By Carol Hiltner | President, Altai Mir University
In collaboration with the village elders of Tyungur, our Altai Mir University project leader in Altai Republic, has initiated a new throat-singing contest, to be called the Kurultai (Convocation) of Storytellers on July 4-6.
We have followed a long trail to get to this. When Altai Mir University was founded in 2006 to preserve the at-risk indigenous Altai culture, the ancient art of storytelling through overtone singing has almost been lost during seventy years of Communist repression. Throat-singing is the medium through which the Altai people convey their oral history, which goes back millennia.
For years, GlobalGiving donations provided tiny, but enabling, stipends to several young throat-singers so they could afford to continue their musical training. Your donations helped to send one of our most capable to an international contest in Spain, where he won first-place honors.
And now, the tradition has been revived enough to support a new contest, which we expect will generate a new wave of interest in this ancient vocal technology. Thank you for supporting indigenous Altai culture, an important link to humanity's wholeness.
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