The University of Pittsburgh's Center for Russian and East European Studies will host Robert O. Beahrs and his talk "Nomadic Perspectives on Multivocality in the Altai Mountains" on January 19.
Over the past forty years, nomadic vocal practices from Inner Asia known as "throat-singing" or "overtone singing have been commonly misunderstood. Drawing on twelve years of fieldwork in Tuva and Altai, this presentation explores how localized cosmologies and indigenous philosophies of voice and music suggest new ways of conceiving of xöömei beyond ethnic identity and vocal technique. This project joins a number of recent anthropological studies of Central Eurasia that reexamine how indigenous peoples were inscribed into the ethnographic archive and offers new ways of conceiving of the poetics and politics of life in less human-centered ecologies.The talk starts at 3:30 pm in 4217 Posvar Hall (map) and is free and open to the public.