Mongolian throat singing is a vocal technique where a single singer produces two or more pitches simultaneously: a low, sustained drone and one or more higher melodic tones that float above it. Known as khöömii (sometimes spelled höömii or xöömii) in western Mongolia, the practice is rooted in the nomadic herding cultures of Central Asia, where singers developed the ability to mimic natural sounds like rushing water, howling wind, and animal calls. In 2010, UNESCO inscribed Mongolian khöömii on its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
How One Voice Makes Two Notes
The physics behind throat singing starts with the same basic mechanism as normal singing: air from the lungs vibrates the vocal folds in the larynx. What makes throat singing different is that the singer deliberately constricts muscles in the throat, mouth, and nasal passages to isolate and amplify specific overtones, the faint higher frequencies that naturally exist in every human voice. By reshaping the space inside the mouth, adjusting the tongue, and controlling the lips, a skilled throat singer can make one of these overtones ring out as a distinct, audible melody while the fundamental pitch continues as a drone underneath.
The result is striking and, for many first-time listeners, hard to believe. It sounds as though two people are singing, or as if a whistle is playing over a deep hum. The singer is doing it all with a single stream of air and no external instruments.
The Main Styles
Both Mongolian and Tuvan traditions recognize several distinct styles of throat singing, each producing a different texture and pitch range.
- Khöömei (or khoömei): The foundational style and also the generic term for throat singing in both Mongolia and Tuva. It produces a soft, diffused set of harmonics above a mid-range drone. Singers form a small circular opening with the lips, creating a resonating chamber that gives the sound its warm, layered quality.
- Sygyt: A style that produces a clear, piercing whistle-like melody above the drone. The singer presses the tongue against the roof of the mouth and filters sound through a narrow opening, isolating a single high overtone so sharply it can sound like a flute.
- Kargyraa: The deepest style, producing a low, growling tone rich in undertones. The singer engages not just the vocal folds but also structures above them in the throat, creating a rumbling vibration that can drop well below the normal speaking range.
Beyond these three, performers recognize additional styles and substyles. Borbangnadyr features rapid, pulsating harmonics that create a rolling, almost bubbling texture. Ezenggileer imitates the rhythmic sound of a horseback rider’s boots hitting the stirrups, with a bouncing, galloping quality to the overtones.
Mongolian vs. Tuvan Traditions
Throat singing is practiced across a wide swath of Central Asia, but the two most prominent traditions come from Mongolia and the neighboring Tuvan Republic (part of the Russian Federation). While the core technique is shared, the two cultures classify and think about their styles differently.
In western Mongolia, styles are named after the parts of the body used to shape the sound. The Bait people, for example, refer to a “root-of-the-tongue” style, while western Khalkha Mongols distinguish between labial, nasal, glottal, palatal, and chest-cavity approaches. Tuvans, by contrast, often classify styles in relation to the landscape, reflecting a worldview in which the music is inseparable from the terrain it describes. The terminology differs too: Mongolians call the art khöömii, while Tuvans spell and pronounce it khoömei.
Roots in Nature and Nomadic Life
Throat singing didn’t develop in a concert hall. It grew out of a herder and hunter lifestyle lived in close relationship with vast, open landscapes. Tuvan and Mongolian singers have long used the technique to recreate the sounds of their surroundings: the whistle of mountain wind through a valley, the gurgle of a stream, the call of a bird, the gallop of horses across the steppe. In animist spiritual traditions common to the region, natural features like rivers, mountains, and animals carry spiritual significance, and imitating their sounds through song was a way of connecting with and honoring them.
This connection to place is still central to how practitioners understand the art. Throat singing is not abstract music. It is, at its core, a sonic portrait of the Central Asian landscape.
Traditional Instruments That Accompany Khöömii
Throat singing is powerful on its own, but it is often performed alongside traditional Mongolian instruments. The most iconic is the morin khuur, or horsehead fiddle, a two-stringed bowed instrument topped with a carved horse head. Its rich, slightly nasal tone blends naturally with the overtones of a throat singer’s voice, creating layered textures that reinforce each other. The tovshuur, a two- or three-stringed lute-like guitar, provides rhythmic and harmonic support. Traditional flutes and the tumur khuur (a jaw harp, sometimes called a Jew’s harp) round out the ensemble, adding airy melodies and buzzing drones that mirror the overtone-rich quality of the singing itself.
Throat Singing in Modern Music
While the tradition stretches back centuries, throat singing has found a massive new global audience in recent years. The most visible example is The Hu, a Mongolian band that fuses throat singing with heavy rock instrumentation. They call their genre “hunnu rock,” named from the Mongolian root word for human being. Their approach layers the guttural drone of kargyraa and the melodic shimmer of khöömii over distorted electric guitars, pounding drums, and traditional instruments like the morin khuur and tovshuur. Their music videos have accumulated hundreds of millions of views online.
What makes The Hu resonate with international audiences is that they aren’t simply copying Western rock with Mongolian flavor. As ethnomusicologists have pointed out, the band treats throat singing and traditional instruments as equal partners with electric guitars and bass, creating something that feels genuinely new rather than borrowed. The result is not rock music performed by Mongolians but Mongolian rock music, a distinction that has helped fuel a broader interest in Central Asian musical traditions.
The Hu is part of a larger cultural moment in Mongolia where traditional arts are being revived and modernized simultaneously, serving both as a bridge to global audiences and as a reassertion of national cultural identity.
Learning the Basics
Throat singing looks mystical, but the underlying mechanics are learnable. Most instructors start with a technique called xorekteer, or chest-based throat singing. You begin by humming or toning a simple “ahhh” and feeling for the vibration in your larynx. Then you gently constrict the muscles around that vibration while continuing to sing. This creates a tighter, buzzier version of your normal voice, the raw material for all other styles.
From there, reshaping the mouth into a small, rounded opening while maintaining that constricted tone produces the basic khöömei sound. Pressing the tongue to the roof of the mouth and filtering air through a small gap shifts the sound toward sygyt, with its high whistle. Kargyraa takes a different path: you start with the mouth closed, clear your throat with a low hum, and then open your mouth to explore different vowel shapes at the lowest pitch you can sustain.
Most beginners can produce a faint overtone within a few sessions of practice. Isolating a clear, controllable melody from those overtones typically takes months of daily work. Experienced throat singers train for years to develop the muscle control and breath support needed to sustain long phrases and switch fluidly between styles.