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Thursday, June 9, 2011

Friday June 10, 8pm - Free performance of Kazakh Traditional Music at Billy Wilder theatre

The nearest we have been to Kazakhstan is to the westernmost part of The People's Republic of China when we visited several places along the southern rim of the Gobi desert back in 1986.   We especially remember an 11-hour bus from Aksu to the Kashgar where my hardboiled eggs for lunch somehow beat all the other hardboiled eggs from the Turkic-speaking locals in a friendly game of egg-butting :)   The friendly people we met, sweetest ever watermelons, grapes, underground irrigation systems, donkey carts with surrey on top, and dodging camels at the Sunday market are all memories of a lifetime.

But the main reason I wanted to share information about this free concert is that there will be throat-singing. The Inuit do it, so do Mongolians and Tibetans ...from Central Asia to Siberia, there are throat-singers.

What is throat-singing?  You would never have guessed that I was introduced to throat-singing from a NPR program which started with the curiosity of Richard Feynman ... yes, the physicist who was also an avid stamp collector and wondered about the country of Tuva whose stamps are pretty exotic.  He asked in 1977, "Whatever happened to Tanna Tuva?"  Unfortunately, he died two weeks before getting clearance from the government of Tuva to visit Tuva.  Read the rest of the story here:

http://www.fotuva.org/
http://www.fotuva.org/newsletters/wheel.html
If you are also a fan of Richard Feynman, check out this site:  http://www.feynmanonline.com/

Anyway, back to throat-singing .. learn more here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overtone_singing

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Throat singing may refer to
From this link,here is a summary of what music we might hear on Friday night:

http://rateyourmusic.com/genre/Traditional+Kazakh+Music/

Traditional Kazakh Music dates from the times when Kazakhs were part of a great Central Asian nomadic culture. Its iconic instruments are Dombra (a long-necked lute), sybyzgy (a flute), jew's harp, and Kobyz (a horse-hair fiddle). The latter is often dubbed "the grandfather of all bowed string instruments" and is a staple instrument of the Kazakh shaman. Epic poetry singing is a crucial genre of Kazakh music and often employs throat singing techniques just like its Tuvan and Mongolian counterparts do. Sadly, Kazakh throat singing has become almost extinct during the communist era and and it is only in recent years that it has seen a revival.

This youtube link shows a throat-singer demonstrating different ways to perform throat-singing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNVrmW0VL2I&feature=related

For a deeper bellowing throat-singing style from Tibet,
http://kazakhamerican.skyrock.com/tags/kOU9o2XmDYW-tuvan-throat-singing.html
For Inuit female throat-singers who always seem to duel-sing, see:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnGM0BlA95I

In case you want to learn how to sing overtones, check this youtube tutorial!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGbFB91eM34&feature=related
See him here in a performance of overtone singing.

Hope some of you make it to this free event at Hammer Museum's Billy Wilder Theater in Westwood which opens a movie festival celebrating Kazakhstan.

http://www.cinema.ucla.edu/events/2011-06-10/kazakhstan-montage-cinemas

UCLA Film & Television Archive and the Hammer Museum present

Special Presentation: Turan

Turan
June 10, 2011
Free Admission!
We are delighted to announce that our film series, “Kazakhstan: Montage of Cinemas,” will open with a special appearance by the Kazakh traditional music ensemble Turan, which performs on an array of ancient plucked, bowed, wind and percussive Kazakh instruments, with traditional throat singing. Founded in 2008 by a group of students from the Kurmangazy Kazakh National Conservatory, the members of Turan are award-winning artists who have performed around the world. This evening’s performance will precede the first screening of the Archive’s film series on Saturday, June 11.

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