Tuva.Asia / The New Research of Tuva

The highest preparedness for the introduction of a new course included in the school curriculum as a federal component was demonstrated by the schools in the capital of the republic. According to the Deputy Head of the Department of Education of the City Hall of Kyzyl Angelika Dietrich, the preparation for the introduction of "Basics of religious cultures and secular ethics" was launched in the February of this year. The new course shall be introduced from the fourth grade in 12 secondary schools of Kyzyl and shall be taught by 43 teachers and each of the school representatives took refresher courses. All necessary textbooks were received and e-learning resources for teachers, pupils and parents were prepared. The parental choice of one of the six modules included in "Basics of religious cultures and secular ethics" is as follows: the basics of the Buddhist culture have chosen 34.1% of the parents, the basics of the Orthodox culture - 15.2%, the basics of the Islamic culture - 0.3%, the basics of the world religious cultures - 26.8%, the basics of the secular ethics - 23.6%.

Dear colleagues and dear readers!

Wishing you all the best on the Knowledge Day, September 1 we would love to present you the new issue of our magazine. The articles concerning development prospects of the particular fields of tuvinology (mongolology, ethno-politology researches); proceedings of the conference dedicated to the 100^th anniversary of  the turkologist Nadelyaev V.M.; the article on the protest movement in 1930s in Tuvan People’s Republic; very vivid report from the last Ustuu-Khuree festival and many other materials are of special interest in the magazine. The volume of the PDF-version of the journal is 166 pp, and it’s as always downloadable in a single file. When necessary, it is possible to get a PDF-file of any particular article on request for printing, reporting, or other purposes. We would much appreciate if any interested and concerned reader writes an issue review (with some thoughts on the read articles such as pros and cons, what you like or dislike, inaccuracies, usefulness of the information, etc). 

XIV international music festival "Spirit of Japan" will take place at the Moscow conservatorium. The first concerts will begin in early September. On September 7, at the Rakhmaninov hall in a program "Where the gods live", gogaku music, shigin singing, shibu dance and calligraphic art will be introduced by the ensemble headed by Okabayashi Yaeko (from Miyazaki in Kyushu).

On 9 September, a program "Unexpected Japan" will be shown by an ensemble with Kano Taeko, Kuzume Junichi, Terada Ryohei, and Yoshino Akira. They will introduce songs from Okinawa and Tuvan throat-singing. One pf the performers, Terada Ryohei, has long been practicing khoomei in its homeland of Tuva. He speaks fluent Tuvan and has Tuvan friends, including those on his page of VKONTAKTE.

Festival "Spirit of Japan" has been held at the Moscow conservatorium since 1999. It was initiated by the Center "Music cultures of the world", on which basis, by the joint efforts of Moscow composer Dzh.K. Mikhailov (1938-1995) and the famous gogaku music performer Iwahori Keiko, classes in Japanese music were began at the Moscow conservatorium (1993), and the ensemble of Japanese music "Wa-On" (1996) and Russian-Japanese center of music culture (1998) were founded.

For the first time, medical research study in field conditions was organized in Tuva at the remote arzhaan "Choigan". The medical team consists of eight practicing specialists from various therapeutic-prophylactic health care centers of the republic. The team includes a physiotherapist, neuropathologist, surgeon, a specialist in clinical laboratory diagnostics, otolaryngologist physician's aide-laboratory technologist, and one student of Republic medical College.

The study was performed during the summer season of active visiting by vacationers seeking healing at medicinal springs of arzhaan Choigan, from 9 to 23 July 2012. This research used instructions for examining patients, tests, questionnaires, worked out by I.N. Smirnova, the head of the therapeutic department of Tomsk institute of balneology and physiotherapy. Medical-clinical studies of all parameters of function were performed on 93 patients twice: when they arrived at the arzhaan, before beginning therapy, and just before departure (after the course of therapy. Consequently, varying periods of therapeutic procedures were noted, but in most cases the vacationers came for a week's stay.

A notice about a find of an ancient burial came to the editorial office of "Plus Inform". Because the information arrived through three or four different hands, it was not clear at first who and how discovered the burial. It was something like: somebody dug and uncovered some bones by chance. In reality, it was something quite different. But it was very strange anyway.
A team of workers from the Service for protection of objects of cultural heritage went to Mezhegei, where the announcement originated. And young people from the village took us to examine the "autopsied" kurgan. It was quite a long trip through the steppe. Suspicions began creeping up: but just what could they have been digging "by chance" in the steppe?
They stopped. Not far from the road, we could see a white flat round area, with a little bit of grey. Maybe there was a salt lake here, which had dried out?

Yesterday was the birthday of one of the best known Tuvan throat-singers - Kaigal-ool Kim-oolovich Khovalyg. On the occasion of his 50th birthday, which was widely celebrated in the republic in 2010, his colleague khoomeizhi Otkun Dostai took an interview with the celebrant. It was published in the Live Journal on the tuvamedee page.. We are now publishing this material in full.
He was born on 20 August 1960 at the foot of Mt. Bayan-Dugai, near Chadaana river in the deepest night, and sang khoomei.
His father was of the Bora-Khol Khovalygs. Kim-ool Chaptygbayevich Khovalyg was born in 1935 in the Bazhyn-Alaak village of Dzun-Khemchik kozhuun. He was a teacher at the local high school. He taught children to understand automobiles in the villages Bayan-Tala, Chyrgaky, and Bazhyn-Alaak. People said about him that he could diagnose a car problem from its sound at a distance.
His mother, Chudur Enchek-Kulakovna Oorzhak, was born in 1936 in Dzun-Khemchik kozhuun.

The NTV, one of the largest Turkish television channels, intends to make a film about Tuva. The news was announced by Elena Kara-Sal, the manager of the Consular section of the Russian Embassy in Turkey, during the meeting with the Head of Tuva Sholban Kara-ool.

According to Elena Kara-Sal, the management of the NTV channel had contacted with the Russian Embassy requesting assistance in initiation of friendly ties with Tuva that could help to make more productive filming and to show different sides of the Tuvan culture. The journalists are interested in the republic, its history, its cultural potential and, particularly, in the phenomenon of the throat singing that hands down from generation to generation. Interestingly, the Turkish journalists know about distinguished Tuvan khoomeizhi Kongar-ool Ondar, the Honoured Artist of Tuva and Russia. They would love to get to know the performer and to present him to Turkish people.

On the way to Kobdo, on the mountain where the Tuvan Arats Rebellion against the Manchu-Chinese invaders took place, starting from July, 8-10 the International Festival of Mongolian throat singing was held. We were invited to the ceremony. The Culture Minister of Tuva Vyacheslav Dongak led the delegation, comprised of the Dyngylday ensemble, the members of Khoomei center, and the National Orchestra of the Republic of Tuva. Descendants of Kobdo battle participants (already being elderly people), writers, and a group from Kyzyl City Hall were on a visit to Mongolian people apart from us.

Officially, I was invited as a khoomei expert. Many professors and academicians gathered at the event, and it was a great pleasure to get on well with all of them and to find a common language. Ingenious throat singing performers being the guardians of music treasures and poetry of the peoples of Mongolia used to be highly respected persons among all the social stratums and the communities of Kobdo.

The 3nd International Felt Festival "Patterns of Life" will take place on 15 August on Arat square within the framework of Naadym, cattle-breeders’ holiday. It will be possible to see and obtain felt products and souvenirs made in various corners of Russia and Mongolia. Master craftsmen from Kazachstan, Republic Altai, Bashkortostan, Khakassia, as well as from many aimaks of Mongolia will participate in the festival. There will be an exhibition and sale of yurts, a fair of folk industries products, felt-making workshops by artisans who have preserved traditional methods, and competitions.

The aim of the festival is to develop international co-operation, widening the scope of possibilities of utilization the valuable raw material by exchange of experiences and establishment of working relationships, renewal and further development of traditions of decorative-applied art, increase in the professionalism if the artisans who produce felt and products made of it.

A new book by Theodore Levin, professor, well-known producer, ethno musicologist, researcher, and promoter of the musical culture of the Inner Asia, will catch the interest of those, who live in Tuva and will be read over by everyone, regardless of their relation to music. The book under the title Where Rivers and Mountains Sing: Sound, Music, and Nomadism in Tuva and Beyond was published in America in 2006.

Theodore Levin presents several points of view of different scientists on the fate of nomad musical art and, especially, of the gained worldwide popularity, the art of throat singing. The author anticipates and fears the commercialization and the loss of genuine nature of khoomei because of the music performers chasing the inviting success.

The Russian version of the book called Музыка новых номадов. Горловое пение в Туве и за ее пределами has just been released in Moscow. 

A ceremonial celebration was held in southern Siberia on Monday (July 23) to mark the opening of a newly rebuilt Buddhist temple - Ustuu-Khuree.

Some ten thousand people travelled to Chadan in Russia's Tuva region to attend the opening festivities, which included a procession with people carrying 1,000 Buddha statues led by a green horse, in addition to a prayer service and music festival.

The new temple is an exact replica of a Buddhist temple which was built in 1907 but destroyed in 1937 during the Stalin regime's anti-religious campaigns. It takes its name 'Ustuu Khuree' from the name of one of these destroyed temples. Ruins from the original building still stand in the region, marked by Buddhist prayer flags.

A traditional music festival was held there every year, but in 2008 construction of the new building began in a field near the destroyed temple.

"Now our new temple is the only Buddhist temple in Eurasia that has been rebuilt after being destroyed 75 years ago. No one thought that it would be restored - like a phoenix from the ashes - and with a thousand Buddhas!", head of the Ustuu-Khuree music festival Igor Dulush told Reuters.

Naadym-2012, the holiday of Tuvan animal herders, will take place on August 3-4 in Bai-Tayga district, which won the honor to host the final and most spectacular part of the chief holiday of Tuva, for the successes in the socio-economic development. Naadym will consist of two parts6 the first one related to the herders’ achievements – in Bai-Tayga, the second with sports events – horse-races, wrestling, achery – in Kyzyl attached to the Day of the Republic on August, 17-18.
“The main idea of Naadym is to honor the workers of the villages, who by their daily work secure the basic necessities of life for us, - says the premier Sholban Kara-ool. - Animal herding remains one of the most important branches of Tuvan economy, and not only because of the economics. Cattle husbandry forms the basis of life of a significant proportion of the population, and the basis of behavior towards the surrounding nature, rituals, ceremonies and traditions. That is why this holiday is truly national.”

There is no end of miracles in Chaa-Khol district, just as throughout the entire republic. However, yet another place worth seeing will emerge around this area very soon. It is already being there. If you go from Chaa-Khol village towards the Shagonar water basin, you can see through the split of one of the rocks a large grayish niche. Its’ contours resemble Buddhist niche closely. It is not the old and well-known Buddhist shrine with ancient Buddha rock engraving, which is, on the contrary, located deep down and constantly gets flooded by waters of the artificial sea. This is entirely new creation – a new rock-cut Buddhist shrine, where the works have launched.

The projects of saving the ancient bas-relief have been discussed for a long time, and eventually only three of them remained: to cut it out of the rock and to place it, for instance, in museum or temple; to imbed it in clear plastic; to make a copy and sanctify it. As a result, the third option has been chosen.

The Minister of Education and Science of Tuva, Doctor of Letters, Buddhist Kaadyr-ool Bicheldey has started implementing the project. The idea, as he says, belongs to His Holiness Dalai Lama XIV.

Traditional culture is what helps a nation to stay unique. The newly built Aldyn-Bulak ethnic cultural centre in Russia’s Tyva Republic in southern Siberia aims to study and promote folklore, traditions and customs. The name ‘Aldyn-Bulak’ means ‘golden spring’. Located 45 km from the capital Kyzyl, the centre is expected to boost ethno tourism in the area. The centre welcomed its first visitors earlier this month.

The construction of the Aldyn-Bulak started last June. While working on the project architects relied on two major principles: environmental awareness and ethnic flavor. The complex is made up of a yurt-style restaurant, four presidential VIP yurts, seven economy-class yurts, fivechums (tents) with a fireplace, a sports ground, pergolas, saunas, souvenir shops, administration building and parking lots. Apart from this, there is a school where one can learn the art of Khoomei,a Tuvan variant of throat singing. Khoomei is when a singer produces two or even three distinct pitches simultaneously.

The centre has recently launched a symbol of throat singing – Ovaa Khoomei, depicted in the form of a golden arrow targeted upwards. 

The grand opening of the International Festival of Throat Singing Performers Dembildey – 2012, with participation of guests from Japan, Mongolia, Canada, America, Norway, Spain, Australia, and Finland took place in Kyzyl, at the Tuvan National Theatre on July 6.

Joan Feynman, sibling of Richard Feynman, the founder of Friends of Tuva, physicist and Nobel Laureate, became the dearest guest of the Festival. Joan Feyman came to Tuva with her husband and friends. The Head of Tuva, Sholban Kara-ool, speaking at the event, warmly expressed Joan and Richard Feynman the gratitude for their love, attention and deep feel for Tuvan culture, as well as for their contribution to popularity of Tuva.

The Premier emphasized the special role of the prodigiously talented sons of Tuva - Kaigal-ool Khovalyg and Kongar-ool Ondar. Both of the performers are the Honoured Artists of Russian Federation, the National Khoomeizhys and favourites of Tuvan fellow citizens.