[Music]
down
I see
[Music]
I
some days I can’t
[Music]
[Music]
I’m going down
that
down by the riverside
I see
[Music]
[Applause]
thank you imagine if you will being
crammed into a 15-passenger van
alongside 18 other people with whom you
share no common language driving through
the night in southern Siberia with not a
window cracked and from what you can see
in the dark there are no guardrails on
the winding hills you climb and it’s
unclear whether the driver is bobbing
his head to the single cassette that
he’s been playing for the past 10 hours
or if he’s falling asleep at the wheel
how many people here would sign up for
that road trip I’ve been on this drive
and if given the opportunity again I
would say yes but here’s why because
that van brought me to a place called
Tuva how many of you have heard of Tuva
okay and how many of you have been to
Tuba so clearly this is not a
destination for American tourism and
it’s certainly the most foreign place
that I’ve ever traveled to by far I like
to travel to new places and as a
musician I love to learn the music of
other cultures and of course I’m not the
only one so what does one seek to find
by traveling to foreign places and what
do we seek to feel by listening to or
learning the music of other cultures I
believe that a big part of why people do
this is to experience humanity more
fully to learn what being human means in
its broadest sense outside of our own
micro perspective of the human
experience music is a mirror that
reflects the unseeable and otherwise
intangible elements of
human experience it shows us our truest
intellectual emotional and cultural
selves and it provides a lookingglass
that takes us as close as we could
possibly get too deeply knowing and
feeling the cultural intellectual and
emotional experiences of others no
matter how foreign I’ve been studying
music since I was about seven years old
and writing songs since I was 12 I
graduated from a reputable College of
Music and spent the first 10 years of my
adulthood touring the US and a bit
beyond performing my songs for audiences
ranging in size from 3 to 3 thousand
people it’s fair to say that say that I
spent my entire life thus far exploring
myself through music and connecting with
others through songs in 2012 My partner
and I took an 11 hour flight from New
York City to Moscow we took the metro
into Red Square and did some sightseeing
we took a little snooze outside of the
Kremlin and the Alexander garden we took
another six-hour flight from there to a
small city in Siberia called Krasnoyarsk
we tooled around there for a few hours
and then we crammed into the after
mentioned 15 passenger van with 18 other
people and took the 12 hour ride through
the night into the center of Asia to the
city of Cazale Tuva we traveled all this
way to learn some new music and to share
some music of our own when I refer to
Cavill as a city I use that as a
relative term Tuva is made up of largely
rural and agricultural regions and even
some remaining semi-nomadic communities
but Cazale has a museum and a large
performance hall historic landmarks and
the cultural center that’s home to the
to the National Orchestra and its
various branch and Samba ‘ls and that’s
who we were invited to come and
collaborate with
Tuva is known for its ancient tradition
of throat singing also known into the as
home-a home-a is a technique of singing
that produces a simultaneous low drone
sound with anywhere from 1 to 4 high
melodic and harmonic overtones it’s it
is – it is done by women but it’s more
typically done by men and I’ll play you
a sample of what it sounds like keep in
mind that this is one man singing and so
all you’re hearing here is a single
human voice at one time and this is the
late congra under
[Music]
No
[Music]
you
you
[Music]
go child of a plan yeah I am
[Music]
you
[Music]
ah
[Music]
[Music]
there are various styles and approaches
to throat singing and in traditional
tube in music there are songs or
portions of songs that include
conventional singing as well there are
also a series of traditional bowed and
strums string instruments and percussion
instruments that have existed in this
culture for many hundreds if not
thousands of years and are still
handmade by just a handful of people
into them here’s a picture of two vassal
ashen Samba with some traditional Tuvan
instruments the traditional songs of
Tuva and the techniques of the singing
and instrument playing are a reflection
of a deep emotional and spiritual
connection to the natural world and when
you hear the sounds at Tuvan musicians
create you get this concurrent sense of
groundedness and other worldliness the
music of Tuva is the sound of a deep and
ancient tradition that’s kept alive and
celebrated by its people all of that
being said even with an appreciation for
world music
Tuva was not on my radar as a place that
I expected to travel to in my lifetime
so when my partner and I received an
invitation from our friends in the alash
in Samba to participate in a cultural
exchange in Cazale we were thrilled by
the prospect of it but we were cautious
in our optimism that it would all come
together we knew it would be a difficult
place to get to nevertheless our process
of getting the thumbs-up involved
sending off our documents followed by a
long and quiet waiting period followed
by we’ll see you in a few days and we
booked our flights and in less than a
week we were there for two weeks we
stayed in and around Cazale
collaborating with members of the Tuvan
National Orchestra and some of their
smaller ensembles and I spent most of my
time there with a group of five
exceptional women who make up the
ensemble of bullsááá and these ladies
are among the most humble focused and
talented musicians that I
ever met and they taught me a wordy
traditional Tuvan song which I was to
memorize with decent articulation and I
taught them the song that you heard me
start out with today in the water which
I wrote a few years prior to this trip
never imagining where it would end up we
didn’t share a common language every now
and then there would be someone around
to translate but for all intents and
purposes we communicated simply with our
music we effectively taught each other
and learn songs that were otherwise very
foreign in all respects with no language
other than the music itself and at the
end of our time there we perform these
songs on the national stage for a large
and enthusiastic audience of Tuvan
people musicians and dignitaries and
after the performance a goat was
slaughtered in our honor and we were
presented with the gift of a celebratory
plate of innards ligaments and tendons
alongside a large carafe a fermented
horse milk which was actually pretty
good I spent two weeks straight
with the women of bullsááá and I felt
a sisterhood with them unlike some
friendships I’ve had for many years I
knew very little about them and they
knew just as much about me and with
nothing to clutter our perceptions of
one another as people all I saw in them
was a fierce love and passion for music
and for the traditions that they belong
to as well as the curiosity and
excitement that they felt from my music
in my traditions and in me I believe
they felt they saw that same curiosity
in that same passion music is a mirror
that reflects the unseeable and
otherwise intangible elements of the
human experience showing us our truest
selves and it provides a lookingglass
that takes us
as close as we could possibly get too
deeply knowing and feeling the
experiences of others no matter how
foreign and moreover through hearing and
learning the traditional music of
another culture we can know ourselves
more deeply for how different we are not
and for how human we are you don’t have
to be a musician to participate in this
kind of cultural exchange and you don’t
have to travel all the way to Siberia to
experience something I opening our
country’s most celebrated cities are
what they are because of their
international communities and immigrant
populations engage with work with share
a meal with go out dancing with people
who have a different first language than
you who practice a different religion
than you who belong to traditions that
you’re unfamiliar with and you will
deeply enrich your one precious
experience on this earth as a human
being I’ll close with a verse from the
song that the Tuvan woman’s in sambal
bullsááá
taught me and the meaning of this song
translates to together we are stronger
vigil and be solemn be so yep Asian
Jewish and Cilic be so yeh beijing GGO
de contrato yep ich liebe es k KY and
shithead
Oh a fish Lubezki Kai and shedded oye el
de la noche de lambie’s
down
I see
[Music]
I
some days I can’t
[Music]
[Music]
I’m going down
that
down by the riverside
I see
[Music]
[Applause]
thank you imagine if you will being
crammed into a 15-passenger van
alongside 18 other people with whom you
share no common language driving through
the night in southern Siberia with not a
window cracked and from what you can see
in the dark there are no guardrails on
the winding hills you climb and it’s
unclear whether the driver is bobbing
his head to the single cassette that
he’s been playing for the past 10 hours
or if he’s falling asleep at the wheel
how many people here would sign up for
that road trip I’ve been on this drive
and if given the opportunity again I
would say yes but here’s why because
that van brought me to a place called
Tuva how many of you have heard of Tuva
okay and how many of you have been to
Tuba so clearly this is not a
destination for American tourism and
it’s certainly the most foreign place
that I’ve ever traveled to by far I like
to travel to new places and as a
musician I love to learn the music of
other cultures and of course I’m not the
only one so what does one seek to find
by traveling to foreign places and what
do we seek to feel by listening to or
learning the music of other cultures I
believe that a big part of why people do
this is to experience humanity more
fully to learn what being human means in
its broadest sense outside of our own
micro perspective of the human
experience music is a mirror that
reflects the unseeable and otherwise
intangible elements of
human experience it shows us our truest
intellectual emotional and cultural
selves and it provides a lookingglass
that takes us as close as we could
possibly get too deeply knowing and
feeling the cultural intellectual and
emotional experiences of others no
matter how foreign I’ve been studying
music since I was about seven years old
and writing songs since I was 12 I
graduated from a reputable College of
Music and spent the first 10 years of my
adulthood touring the US and a bit
beyond performing my songs for audiences
ranging in size from 3 to 3 thousand
people it’s fair to say that say that I
spent my entire life thus far exploring
myself through music and connecting with
others through songs in 2012 My partner
and I took an 11 hour flight from New
York City to Moscow we took the metro
into Red Square and did some sightseeing
we took a little snooze outside of the
Kremlin and the Alexander garden we took
another six-hour flight from there to a
small city in Siberia called Krasnoyarsk
we tooled around there for a few hours
and then we crammed into the after
mentioned 15 passenger van with 18 other
people and took the 12 hour ride through
the night into the center of Asia to the
city of Cazale Tuva we traveled all this
way to learn some new music and to share
some music of our own when I refer to
Cavill as a city I use that as a
relative term Tuva is made up of largely
rural and agricultural regions and even
some remaining semi-nomadic communities
but Cazale has a museum and a large
performance hall historic landmarks and
the cultural center that’s home to the
to the National Orchestra and its
various branch and Samba ‘ls and that’s
who we were invited to come and
collaborate with
Tuva is known for its ancient tradition
of throat singing also known into the as
home-a home-a is a technique of singing
that produces a simultaneous low drone
sound with anywhere from 1 to 4 high
melodic and harmonic overtones it’s it
is – it is done by women but it’s more
typically done by men and I’ll play you
a sample of what it sounds like keep in
mind that this is one man singing and so
all you’re hearing here is a single
human voice at one time and this is the
late congra under
[Music]
No
[Music]
you
you
[Music]
go child of a plan yeah I am
[Music]
you
[Music]
ah
[Music]
[Music]
there are various styles and approaches
to throat singing and in traditional
tube in music there are songs or
portions of songs that include
conventional singing as well there are
also a series of traditional bowed and
strums string instruments and percussion
instruments that have existed in this
culture for many hundreds if not
thousands of years and are still
handmade by just a handful of people
into them here’s a picture of two vassal
ashen Samba with some traditional Tuvan
instruments the traditional songs of
Tuva and the techniques of the singing
and instrument playing are a reflection
of a deep emotional and spiritual
connection to the natural world and when
you hear the sounds at Tuvan musicians
create you get this concurrent sense of
groundedness and other worldliness the
music of Tuva is the sound of a deep and
ancient tradition that’s kept alive and
celebrated by its people all of that
being said even with an appreciation for
world music
Tuva was not on my radar as a place that
I expected to travel to in my lifetime
so when my partner and I received an
invitation from our friends in the alash
in Samba to participate in a cultural
exchange in Cazale we were thrilled by
the prospect of it but we were cautious
in our optimism that it would all come
together we knew it would be a difficult
place to get to nevertheless our process
of getting the thumbs-up involved
sending off our documents followed by a
long and quiet waiting period followed
by we’ll see you in a few days and we
booked our flights and in less than a
week we were there for two weeks we
stayed in and around Cazale
collaborating with members of the Tuvan
National Orchestra and some of their
smaller ensembles and I spent most of my
time there with a group of five
exceptional women who make up the
ensemble of bullsááá and these ladies
are among the most humble focused and
talented musicians that I
ever met and they taught me a wordy
traditional Tuvan song which I was to
memorize with decent articulation and I
taught them the song that you heard me
start out with today in the water which
I wrote a few years prior to this trip
never imagining where it would end up we
didn’t share a common language every now
and then there would be someone around
to translate but for all intents and
purposes we communicated simply with our
music we effectively taught each other
and learn songs that were otherwise very
foreign in all respects with no language
other than the music itself and at the
end of our time there we perform these
songs on the national stage for a large
and enthusiastic audience of Tuvan
people musicians and dignitaries and
after the performance a goat was
slaughtered in our honor and we were
presented with the gift of a celebratory
plate of innards ligaments and tendons
alongside a large carafe a fermented
horse milk which was actually pretty
good I spent two weeks straight
with the women of bullsááá and I felt
a sisterhood with them unlike some
friendships I’ve had for many years I
knew very little about them and they
knew just as much about me and with
nothing to clutter our perceptions of
one another as people all I saw in them
was a fierce love and passion for music
and for the traditions that they belong
to as well as the curiosity and
excitement that they felt from my music
in my traditions and in me I believe
they felt they saw that same curiosity
in that same passion music is a mirror
that reflects the unseeable and
otherwise intangible elements of the
human experience showing us our truest
selves and it provides a lookingglass
that takes us
as close as we could possibly get too
deeply knowing and feeling the
experiences of others no matter how
foreign and moreover through hearing and
learning the traditional music of
another culture we can know ourselves
more deeply for how different we are not
and for how human we are you don’t have
to be a musician to participate in this
kind of cultural exchange and you don’t
have to travel all the way to Siberia to
experience something I opening our
country’s most celebrated cities are
what they are because of their
international communities and immigrant
populations engage with work with share
a meal with go out dancing with people
who have a different first language than
you who practice a different religion
than you who belong to traditions that
you’re unfamiliar with and you will
deeply enrich your one precious
experience on this earth as a human
being I’ll close with a verse from the
song that the Tuvan woman’s in sambal
bullsááá
taught me and the meaning of this song
translates to together we are stronger
vigil and be solemn be so yep Asian
Jewish and Cilic be so yeh beijing GGO
de contrato yep ich liebe es k KY and
shithead
Oh a fish Lubezki Kai and shedded oye el
de la noche de lambie’s
Please follow and like us: