Ondar - Back Tuva Future

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CD Details

• Produced by David Hoffner.
• Manufactured by Warner Brothers.

Music reviews of Back Tuva Future

Music Review: Tuva Mixed and Mashed
Rating: 4 Stars

Too rough for them perhaps, too inaccessible to where they stand at the moment. And you can't really take this kind of uncouth noise seriously on its own can you? You have to ADAPT it. You have to DO SOMETHING with it! A century ago the answer was to adapt (and usually water down) any folk or foreign music you liked into symphonic form. As is still done.

So David Hoffner has created a pop mix of Ondar's Tuvan throat-singing with added background instrumentals, and bits of Willie Nelson, Randy Scruggs, and physicist Richard Feynman recounting stories. Golly kids, you can even send in for a free SECRET DECODER CARD for Tuvan Throat-singing and for Feynman diagrams! And there's a neato, keeno hidden track on the CD (giving a Dummy's Guide to Tuvan throat-singing and SECRETS of how the album was produced and where some of the background noises came from). So COOL! Or perhaps "KOOL!"?

I tend to be a bit of field recording snob. Yay Seamus Ennis, Peter Kennedy, Alan Lomax, Eduard Alekseev and so forth! And I'd already come across other records of Tuva throat-singing which I'd enjoyed.

But I can't help liking this silliness also. Let's have FUN WITH MUSIC, kids! The background music and noises emphasize or create links with other music sounds, often pop music. Why not? The similarities of style or emotion were there already waiting to be pointed out. Simultaneous punctuation and interpretation by the background music does more than pages of written critique would, with probably no more distortion.

But the album is not a teaching album per se. David Hoffner obviously intended the album to be zestful, interesting, entertaining, and artistic on its own merits, having fun with Ondar's talent, but not at the expense of it. He enjoys Ondar's throat-singing very much and wants to tell everyone. Yet _Back_TUVA_Future is designedly Hoffner's album as much as Ondar's, so the result is a fusion intended to enhance Ondar's throat-singing in ways that Hoffner sees as true to Ondar.

For me it works. I've played _Back_TUVA_Future_ many times! It's fun! It's exciting! It never lags! It points ways to listen to unenhanced throat-singing. It does what David Hoffner wanted it to do. I would probably have enjoyed it even more had it been my introduction to Tuvan music. This creative mix certainly doesn't hinder enjoyment of more traditional presentations of Tuvan music, nor does a liking for the unadorned Tuvan music prohibit a taste for Hoffner's smorgasbord. The kind of enjoyment is just different, in part. If anything, _Back_TUVA_Future_ has increased my appreciation of the unenhanced music.

Description of Back Tuva Future

International CDs

• Music > Styles
• Pop
• Rap & Hip-Hop
• Rock