Track Listing

1. A Reverberant Valley
2. Sakha Animal Imitations
3. Tuvan Round-Up
4. Fantasy On The Igil
5. Birds And Birds Imitations
6. Xoomei On Horseback
7. Borbangnadyr With Stream Water
8. Xomuz (Jew's Harp) Imitating Water
9. Home On The (Mountain) Range
10. Ang-Meng Mal-Magen Ottuneri (Imitation Of Wild And Domestic Animals)
11. Ang-Meng Mal-Magen Ottuneri (Reprise)
12. Harmonics In The Wind
13. Sonic Landscape
14. The Legacy Of Ancestors
15. Cave Spirits
16. Kyzyl Taiga (Red Forest)
17. Talking Xomuz
18. Chiraa-Xor
19. Epilogue

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #124387 in Music
• Model: SFW40452
• Released on: 1999-01-19
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Compilation
• Dimensions: .25 pounds

From Amazon.com
Thanks to the astonishing clarity of modern recording techniques, this remarkable CD documents the oldest form of music making, which producer-recorders Ted Levin and Joel Gordon refer to as "sound mimesis," or the art of imitating natural sounds through music, as practiced in Tuva. With a variety of musicians, including members of Huun-Huur-Tu and other regular folk musicians and farmers, these 19 tracks were recorded outdoors on location (with the exception of two recorded in a small living room). Musicians and singers interact with the sounds of wild and domestic animals and environmental sounds like streams, the wind, and bird song. Throat singing and xomuz echo the harmonics of a babbling brook, upturned igil (fiddle) and doshpuluur (lute) replicate the effect of a wind harp with the breeze caressing the strings, and horsemen chant in the saddle, picking up the rhythm of galloping steeds. These and many other examples illustrate a living animist tradition where the boundaries between sound and song have no clear definition; indeed, the very term "music" as the Western world interprets it has no equivalent, and Tuva, Among the Spirits may well make you reassess the latent music in your own environment. --Derek Rath