadly ‘music’ or ‘orchestra’, implying the use of musical instruments as opposed to voice alone). Rather, social functions, techniques of acoustical production and formal styles are described by a range of specialized terms. These functions, techniques and styles might best be understood as points along a continuum which ranges from ‘sound’ to ‘song’, that is, from iconic imitation of natural sounds through stylized imitations of natural sounds to autonomous musical constructs. Examples of iconic imitation include vocalizations which Tuvans call ang-meng mal-magan-öttüneri (‘imitation of wild and domestic animals’) and instruments such as the ediski (a single reed made to imitate bird sounds), xirlee (a thin piece of wood that imitates the sound of wind when spun like a propeller on a tensed, twisted string) and amyrga (a hunting horn used to imitate an elk call). Stylized imitations of natural sounds are produced on instruments such as the xomus (jew's harp) and igil (two-string fiddle) as well as, most famously, by the vocal technique known as xöömei, commonly translated as ‘throat-singing’ or Overtone-singing.
In xöömei, a single vocalist produces two, and occasionally three, distinct notes simultaneously by selectively intensifying vocally produced harmonics. Numerous legends about the origins of xöömei underscore the notion that humankind learnt to sing in such a way by imitating natural sounds whose timbres are rich in harmonics. These sounds include waterfalls, burbling brooks, bird songs and strong wind exciting the strings of a zither, called chatagan, which Tuvan herders place on the roofs of their yurts to dry the instrument's gut strings. Performers of xöömei, called xöömeizhi, use harmonics both to extemporize melodies and to perform standardized tunes. In either case the use of harmonics is not simply naturalistic, but conforms to a culturally determined notion of melodic mode. The strong propensity to pentatonicism in Tuvan music is reflected in the ubiquitous use of the 6th, 8th, 9th, 10th and 12th harmonics.
In Tuva, music scholars and performers alike divide xöömei into several styles, e.g. sygyt, kargyraa, borbangnadyr, xöömei (the name of a particular style as well as the general term for throat-singing), each characterized by a different type of vocal production. These core styles, however, are performed in highly individualized ways by different singers, and well-known throat-singers typically become identified not only with a particular manner of vocal production, but with a specific tune that serves as a personal musical signature. For example, ‘Kombu xöömei’ is a musical item identified both by vocal style and melody as belonging to the singer Kombu.
Vocal genres other than xöömei include most notably the lyrical uzun yry, literally ‘long song’, so-called because of its melismatic style in which syllables are melodically extended over long durations, and kozhamyk, a light-hearted refrain song often sung antiphonally by two groups of singers in an undeclared competition. Both of these genres represent strophic song forms, yet many of the ways in which Tuvans traditionally use sound and music represent more a technology than an art; that is, sound is used to achieve a specific goal such as calming animals, communicating across a river or appeasing spirits.
During the Soviet era, official musical life in Tuva was centred on pan-Soviet cultural institutions such as the Composers' Union, House of Culture system and Philharmonia Society, which organized and provided artistic direction for professional ensembles performing folkloric and popular music. Following the break-up of the Soviet Union, state-sponsored ensembles largely evolved into groups initiated by musicians themselves, several of which have become well known outside Tuva for their arrangements of throat-singing and other musical genres. (See Huun-Huur-Tu.)
A.N. Aksyonov: Tuvinskaya narodnaya muzïka [Tuvan folk music], ed. Ye.V. Gippius (Moscow, 1964)
V.Yu. Suzukey: Tuvinskiye traditsionnïye muzïkal'nïye instrumentï [The traditional musical instruments of the Tuvans] (Kyzyl, 1989)
V.Yu. Suzukey: Burdonno-obertonovaya osnova traditsionnogo instrumental'nogo muzitsirovaniya (Kyzyl, 1993)
M.M. Sundui and C.C. Kuular: Oorjak xunashtaar-ool: monografiia xevergli bizheen ocherk [Oorjak xunashtaar-ool: a sketch in monograph form] (Kyzyl, 1995)
Tuva: Voices from the Center of Asia, Smithsonian Folkways SF 40017 (1990)
Tuvian Musicians, World Network (1993)
Tuva: Among the Spirits, Smithsonian Folkways SFW 40452 (1999)
THEODORE LEVIN