And the singer, Attila Csihar, appearing halfway through the 90-minute set and staying through the end, did his extraordinary part in this ritual, singing in deep overtones, murmuring indistinctly and whispering like a dying man.
The sound of Travis is that of simple, self-examining lyrics that take on deep overtones in the context of sparse, plodding music and a vocalist, Fran Healy, who sings with restrained passion.
The entire scene was imbued with deep religious overtones and constant references to the Imam Ali, the Prophet Muhammad's son-in-law and a key figure in the Shia sect.
Rather, itch seems to be a multidimensional neurologic web incorporating sensation and action along with deeper emotional overtones.
They chant as they meditate with a technique that produces multiple overtones over their deep bass notes: an otherworldly sound that seeks to heal the world, punctuated by the clang of cymbals and roar of long trumpets.
Along with the fundamental note, Khoomei singers emit deep, swirling, prismatic resonant overtone frequencies that they can manipulate by changing the shape of their mouth and throat.
But these sounds are ravishing: piano notes rich in reverb and overtones with hail-drop hammer strikes and deep burgundy finishes, ice-pop synthesizer tones and, at points, a strangely distressed and chipped-up little sound, like air whistling through a keyhole, or a furious and quiet violin pizzicato.
But after listening to a lecture on Tuvan culture and history and viewing throat-singing videos, I was hooked on the sound — a deep buzz saw with high overtone whistles — and was happy to watch the assigned 90-minute concert by a touring Tuvan ensemble.
Originally called overtone-singing in Western scholarly literature, the identification by acoustical researchers of the presence of harmonics below the vocal drone in the deep, guttural styles as well as overtones in the more melodic styles led to adoption of the term throat-singing (a translation of the Mongolian term höömei).
In a style known as throat-singing, Mongol and Tyvan (a Siberian people northwest of Mongolia) vocalists produce two parts while singing solo by strongly reinforcing upper partials (overtones) while singing a very deep fundamental pitch.
The reality is that, faulty as many of his ideas are today, his ideas then were often quite brilliant -- though his deep dislike of frontrunner Walter Mondale had unhealthy overtones -- and we hatched ideas to demonstrate to Iowans how Hart represented a new and better version of a party whose tired out establishment was all too accurately epitomized by the former vice president.
