First couple days in Tuva

Sean works in the Dom Narodnovo Tvorchestvo (House of National Creative Arts) where the Ministry of Culture, the International Khoomei Center, and the offices of the national orchestra are located. He's a member of the orchestra and seems to do work for the other offices in the DNT too. I've been down there every day for one thing or another.

I've been trying to track down the director of the Khoomei symposium to register and to try and get a reduced registration fee. They have a two-tiered system set up whereby Russian citizens pay about $100 for registration and foreigners pay $300. I'm hoping that my status as a student and some arrangement to volunteer at the symposium will be enough to catch a price break.
While I failed to find the symposium director, yesterday I did stumble upon the person I needed to talk to to register for Ustuu-Khuree, the music festival in Chadaana next week. I'll be there probably from Tuesday to Saturday, sleeping outside.

----Tonight there was a concert down at the '5 Years of Tuva' stadium. It was the most incredible range of performers I think I've ever seen on a single stage. A couple of traditional Tuvan folk music bands played, along with Sean, the traditional Tuvan American guy (his jokes about being an American in Tuva were apparently hilarious, judging by the crowd's response). There were also a couple of different traditional dance acts and Tyva Kyzy, the all-female traditional music ensemble. A woman who performed an a cappella kargyraa solo probably got one of the biggest rounds of applause of the night.

But then things moved towards the progressive side. A group of students at the university in Kyzyl performed Tuvan folk music with a couple of guitars and a rock flavor. A singer sang Tuvan songs to backing tracks that were very heavy with electric bass and a western drum set.
And then, the MC announced that we were moving into the 'youth' section of the program. This meant breakdancers, a rock band that sounded a lot like Dave Matthews (they featured a pair of saxophones and a trumpet), and a DJ from Novosibirsk who started spinning Russian club music.
All these types of music coexist in Tuva. That is to say, it's not as if traditional music is only for an older generation or as if it's static. At the concert, I met a history teacher, probably around 35 or 40 years old, who came for the folk music. I also met a couple of guys my age, one of whom was still in college. He plays the guitar, but also prefers traditional Tuvan music over the contemporary stuff.

On the vocal imitation front, I heard a great vocal imitation of a khomus (jaw harp) done by one of the performers at the concert. Also some pretty slick igil playing-- it can sound very much like throatsinging in the right hands, or even exactly like a horse's whinny.