CONTENTS
ORIGINS: Tuvan Throat Singers
Learn more about where these amazing overtone singers
come from and how they make their music.
PROFILE: ARTIST
ON STAGE
Up-and-coming bluegrass band King Wilkie will be in
Dayton on January 14.
MATERIAL CULTURE:
Metalworking
Cityfolk announces the focus of the material culture area at the 2006 Cityfolk
Festival.
PROFILE:
BEHIND THE SCENES
This time we shine the spotlight on long-time volunteer Hayward Jones
STAFF PICKS
Director of Programs Dave Barber reviews Peter Guralnick's new biography Dream
Boogie:The Triumph of Sam Cooke.
CITYFOLK
NOMINATED
This year, Cityfolk was nominated for an award by the Dayton Business
Journal.
ORIGINS: Tuvan Throat Singers
Once they get past their initial shock and disbelief, most people have two questions after first hearing Tuvan throat singers: where on earth are these people from and how on earth do they do what they do, which is to sing more than one note at a time.
The Republic of Tuva, part of the Russian Federation, is located in central Asia in the mountains of southern Siberia, tucked between Russia and Mongolia. One of the older cultures in Asia, Tuva was conquered by Genghis Khan in 1207, which marked both the end of the development of "pure" Tuvan culture and the beginning of centuries of domination by outside forces. The country was made a Russian protectorate in 1914 and from 1944 to 1991, "voluntarily" absorbed into the Soviet Union.
Tuva
is home to thousands of nomadic reindeer herders, among the last of the fast-vanishing
hunter-gatherer cultures in the modern world. These herders inhabit what they
call the taika, a region of pine forests covering the land between
the tundra and the steppe. Their culture is increasingly threatened by poverty,
lack of food, limited access to health care, shrinking habitat of the reindeer
the people depend on, expanding mineral and timber exploitation and, somewhat
ironically, eco-tourism, where well-meaning Westerners wanting an up-close
look at the "reindeer people" cause their own damage.
The ability to produce two notes simultaneously is called "throat singing," or khoomei in the local language. This peculiar style of overtone singing is not limited to Tuva; it is also found in parts of Mongolia and among Tibetan monks now living in India. Most Tuvan throat singers are male, though this is more a matter of the lower pitch of male voices than any gender restrictions placed upon the art.
Explaining
how one sings khoomei might be harder than actually doing it. The
khoomigch (a singer of khoomei) begins by singing a loud,
steady note pitched in the middle of his range. With this note as the base,
the singer can create harmonic overtones (other notes) by using the tongue
to divide the mouth into two sound chambers. Then, by positioning the lips,
tongue, cheeks, jaws and mouth just so, a second note, usually higher pitched
than the base note, emerges.
The intent of the throat singer is to emphasize one of the harmonics already present in the sung note. By "adjusting the tension and geometry of the mouth" (to quote one explanation), the singer can emphasize different harmonics, thus creating a tune.
In
addition to Huun
Huur Tu, the Tuvan throat singers appearing on the World
Rhythms Series on February 2, other artists and ensembles presenting the
utterly amazing sounds of khoomei include Ozum, Sainkho
Namtchylak (a woman), Tuva Ensemble and Kongar-ool
Ondar (pictured above left). There are several albums of throat singing
available to the adventurous, including outstanding releases on Shanachie,
Smithsonian Folkways and Real World. Such U.S. artists as Kronos Quartet and
the late Paul Peña have also explored khoomei on their recordings.
At one time, you could even stream khoomei
on the Internet 24 hours a day.
--Jon Hartley Fox
Want to learn more?
Explore more aspects of Republic of Tuva at Friends of Tuva or at Tuva Trader.
Read a longer article on Tuva throat singing called Deep in the Heart of Tuva.
Browse the large selection of CDs, books and DVDs about Tuva
available at Amazon.com.
Click on the artist links within the article.
On
January 14, Cityfolk is featuring the bluegrass sounds of the Del
McCoury Band and special guest King
Wilkie. Chances are good you've heard of the Del McCoury Band--especially
since they appeared at the 2004 Cityfolk Festival--but up-and-comers King
Wilkie are probably a different story.
Back in 2000, college friends Ted Pitney (lead guitar and harmony vocals) and Reid Burgess (mandolin) went to a bluegrass festival here in Ohio, and were hooked. They threw themselves into their new-found love, and after graduating the next year, moved to Virginia and began to recruit the rest of the band. The sextet is rounded out by John McDonald (guitar), Abe Spear (banjo), Nick Reeb (fiddle) and Drew Breakey (upright bass). They named the band after Bill Monroe's favorite horse, and headed out on the road.
Don't let their good looks fool you: these young men are talented players. Pitney and Burgess are also skilled songwriters. They have played hundreds of concerts and festivals over the last couple of years, gaining legions of avid fans and increasing stardom in the process. Catch these rising stars live in concert on January 14 at the Dayton Masonic Center.
Want to learn more?
Listen to a 2004 interview with the band, conducted by BluegrassCountry.org.
Read or listen to an interview with mandolin player Reid Burgess from Blue Ridge Country Magazine.
Read a concert review from November, 2005 that appeared on CountryStandardTime.com.
Hear selections from their albums on Cityfolk's website or at Amazon.com
MATERIAL CULTURE: Metalworking
The
focus of the material culture area at the 2006 Cityfolk Festival will be on
metal work. Curator Doug Smith is busy researching Ohio artists
who work with metals in a wide variety of ways. Possibilities include silver
and gold jewelry, cloisonné, kinetic sculpture made from aluminum,
punched tin, blacksmithing with iron, copper repoussé (such as the
19th century Nepali festival wine holder, shown here), chasing (creating ornament
on metal through indentations), instruments such as resonator guitars (made
of steel) and flutes, and sculpture. We will begin profiling specific arts
in more detail in the next edition of the Cityfolk ENews.
Want to know more?
Anvilfire.com is a resource by and for blacksmiths and other metal workers.
Read more about copper repoussé and chasing and cloisonné at Wickipedia.com.
Visit Folk of the Wood to read a history of the resonator guitar, and see pictures of one from many angles.
PROFILE: Office Volunteer Hayward Jones
One of the crucial assets at every non-profit organization is the volunteers who help out throughout the year. Cityfolk is certainly no exception. One man we can rely on from week to week is Hayward Jones. He’s one of those hard-to-find folks who is perfectly happy coming in nearly every week to do data entry, stuff programs, or label envelopes.
Hayward
and his wife Betsy are Massachusetts natives who transplanted to Dayton in
1970 because of his job with the YMCA. He rounded out his career with over
20 years at the United Way of the Greater Dayton Area before retiring in 1996.
After so many years of work in the non-profit sector, Hayward knew first-hand
how valuable volunteers are, and lost little time lining up volunteer jobs
at his favorite agencies. Over the years, he has volunteered at the University
of Dayton, WDPR, Aullwood Audubon Center and Farm, Dayton History, Inc., as
a docent at the Packard Museum and of course, at Cityfolk. Hayward discovered
our volunteer needs listed under "Volunteer Opportunities" in the
Dayton Daily News. He says it’s the only position where he had a formal
interview!
The Joneses will celebrate their Golden Anniversary in September, 2006. They raised two daughters and two sons, all but one of whom stayed in Ohio. Their 13-year old grandchild Claire is within close doting range, in Oxford. Betsy also volunteers for several organizations, and Hayward volunteers about 4 days a week, keeping Friday as a day off. Several times a year, the couple travels to visit family and Elderhostels around the country.
RECORDING I'M LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW: Miles
Davis, Kind of Blue
LAST THREE BOOKS I'VE READ: Ball
Four: Final Pitch
FAVORITE LIVE MUSIC EXPERIENCE: Doc Watson concert, presented in April, 2005 by Cityfolk (It was amazing.)
FAVORITE COMFORT FOOD: Home Fried Potatoes and Pan Fried or Grilled Smoked Sausage
FAVORITE PASSTIMES: Tennis, Reading, Volunteering, Photography, Attending Concerts/Plays, Travel,
DREAM VACATION: Exploration of the
British Isles
There
are few lives in American music which provide as much paradox as Sam Cooke’s.
A gospel music comet in the 1950s as lead singer of the Soul Stirrers, he
crossed into secular music with the smash hit "You Send Me" in
1957 and began a calculated climb to dominate the worlds of both black and
white pop music. A shrewd entrepreneur who realized early on the value of
music ownership and publishing, he ended up the victim of his own reckless
behavior.
In the new biography Dream Boogie: The Triumph
of Sam Cooke, Peter Guralnick etches Cooke’s story in
exhaustive detail (as he did in his two-volume bio
of Elvis Presley
The six years he spent researching Sam Cooke are revealed in the powerful way he recreates the settings for the triumphal early performances of the Soul Stirrers and later, on one of his last road tours with Jackie Wilson, underscoring how Cooke's elegant showmanship and unmatchable voice one-ups Wilson's spectacular stage show. Unprecedented access to close associates such as mentor/business partner J.W. Alexander, singer Bobby Womack and Cooke's widow Barbara help provide a deeply textured, unvarnished look at a man with bottomless ambition, equipped with all the tools to realize it.
At
the time of his passing at 34--shot dead in a seedy L.A. motel after an encounter
with a prostitute--Cooke was reaching out to conquer a number of worlds at
once. He had begun to process the spirit of the civil rights movement into
his original songs (his "A Change Is Gonna Come" became an enduring
anthem), had tapped a deep rhythm and blues vein with the album Night
Beat
Want to learn more?
Listen to an interview with biographer Peter Guralnick from NPR's News and Notes with Ed Gordon.
Guralnick has provided the liner notes for two valuable Sam Cooke reissues, out in 2005 from RCA, the aforementioned Night Beat
Visit Sam Cooke's website.
This
year, Cityfolk was nominated as Non-Profit Organization of the Year by the
Dayton Business Journal, along with the Dayton Art Institute and
the American Red Cross: Dayton Chapter. The staff (pictured here) and many
Board members attended the award ceremony at the Schuster Wintergarden on
November 30. Our hats are off to the American Red Cross: Dayton Chapter, whose
contributions to the hurricane relief effort this year earned earned them
the award.
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