Wow, I can’t believe Tuvan throat singing hasn’t been mentioned yet:
Many Central Asian cultures have a singing technique where the oral cavity produces strongly audible overtone pitches in addition to the note being produced with the vocal cords. So this is not a case of two different pitches produced simultaneously from the cords, but instead, two distinct pitches produced as a result of overtones.
Editorially, I might add that it sounds really cool. The Crash Test Dummies used to do throat singing in some of their shows…
The most well known multi-note throat singing style is that of the Tuvan people. The movie “Genghis Blues” is a fascinating documentary of a blind blues singer, Paul Pena, who taught himself to do Tuvan throat singing after hearing some on a shortwave broadcast from the Soviet Union. He ends up traveling to Tuva to compete in a national competition. See http://www.genghisblues.com/film/ for more information on both the movie and the CD.
The album “Back Tuva Future” was recorded more recently and is a fascinating mix of Tuvan and Western musical styles, including chanting and drumming by the late Richard Feynman, who discovered Tuva through stamps and started the Friends of Tuva society.
Note that it is not uncommon in Tuvan throat singing to sing three notes at once.
Finally, Inuit throat singing is another multiphonic tradition. I’m not as well acquainted with it as I am with Tuvan, but Tanya Tagaq Gillis has been instrumental in bringing this style to the world. See http://www.tagaq.com/bio.html for more information.
–Toby Everett
“Enough with this throat singing already
If you want to sing two notes at once
Why don’t you do like everyone else
Get a multi-track machine
Lay 'em down separately
Make a little harmony
Maybe a bass track like one from the Rolling Stones
None of this long last art
This archaic stuff
Go out and buy something”
(Dan Bern, “Go To Sleep”, on which Josh Zawaduck does throat singing:)
This exact thing came to mind when I read the column. I didn’t remember the name, but I remember seeing some old east Asian man doing it on Conan O’Brien and thought it was pretty cool how he could harmonize two different sounds in his throat.
Major deja vu! Back in the 70s when I was a college audio-visual geek, I showed a film for a speech pathology class featuring a teenage girl singing a religious song in harmony with herself. I remember what they called it back then: diplophonia.
Tibetans and Mongolians (Tuvan’s are related to the Mongolians) have a long history of multinote. This is used in all the Tibetan Buddhist monastaries during their chanting. Mickey Hart of the Greatful Dead has a world music series with one selection on the Gyoto Tantric Buddhist Monk’s chanting. These monks are part of the Dalai Lama’s personal monastary. Excellent recording. These monks toured the US in the late 1980’s.
Go to any monastary in Tibet and you will be treated to the assembled monks doing their chordal tantric chanting. It is one of the most amazing things I have ever heard. Anywhere from one to hundreds of monks chanting in unison. Just frickin’ amazing.
This blokey is one of the foremost khoomii singers in the UK ( I know not of elsewhere), and has deeply impressed me on the couple of occasions I have seen him perform. I’m not trying to advertise his concerts, but just illustrate that overtone singing is performed by other westerners than David Hykes.
Damn, maybe you throat singing afficianados are the folks to whom I can reiterate this question- where can I find a cd by the throat singing Kazakistanian folk-rock band Roksonaki? Some kind Dopers found rumors of out-of-print tapes and the like, but … no success.