A quick thread on overtone singing history in Europe, and how the tradition can be traced back from a WWI doctor with auditory hallucinations to death metal, through avant-garde theater and 70's Italian prog-rock (!)

Brace yourselves, this is quite the trip (12 tweet thread)

Overtone singing consists on changing the harmonic frequencies of your voice while maintaining a fundamental frequency by shaping your mouth and larynx, effectively producing two (or more, sometimes even four!) sounds.

Better seen than explained:

This kind of singing has a very long trajectory in Mongolia, but I'm not getting into that, mostly out of ignorance. However, suggestions re mongolian music are very welcome!

So let's trace this back a bit. To WWI, actually.

Introducing Alfred Wolfsohn. Doctor during WWI, the trauma of seeing people die daily led him to have auditory hallucinations with the extreme cries of the near-dead.

So he creates a therapy for it.
He starts screaming.

He heals himself by expanding the voice to its limits, appropriating the traumatic sounds in the mean time. He also theorizes that this technique can be applied to other areas, including theater. His pupils realize this, and some of them found the Roy Hart Theater.

Here's the nominal Roy Hart, showing of his very impressive vocal range:

If you are a prog rock freak like me you probably know Area, the 70s Italian band. Their frontman was the charismatic greek singer Demetrio Stratos. Area is cool enough to have their own thread, but Demetrio Stratos was simply unique. His technique:

Demetrio Stratos integrates the Asian, Mongolian tradition of throat singing with the thought of using voice as a ritual, healing tool, fred from the slavery of the use for language, rooted in the studies of Alfred Wolfsohn. This intelectual legacy reaches way far.

Think for example about the cathartic nature of death metal, and how growls are integrated in death metal singing. It's not hard to recognize the drive for an expansion of human expression in there.

(Also, there's nothing more metal than tracing this back to WWI dying screams)

As for overtone singing: Metal (death, black) provides the perfect ambient for the extreme, almost inhuman atmospheres that it can create. See Attile Csihár, who uses the technique extensively. Of course, I'm sure I'm missing other precedents, but I like this particular path.

As for overtones in the rest of western music, they still remain, sadly, a fringe technique. The most recent example outside of metal I can think of if King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard's coolest (IMHO) album so far, Flying Microtonal Banana. https://open.spotify.com/track/5iGPF5Vg43aZ2QTXslY6VA?si=7sNFrX4JQt-Yy-zZt3Ta0Q

So here's where I ask for help. Do you know more overtone singing bands I should know? Are you very much into Mongolian music? Do you know of other traditions that use overtone singing? Suggestions welcome!
End of thread