Tuva.Asia / The New Research of Tuva

The ancient Tuvan song 'Chyraa-Khoor,' explains Radik Tyulyush of the Tuvan band Huun Huur Tu, tells the story of a man riding his horse – a yellow trotter, as the title translates. "It's a very good horse for traveling, and he took it from the west of Tuva to the east of Tuva, traveling around and giving the names of everything – names of the mountains, names of the forests," he says over the phone from his home in Kyzyl, the capital of the Russian Federation republic that sits just north of Mongolia. Even if you don't know the words, the music paints a stirring picture. "That is a very old melody," says Tyulyush, the newest and, at 35, the youngest member of the group, who plays traditional flute and joins his bandmates in the signature Tuvan throat singing. "Very, very old – 13 or 14 centuries. Very old music."