It may seem to people unfamiliar with this art form that the sounds they hear are actually made by a musical instrument. It is difficult to imagine that human ligaments are capable of this, especially when masters of throat singing do the almost impossible – they begin to sing with two voices at once. Some types of such peculiar music are not even amenable to musical notation. Researchers believe that the peoples of Siberia and Central Asia, owning this art, are the guardians of the oldest method of sound production lost in other countries.
Listening to throat singing, you can catch many sounds: the murmur of water, echo, rockfall in the mountains, the whistle of the wind, the voices of birds and animals. The basis of this ancient art was the onomatopoeia of nature. We can say that this is the very foundation of music, its historical roots. Ancient hunters lured prey like this, nomad cattle breeders controlled their pets with their voices, ministers of ancient religious cults communicated laryngeal sounds with the gods, because a simple human voice was not suitable for such unusual purposes. Continue reading