Theodore C. Levin

Professor of Music

26 March,2007

Re. German and Klavdia Khatilaev

German and Klavdia Khatilaev are outstanding musicians from the Sakha Republic of north central Siberia. Like many other musicians from the former Soviet Union, they face what is arguably the preeminent artistic challenge of our times: how to get globally connected while retaining a link to art rooted in a sense of place and tradition. German and Klavdia have addressed the conundrum of cultural globalization with exemplary imagination and brio. I first met them in 1998, when I traveled to Yakutsk to observe the yearly Tabyk Festival, which features tradition-based pop and rock music. I was so taken with German and Klavdias musical transformations of traditional Sakha soundscapes performed with extended vocal techniques, jaw harps, archaic fiddles, and homemade percussion instruments, that I included two tracks of their music on a CD released by Smithsonian Folkways, Tuva: Among the Spirits: Sound, Music, and Nature in Sakha and Tuva (Smithsonian Folkways 40452). Performing as a duo, as well as in a small ensemble, German and Klavdia mimetically animate a primal world of nature filled with the sounds of birds, horses, wind, and spirits. In doing so, they bring to life what is surely one of humankinds oldest forms of music-making as well as one of its most contemporary. German and Klavdias innovation in tradition puts them at the cutting edge of musical performers from a vast, yet little known part of Asia. I highly recommend German and Klavdia Khatilaev to any performance venue, school, university, or cultural organization interested in illuminating the richly spiritual expressive culture of Siberian peoples.

Sincerely,

Theodore Levin

Автор: Шишигин А.Н.