Throat Singing Cellphones.

Before I get to far into this, I have a confession to make. After my fairly lengthily entry, posted in August, on why I do not own a cellphone, I feel a certain responsibility to fess up. On Friday, I went out and picked up a cellphone.

Now this is the part where I begin issuing forth a number of excuses for my hypocrisy. The truth is, I don't really want to offer any sort of excuse, I feel as if I do not need to justify anything. In fact, if I were to offer an excuse, it would be as simple as stating that the original article was written at a time where I genuinely felt that I had no use for a cellphone. To avoid further detail that is not really relevant or even really interesting to the reader, I will simply say that my needs - and I'll admit - desires for owning a cell phone have changed.

Now that that is out of the way, the only thing remaining for me to do is to remove the no cellphones sticker from my guitar case.

In other - non-related news, let's move on to throat singing (which isn't really news at all).

The following group, Huun Huur Tu, is a group of musicians from the Republic of Tuva, a country I had never heard of until my discovery of the group. I stumbled across Huun Huur Tu in my YouTube searches for Tibetan music during my long Christmas break. Tibetean music lead to throat singing, which lead to Mongolian music, which lead to Huun Huur Tu. Upon discovery of Huun Huur Tu, I set out to find any recorded music I could of them. This lead me to the beautiful record "Fly, Fly My Sadness," - a record more than worth finding. The record is filled with harmonized throat singing, chourses of singers, and errie stringed melodies.

The following videos are examples of the sort of sound these musicians create. The first is an example of harmonized throat signing. The second is an example of throat singing whistleing. Both kinds of throat singing are foreign to me and I'd be the first to admit I know nothing about them, but it is certainly enjoyable to listen to and appreciate, so I thought I would share.

Enjoy!