BBC - Radio 3 - Awards for World Music 2005

SAINKHO NAMTCHYLAK (TUVA)

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Extreme vocalist, performance artist and musical chameleon, Sainkho Namtchylak could be lazily described as 'Tuva's answer to Yoko Ono'. She prefers to call herself 'first and foremost a woman of the steppes', despite the fact that she now lives in Austria and has conducted her entire career outside the remote Central Asian republic where she was born in 1957. Regardless of whether she sings in English or Tuvan, or adopts one of several free-range non-verbal personae, her work constitutes an oblique, bittersweet and sometimes downright perverse musical love letter to her homeland.

Sainkho grew up in an isolated gold-mining village, immersed in a culture where music was all pervasive and unselfconscious. Her first musical inspiration came from the lullabies of her nomadic grandmother. A non-conformist nature meant that her first attempts at formal music training were shunned by a local college, which prompted a move to Moscow. There, she discovered improvisation and studied Siberian lamaistic and shamanistic traditions as well as Tuvan and Mongolian overtone singing. A stint with the state-sponsored folklore ensemble Sayani and the group Tri-O followed, before she went solo in 1990.

The interconnectedness of nature and spirituality, urban alienation and Buddhist philosophy are pervading lyrical themes in her work, which walks a fine line between dream-like and nightmarish qualities, and has a pervading sense of melancholy. Tuvan blues? Yes, but also drum 'n' bass, ethno-jazz, electronica, classical, dance and world music, alongside various elements of her own roots. Marrying tradition and the avant-garde, she's no purist.

"Some people perceive traditional music as like a piece of stone from the prehistorical time; archaeologist, he finds it and he keeps it the way it is. But some people really believe that music is a floating river," she explains in typically poetic style.

Sainkho has released over thirty albums, many of them off-the-wall collaborations pretty much outside the remit of these awards. "Out of Tuva" (Cramworld, 1993) has some of her earliest and most folkloric recordings, and "Naked Spirit" (Amiata, 1999) features a collaboration with Armenian duduk player Djivan Gasparyan. "Stepmother City" (Ponderosa, 2000) is Sainkho at her most accessible, while the mini-album "Time Out" (Ponderosa 2001) includes several examples of traditional Tuvan songs as well as excursions into African rhythms. This motif is extended by the use of Lao Kouyate's kora on her most recent release "Who Stole The Sky?" (Ponderosa, 2003) which is both experimental and beautiful.

Jon Lusk (courtesy of fRoots)

Sainkho's official website

Your Comments

ULYSSES FARIAS-INDIA
REAL GOOD.!!!!

simon ,oxford
I found 'Tanola nomads' on World music Network1001cd and it is fantasic. I would like to contact her about an art event i am planning in the Ashmolean Museum Oxford , England this Autumn . Would love her to perform.

luis oporto portugal
first time i listen to this hypnotic voice my concept of human voice changed... ...discoverys like that..one in a life time...great!!!

Paula and Leo, Brazil
We got simply ammazed by Sainkho's art, thought we haven't yet got the opportunity to know more about her. We are a theatre group that is researching the mongolian sounds and songs to help our vocal improvisations, thinking on our brazilian vocal varity, to create our plays (without words) using only voice effects. We would like very much to get some kind of contact to Sainkho.

Gregory, Poland, Krakow
Nice to know, that such great voice and talet spread trough the world. Magnificent, strange and hypnotic music. Such a pleasure to listen...

julia, poland, kraków
I study turkology and I learn tuva grammmar too. It`s great to know about Sainkho...;-)

sainkho
I am Sainkho Namtchylak. I have my web site (www.sainkho.com) can you link to it or mention it on your site. It is very nice to see how people reacl. It is giving me the power to go on. Thank you. Sainkho Namtchylak
Leszek, Poland - Krakow
"Lost Rivers" is the most impressive experience with human voice I've ever had, it's so natural, naked, innocent, authentic! Whole that plastic world of mainstream western music just disappears when I'm listening to the music od Sainkho. Thank You!

ferit yazgan - turkey
while I was looking for a strange sounds I found her, and then I learned she was from my grandfather's land, Tuva. her voice like my whispering to my soul, sometimes I dont understand words she said; then I noticed that maybe I have to listen her with another ears of my body. thank you sainkho, go ahead!

Ulises Farias from Caracas/Venezuela.
She is great.... God bless you Tuva.

Lee,Jung-hwan SOUTH KOREA
The Music of Nomad is always unique.That of Sainkho is in that category.That's the reason why I like her music.

Walter, Rome
In this strange cocktail called for marketing reasons WORLD MUSIC, Sainkho is really a voice that mixes her musical tradition and western reverberations as few of the nominated artist for WM2005 are able to do

Israel
I've been to her concert last year and she was amazing!

Richard Dorrell
An absolutely astounding artist (Ifirst described to me, again fairly incorrectly, as the Asian Bjork)- most interestingly (particularly given Tuvan musical recordings are the only widely available Siberian music in the West) her experimentation with other music styles from within Siberia itself: the Tungus-style vocal imitation in "Tuva Blues" (from Stepmother City) is a fantastic stretch of the vocal imagination.

Chris, London
Sainkho Namtchylak is, without a shadow of a doubt, the most weird artist I have ever heard. Although I will not be playing this CD (Lost Rivers) at any parties any time soon, it certainly made for interesting listening!