ArtistInfo

Tyva Kyzy
Igil Unu - Iyem Unu (The Igil's Voice My Mother's Voice)

Album RU 2008 on The Tuva Trader label
World (Overtone Singing, Mouth Music)

The title of Tyva Kyzy's new album 'Igil unu - Iyem unu' (the Igil's voice my mother's voice ) declares the spirit of the album: these songs feature mothers and the igil, that two-stringed grandmother of Tuvan musical instruments. Beyond this dual dedication, however, this album demonstrates Tyva Kyzy's unique ability to mine the depths of Tuvan musical tradition and give new voice to familiar songs. The meeting of old and new begins with the album's first track, an old song with modern lyrics, sung by Nadezhda Kuular. Kuular's youth, steeped in the songs of Tuvan nomadic life, combines with her later operatic training in a voice that defies clear categorization. Kuular's own mother, Opal Shuluu, joins her daughter on the second track, in which the igil and the khomus, the two most fundamental of Tuvan instruments, lead us back to the roots of Tuvan sound culture, even as daughter and mother sing about their ancestral homeland. By the opening of track three, we seem to have arrived in the hoary past, resonant with birdsong and the primal sounds of wind. Surprisingly, this is the album's newest song, in which the transcendent voice of young Aylanmaa Damyrang disappears into the sounds of the igil as she remembers a mother last seen long ago. Such blurring of the boundaries between generations and between the female voice and instrumental sound lead us into the heart of the album as the group's youngest singer, Sholbana Belek-ool (herself a new mother) sings the song of an orphan child in a voice dripping with age. Then, suddenly, the album picks up a family of themes more familiar from Tuvan music: love, the land, and the simple act of singing. In this, Tyva Kyzy demonstrates the true depth of their art: they invite us back onto the familiar territory of Tuvan music, this time through the perspective of motherhood and the rich simplicity of the igil.

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