Each style of harmonic chant finds its inspiration in the concert of nature and the chamanic practices and animists. In Touva, one indexes five principal and of many alternatives: sygyt, ezengileer, borbannadyr, kargyraa, xomej.

One of the most harmonious styles is the chant sygyt, which results in “whistling” and which requires a constant tension of the larynx, the tongue and pressure of the breath. To evoke important diaphragmatic work that this song with the high-pitched overtones requires, the touvas say that "the abdomen must be as hard as a stone."

The ezengileer - which results in “the clamp” - the gallop of the horse evokes. With listening, it is close to the sound to the Jew's harp and the movement to the tongue which snap behind the teeth replaces that of the small chamanic blade of the instrument.

The bearing of the chant borbannadyr evoke sometimes the storm and angers of the wind. It is characterized sometimes by its aspect triphonic: a drone bass in the low register, a second who “ answers him intermittently” in the medium, and a his overtone in the acute one.

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The singers of throat of Central Asia do not regard it a vocal style but rather as a combination of effects resulting from the combined positions of the lips, the tongue and the oral cavity which produce harmonic trilles imitating for example of the songs of birds.

Chant kargyraa impress by its open vowels in the extreme low register, like an open hole, a diving in the entrails of the ground. The song is distinguished kargyraa steppes (xovu), less serious and with more piercing sonorities which is often practised with horse while following the peregrinations of the herds, of that of the mountains (dag) where resonances of the voice in the stomach are like an offering with the gods of the summits.

One also finds in Mongolia of the equivalent styles of harmonic or diphonic chant using resonances of the abdomen, the chest, the nose or the head, but most known in all the Central Asia remains it xöömii who indicates with the time a style and the generic name of all the songs of throat. In this style which was often imitated by the Western harmonic singers, the tongue remains well flat behind the lower teeth while the oral and labial modifications produce the overtones.

Spectral analysis of a Mongolian song

sound continuous (in bottom) and melody of the harmonics

                                  www.chantharmonique.eu - European site of harmonic chant

Among its many alternatives, let us quote the songs xarkiraa xöömii, rather narrative and very low-pitched, isgerex who produces a sound of flute thanks to the resonator of the barrier bucco-dental consonant, opej-xöömii who evokes a lullaby - called too tônmes- xöömii : “song of throat of an infinite softness”.

See it video of film “Chant of the overtones”

© Hugo Zemp - CNRS, 1989 - canalU

- What is this which cures me? The tongue which snap as a whip in my mouth, the intention which I do put in each sound carried by the horse of the breath?

        www.chantharmonique.eu - European site of harmonic chant

Philippe Barraqué

musicologist, music therapist

founder of the therapeutic harmonic chant

 

                                                                    

 

 

 

 

Any reproduction of this site is prohibited without the preliminary authorization of its author. Extracted the book harmonic healing, Philippe Barraqué, editions Jouvence, 2004 - ISBN 2-88353-350-4 - straight reserved for all countries.