| home | music diary intro | index to music | contact |
Tuvans must live on horseback (man, I'm jealous!); on Dalai Beldiri, you can even hear gaits. The album starts at a canter, relaxes to a brisk trot, continues with a stirring morning gallop. Horse-rhythms make it sound like country music; the blended Tuvan and Western tunings, timbres, and vocal techniques make it sound like so much more.
Albert Kuvezin, the arranger, instrumentalist and guiding light behind Yat-Kha, is a passionate genius with the voice of a tiger. Aldyn-ool Sevek also displays amazing vocal prowess in a variety of Tuvan styles: his simultaneous control of fundamentals and overtones is especially impressive in "Opei Khoomei," a lullaby, (track 4, and I'm sorry to say that no fewer than three umlauts are missing from that song title -- and if this is really the sort of thing that rocks Tuvan babies to sleep, it's a wonder they haven't taken over the world by now).
The juxtapositions are thrilling: when the jew's-harp makes its appearance four minutes into "Khemchim" (track 2), it sounds almost techno. "Sodom i Gomora," (track 10, a musical rendition of the traditional poetry of Old Believers), sounds more than anything like The Residents on their recent album of Bible stories Wormwood. Zhenya Tkach'v (the third member of the group) sings just like them. Eerie.
Not a few of the treats in this album are cultural. "Dyngyldai" (track 3"), for example, a gallop to meet the sunrise, is a song from the Soviet era celebrating the industrious people of Tuva, and a much-needed reminder that, at least for some, the socialist experiment began in idealism, faith -- even joy. Now it sounds like cowvboy rave.
I could go on and on enumerating treats and surprises: the electric guitar interspersed with operatic singing on "Ydyk Buura" (track 8, a Robin Hood song). Or Kuvezin's deep, corded voice and gentle acoustic guitar reminding us on "Charash Karaa" (track 7) that one of the prime functions of music is to sweep the gal off her feet. A whole universe of music is here. It's like nothing else.