Central Asian Throat Singing

Central Asian throat singing is the family of overtone-singing techniques practised across Tuva, Mongolia, the Altai and Khakassia, in which a single singer sustains a drone fundamental and shapes the vocal tract to amplify selected harmonics into a second, flute-like melody. Its styles range from the deep, pressed kargyraa to the whistling sygyt and the horse-gallop rhythms of ezengileer, traditionally performed outdoors by herders in dialogue with landscape, and often accompanied by the igil horsehead fiddle, doshpuluur lute or jaw harp. Groups such as *Huun-Huur-Tu* carried the practice from Soviet ethnography to the world stage.