Overtone Singing: In the News Again

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-USASCII text omitted.)LAST FALL, AN ONLINE VIDEO of the German singer Anna-Maria Hefele went viral, rocketing to over six million views within a few days of being posted.1 The video showed Ms. Hefele giving a brief demonstration of what she called polyphonic overtone singing, and it quickly made the rounds on social media sites. Singing students shared it with their teachers, teachers shared it with their colleagues, and a brief firestorm of discussion erupted among commenters on the video. What became clear from that discussion is that there remains a considerable level of misunderstanding within the general public, as well as members of our own ranks, regarding both the history of overtone and the mechanics of producing this type of music.HISTORY OF OVERTONE SINGINGTrue to the phenomenon of making a social media splash, this video was not Ms. Hefele's first or even most impressive video, nor are hers the only overtone examples available on YouTube, the popular video sharing website. Overtone always garners a mixture of awe and curiosity when presented to modern audiences. It is far from a new practice, regardless of this recent flash of media fueled attention.While a precise point of origin for the use of overtones as a prominent element in a vocal music genre proves elusive, the best known roots are in Mongolian and Tuvan chanting. Even in these cultures, there is no clear explanation of how overtone developed. Tuvan legend claims that early humankind learned the style in attempt to mimic the sounds of nature surrounding them. This explanation is undoubtedly influenced by the Tuvan's tradition of animism-the belief that objects in nature have souls or spirits.2 While overtone is occasionally performed in formal settings, its use was traditionally more widespread among both the Mongols and Tuvans in less strict contexts such as herding livestock and lulling babies to sleep.3 During the drives for nationalism of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, however, it became an element of the historical national identity and was adopted into the school curricula.4It wasn't until the mid-20th century that overtone gained any significant recognition in Western music with Karlheinz Stockhausen's Stimmung being the first major composition to utilize the technique.5 Since ...then, overtone has seen widespread use in many genres, but is most frequently found in so-called New Age and World Music.WHAT'S IN A NAME?As mentioned earlier, Ms. Hefele dubs her technique polyphonic overtone singing. In reality, like most overtone singers, she selectively amplifies overtones to create a melody above a relatively stable fundamental frequency (F^sub o^). While her F^sub o^ does move, it may be questioned whether its movement rises to the level of an independent melody. As such, calling her technique polyphony - a musical style with its own rich history - might be a stretch. In his 2005 article in this journal, Stuart Hinds points out that he and other overtone singers are indeed capable of a style of overtone that could justifiably be called polyphonic, but this practice seems to be an exceptional extension of the style and not the most common practice.6Ms. Hefele may be excused, however, for being uncertain of what to call her performance. After all, a single term for this type of phonation has hardly been decided upon, either by performers or by scholars. Ethnomusicologist Carole Pegg notes that English terms for the practice include biphonic singing, split-tone singing, jew's harp voice, and throat singing. French terms are no less varied, including chant diphonique, voix dedoublee, and voix guimbarde. Furthermore, researchers cannot even agree upon a single transliteration of the Xalxa Mongolian term for the practice ....7 It is little surprise, then, that polyphonic overtone singing would be added to the list of widely varied terms used to describe the same vocal behavior. …