Now, how to search online if your preferred term for the most accessible, most adorable, most transportable instrument happens to be *‘trump’*? By informing yourself about all the other names in existence. ‘Trump’ is but one of more than 1100 names for the same instrument. Phons Bakx, the renowned Dutch Jew’s harp player and researcher, recently shared the latest version of his list with me. Carefully collected during decades of research, with the same rigour that anthropologist Bakx applied earlier to investigations into other obscure instruments, like the bullroarer and a certain non-Tibetan type of singing bowl played on the countryside of Brittany (France).

So check out the 1100+ names for *Jew’s harps*, go to this page

http://www.antropodium.nl/Duizend%20Namen%20Mhp%20voorw%20ENG.htm

and click on this line 

(Click here) ► for the Nomenclature of Jew’s harp Names

Be patient if the list does not show up immediately! If there is a warning, ignore it and click ‘continue’. You might also try this one directly:

https://www.antropodium.nl/Duizend%20Namen%20Mhp%20NOMENCLATUUR.htm

Of course, many names for these ‘marranzano pancakes’ (a term actually in use in the States) are quite common and well-known. In Siberia and far beyond, many people know the *khomus*, here in Taiwan more and more people are becoming familiar with the *lubuw* and in Germanic-speaking countries we have the *Maultrommel*, *mondharp* and *mouth harp*. In South Africa, the Xhosa people’s *isitolotolo* is little-known but gee whiz, what a beautiful name it is!

With ever better translating tools (AI!), we may expect more and more reports around the world about President Khomus, President Isitolotolo, President Lubuw and so on in the next four years – you can read the 1150 other variations for yourself but I continue to use some names here, like *this*, so you know what I am talking about.

Meanwhile excitement is building up here in Taiwan, this time for non-political reasons. Final preparations are made now for the truly grand World Jaw Harp Music Festival. One that was envisioned many years ago, but which due to corona become a rather small-scale event in 2022 (see my photos here). But now it has grown to impressive proportions, with musicians attending from all over the place, plus of course a huge representation of local and regional talents. The performer’s list kept on growing in recent months: it seems a second Asian hub for *doromb* is in the making here! The first Asian hub for *guimbarda* being, what else, Siberia. In particular Yakutia, the republic which carries the *timir khomus* as its emblem, because the Yakuts (or Sakha’s) are the world’s most fanatic makers and players of *pangapoans*.

https://www.jawharpfestivaltw.com/

But who knows about other *gewgaws* in Siberia? What kind of *genggong* music do other indigenous people in Siberia have, such as the Negidaltsi, the Ket, the Chukchi – you probably never even heard the names of these people before (check out the map below to read all their names). So let me share some obscure recordings from the early days of my own *kunka* infatuation. I listened again and again to a double-album (2-LP) I bought in Moscow in 1992, an anthology of indigenous music from Siberia and Russia’s Far East. It was compiled by composer and music collector Igor Bogdanov (whom I met in Moscow in the year 2000, to learn more about an extraordinary triple album of Tuvan traditional music he had produced in the 1980s). There are a total of seven pieces with *vargan* players. This album, and my fieldwork in Tuva in 1993, is where I got my early *morchang* education: not from Yakutia, which is absent on this album (because it is dedicated to the “small-numbered” peoples of Siberia and the Far East). Besides the series of Siberian field recordings from Henri Lecomte on Buda Records (1992-now), each dedicated to one ethnic group, not much was ever published on disc for many of these peoples, as far as I know. And this two-elpee collection stands out as a fantastic introduction to the singing, the instruments and the shamanic séances which can be heard on this gigantic landmass covered in permafrost. (There are quite a few other very obscure instruments, too).

We start with an upbeat style played on the *tumran* from the Khanti-Mansi people (the *names* I write here are the actual names in use by these Siberian peoples). The reverb you hear on all recordings was added in the studio: this was a standard procedure in folk music recordings for Melodiya Records. It adds a certain touch that over time became associated with traditional music recordings from the Soviet Union, and which, I have to admit, has its own charm. 

Next is another upbeat piece from the Selkup, with two instruments indicated, each with a different name: *kypa* and *pyngyr*. Might these be two harps?

We continue with the lovely combination of the *pymyl*, together with the zooming disc mergeykoya from the Ket group. Listen to the lovely layered melodies from the *pymyl*, an octave apart: there is more going on than you might think.

Next are two pieces from Evenki, Eveni and Negidaltsy, the album notes do not tell which one is which.

The first one of these reminds one strongly of the Yakut style of playing and making *kumyzs*. The – presumably Evenki-  instrument is called *kordavun* and is even tuned up a half tone towards the end.

The second of these one is the much lower, darker sounding *kunkakhi* of, I think, the Negidaltsi, with plenty of breathing sounds.

We move on to the Nivkh of the Far East, whose instrument is called *kangan* (pronounced as kan-gan) and with a very low pitch.

The last one is yet something very different, the very dynamic *vanny* from the Chuvash or Chukchi. My guess: the Chukchi, who are living next to the Bering straight. I have once seen a group performing in the Netherlands, with some fine *čangko’uz* playing.

Of course by now you wish to know: where to find these peoples? Here is a map printed in the nice 2-CD compilation The Spirits are Listening. Music of Indigenous Siberian Peoples by Henri Lecomte, whom I mentioned above.

Finally, let me be clear about President Isitolotolo: his election is not a joke, but it is not the end of the world either if you are in the other camp. The Dutch historian Johan Huizinga had this to say about American politics, in his groundbreaking 1938 study Homo Ludens:

More obvious than in British parliamentarianism is the Game element in American political mores. Long before the two-party system in the United States came closest to assuming the character of two teams, whose political difference was hardly distinguishable to the outsider, the electoral propaganda there completely took the form of great national games. The presidential election of 1840 created there the style for all later ones. Candidate then was the popular General Harrison. A program his supporters did not have, but a coincidence gave them a symbol, the log cabin, the rugged log cabin of the pioneer, and with that sign they won. Nomination of a candidate by largest volume of votes, i.e., by loudest shouts, was inaugurated by the election of 1860, which brought Lincoln to his post. The emotional character of American politics already lies in the origins of the national character, which never denied its origins in the primitive relations of a pioneer world. Blind party loyalty, secret organization, mass enthusiasm, combined with a childish desire for external symbols, give to the element of play in American politics something naive and spontaneous, that the younger mass movements in the Old World lack.

That was looking back into the 19th century, and up to Huizinga’s time, 1938. On the previous page Huizinga writes:

Modern culture is hardly ‘played’ anymore, and there where she seems to play, the play is foul. Meanwhile the distinction between play and non-play in the phenomena of civilisation becomes gradually harder to make, as one approaches one’s own time.

Nearly 90 years later things have changed, but reading the words of an original historian and cultural analyst can help us see that our current epoch is not the only one dealing with extreme situations.

My advice: use your *trump* / *lubuw* / *khomus* etc. wisely, as the Italians do: as a *scacciapen­sieri* – a *thought dispeller* or *gedachtenverdrijver*!!

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http://www.hum.leidenuniv.nl/medewerkers/forum/index-509/vantongeren-509.html

and this is the English translation:

In The research of … Mark van Tongeren, doctoral student at the Academy of Creative and Performing Arts, tells about his research int new possibilities of multi-voiced overtone singing. “We are making audible a strange world of harmonies, that is hidden behind every word that we speak.”

Tell something about yourself, how did you arrive at this research topic?
For some twenty years now I am studying the foundations of sound, among others from (ethno)musicological and artistic perspectives. It all began with the question: what is sound colour? I tried to find answers to that question experimentally, because I thought something of the spectral analysis that we saw at acoustics classes must be retracable in our experience. After a little while I recognized in my voice specific resonances, so-called overtones, and I taught myself to sing in two voices. The unfamiliarity of the phenomenon of overtone singing taught me, as a musicology student, that this was an interesting area of study that I could help develop. I went to Tuva, in Siberia, in 1993, where the world’s best overtone singers live: in that time it was almost terra incognita for Westerners. Those fieldwork experiences raised my curiosity about the wider role of music and sound in society, vice versa. More research trips to Asia followed, and I wrote a book in which I assembled existing knowledge about overtone singing. Parallel to this I developed my vocal art and did theatre projects. Through my teaching post at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague I heard about the inauguration of the Faculty of Creative and Performing Arts. The combination of science and art has always attracted me, and now I can solve some burning issues as a PhD student.

Photo: Four Sardinians sing in Five Voices. Photo M. van Tongeren, Castelsardo, Sardinia, 2007.

Can you tell what the research programme is about? Which is the central question?
I discern two main themes in my research programme Overtone Singing and the Thresholds of Audibility: one concerns a niche within a niche of music, the other rethinks and articulates what that means for the way in which each human relates to the world acoustically. My starting point is the artistic research into new possibilities of multi-voiced overtone singing. In fact I am not doing more, but less than what already has been done: together with others I show the matrix that is the foundation of the singing voice, without frills. This is done with the help of Zero(points) (Nulpunten), a series of systematic sound structures in which fundamental tones and overtones ‘meet themselves’ as it were. We are making audible a strange world of harmonies, that is hidden behind every word that we speak. Everyone speaks with the help of overtones, but nobody hears them, because speech is founded upon strategic transformations in our perception. That is the reason, secondly, for a deeper investigation of reality and illusion of our auditory world. For example, overtone singing is often considered a spiritual phenomenon, despite the fact that it is founded upon a way of listening that could be called rather empirical or phenomenological.

On 0.29/3028 three singers execute a variant of  Zero(point) 29, which exists of an almost endless series of permutations. In a simialr fashion Parafonia has recorded hundreds of chords, rather systematically and without frills. A selection of the Zero(point)s, starting with 0.32, forms the artistic part of the PhD, and its leitmotiv. They are further approached from the viewpoint of science, philosohpy and belief.Listen: 0.29-3028 (mp3)

What are the most exciting parts of the project?
I am tempted to select the artistic part of my research, for which I founded my laboratory Parafonia, as the most exciting part. Without a doubt the vocal experiments, in which performance – and theatrical elements also play a role, are the driving force behind this project. Within that, the composition cycle Zero(points) takes a special place, because it is something that has never been done before, while in my view it deals with fundamental knowledge and skills in music and acoustics. It is interesting both artistically and conceptually. On the other hand, it is just as exciting to think about what is nót very specific about this obscure way of singing, but what this way of singing lays bare about acoustic reality as such. You hit upon fundamental illusions in our perception that are comparable, for example, to the gaping rift between the space-time of modern physics and that of our everyday experience.

What do you hope to achieve?
For the short term, until February 2010, I hope I will be able to write down my thoughts crystal clear and to record the sound likewise. These are important conditions to get my research across to people. It is my intention that singers, composers, and my group Parafonia do much more with this material. Apart from that, I am aiming at people who have an interest and passion for music, who want to satisfy their curiosity with sounds that, from a musical and aesthetic perspective, try to get to the essence of sound.

How do you like the life of a researcher at this faculty?
I find the wide scope of the Academy of the Performing and Creative Arts  in the international framework of docARTES very stimulating. The first two year every PhD student joins monthly meetings with other musicians and composers, to talk about the theory and philosophy of artistic research. Philosopher Marcel Cobussen and theoretician Henk Borgdorff have given many impulses for the development of the new area of artistic research, together with a host of international guests from the musical and scholarly world. That was rather intensive, and to some extent I now miss the frequent exchange of ideas. Here in Leiden I have the privilege to work in a beautiful building on the Rapenburg with excellent acoustics: we have recorded the best Zero(points) here, among others in the kitchen, and not in the chapel in The Hague where our new, audiophile Cd Sphere was recorded. Hopefully the Academy of Creative and Performing Arts remains in this building for a while so that we can continue to realize our crystal clear recordings in ideal acoustic conditions.

Forum, September 2009

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