Huun Huur Tu March 2, 2008

Huun-Huur-Tu, a veteran of concert and festival performances in nearly every country of Europe, has emerged as the foremost international representative of Tuva's remarkable musical culture. Tuvans not only transform the sounds of the natural world into music through imitation; they also make sonic "maps" of physical landscapes which may be expressed in texted songs, throat-singing, whistling, or other types of vocal production. For the Tuvans, one of the purposes of music seems to be to offer detailed and concrete descriptions of topography. In short, Tuvan music is not abstract, like most Western music, but radically representational, by imitating or aesthetically representing the sounds of nature.