CD Review: Huun Huur Tu and Carmen Rizzo - Eternal

Sunday August 30, 2009

It's no secret around here that I'm mad about Tuvan Throat Singing. I think there are very few genres of music left in this world that so perfectly capture the essence of the place it sprung from... the terroir, if you will. I think the onomatopoeic nature of the genre has something to do with it - the singers and instrumentalists actually mimic whistling winds, chirping birds, hoofbeats, even crying camels and grumbling yaks, and somehow make it musical and beautiful, as well as complex - it's not primitive, it's just closer to the earth. In the earliest cave-dwelling and desert-roaming days of humanity, all music was based on nature sounds, and perhaps as art is a reflection of culture, so too is the terribleness of modern pop music reflecting how far we've gotten away from nature. Note that I have zero interest in living in a cave, treehouse, or even a yurt (um, hi, I won't even sleep in a tent), and that I love my coffeemaker and blowdryer, I've killed a record 6 cacti in my life (not to mention my perpetually dying "vegetable garden" - a running family joke), and the thing I've been looking forward to most this week is the season finale of True Blood, so feel free to ignore me at any time when I start to wax poetic about the earth and nature, because I am definitely entirely too comfortable in the modern world.

Luckily, though, I've been given a little bit of hope that pure nature and the modern world can be reconciled. Tuvan ensemble Huun Huur Tu and producer Carmen Rizzo have teamed up to create Eternal, a CD that blends traditional overtone singing and Tuvan instruments with electronic elements. It's one of those things that totally could be contrived - it could be really bad, in fact, if done improperly - but, by golly, it works! I mean, it really works! The end result of the marriage of two worlds is haunting, intelligent, and just a really interesting listen (and re-listen - I've played it a dozen or so times already, and I'm nowhere near tired of it - it's a keeper, for sure!)... I think I'm in love. Now, it might be pushing it a little to presume that the clean integration of the earthly and the hyper-modern on Eternal is some sort of parable for people like me, who want to believe that we can have fancy shoes and iPhones and still connect with nature and the earth, but a girl can dream, right? And I'll be doing my dreaming with Eternal as my soundtrack, thank you very much.