Yat-Kha
Yat-Kha is a band from Tuva, led by vocalist/guitarist Albert Kuvezin. Yat-kha's music is a mixture of Tuvan traditional music and rock music, featuring Kuvezin's distinctive kargyraa throat singing style, the kanzat kargyraa.
Yat-Kha was founded in Moscow in 1991, as a collaborative project between Kuvezin and Russian avant-garde, electronic composer Ivan Sokolovsky. The project blended traditional Tuvan folk music with post-modern rhythms and electronic effects. Kuvezin and Sokolovsky toured and played festivals, and eventually took the name “Yat-Kha,” which refers to a type of small, Central Asian zither (similar to the Mongolian yatga and the Chinese guzheng), and which Kuvezin plays in addition to the guitar. Apparently, "yat-kha" is also a Tuvan slang word for Tuva during the Soviet period, meaning "poor wretch", "(dumb) little brother".
In 1993, Yat-Kha released a self-titled album on the General Records label. After the release of this album, Kuvezin and Sokolovsky parted creative ways. Kuvezin went on to release albums under the name Yat-Kha with other musicians (with less emphasis on electronics), beginning with Yenisei Punk in 1995 with morin khuur player Alexei Saaia. Sokolovsky issued a remastered version of the Yat-Kha album, with additional tracks, under the title Tundra's Ghosts in 1996/97.
Discography
Albums:
- Priznak Greyushii Byedi (1991)
- Khanparty (1992)
- Yat-Kha (1993)
- Yenisei Punk (1995)
- Yenisei Punk (Remastered) (1999)
- Tundra's Ghosts (1996/97) (remastered version of Yat-Kha released by Ivan Sokolovsky)
- Dalai Beldiri (1999)
- Aldyn Dashka (2000)
- Bootleg. Yat-Kha in Europe Live 2001 (2002)
- Tuva.Rock (2003)
- Re-Covers (2005)
- Bootleg 2005 (2005)
Members
Current:
- Albert Kuvezin (vocals, guitar, bass guitar, chanzy, khomus, yat-kha)
- Evgeny "Zhenya" Tkachov (percussion)
- "Scipio" (bass guitar)
Past:
- Radik Tiuliush (vocals, morin khuur, igil)
- Sailyk Ommun (vocals, yat-kha)
- Makhmud Skripaltschchikov (bass guitar)
- Aldyn-ool Sevek (vocals, igil)
- Alexei Saaia (vocals, morin khuur, bass guitar)
- Aias-ool Danzyryn (vocals, chanzy)
- Ivan Sokolovsky (synthesizer, percussion)
Awards
- 1991 recognized by Brian Eno, one of the international judges at the first Voices of Asia Festival in Almaty, Kazakhstan
- 1995 French RFI "Decouvertes Est" prize for Yenisei Punk
- 1999 German Critic's Prize for Dalai Beldiri
- 2002 BBC Radio 3 "Award for World Music"
