in throat singing, which the tuvans call khoomei, and it's also called overtone singing in the west,u're doing is selectively amplifying harmonics which are naturally present in the voice and thus singing two pitches at the same time-- a fundamental pitch and a harmonic pitch. and i'll try to demonstrate that. [singing sample] this tuvan throat singing, the imitation of natural sound i think represents a window into the dark deep past of music maybe back to the very origins of music. how did music begin? that's a big question and there is very little evidence around. but i think that this case of tuva perhaps provides some evidence of how music began. and i think it might have begun as a way of people interacting with natural sounds in just the way the tuvans do. you can see them moving for instance from these literal imitations to this more aestheticized artistic interpretation of a sound. you also see the dawn of the artist, because an artist is someone who has to have a kind of subjective sense of him or herself as an artist, of someone who is not simply literally imitating or ref