Throat inflections

>> Bernard Dubreuil can show you how to sing along with yourself--and balance your chi at the same time

by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

Ever wonder what your voice looks like? Bernard Dubreuil--throat-singer, teacher, fest organizer, computer whiz and linguist--is ready to show you.

"As I was trained as a linguist, I of course studied spectrograms and sound analyses. I had always had this idea that sound was made of something, and that something was a series of overtones. There are colours in the sun's light--you can diffract it and break it into several colours because there's this thing called a rainbow. But we don't have any concept of sound rainbows. Obviously, what we're doing is splitting the sound that we produce and creating a rainbow of overtones."

Dubreuil isn't the first to figure out that the human voice can be split into multiple, harmonic tones, creating an eerie, otherworldly sound. There are ancient traditions of polytonal singing in Mongolia and its neighbouring Siberian region of Tuva, as well as Tibet, South Africa and Nunavik, in Quebec's arctic area, as varied in function as they are geographically.

"For the Tibetan monks, it has meditative purposes. In Mongolia, it's very secular and folky. That's what they sing out to their herds, their cattle, yaks and camels. They're herdsmen, so think of it as cowboy music. The interesting thing is that in both South Africa and Nunavik, it's women who throat-sing. There's no obvious reason why--both males and females can do it."

What, even that super-baritone Tibetan style?

"That's my discovery! One day, I asked four monks to sing downwards with me, and one by one I lost them. They couldn't sing low! So, I knew from the computer analyses that I had made that there were two notes being generated. One was sung in the normal voice, the other sort of latched onto the first, because of a very mechanical process that engineers know about when they build bridges--a phenomenon they actually want to avoid.

"Suspension bridges oscillate up and down, which is okay. But when they oscillate both torsionally--twisting--and horizontally, the bridge breaks. When you do this to your vocal cords, it doesn't do them any harm, but it generates a sound that's one octave below the note you're singing. Women can do it, even my niece was doing it at age seven. It has nothing to do with age or gender. It has to do with the mechanical properties of oscillating bodies."

The chi in we

Less clinical is Dubreuil's explanation of how throat-singing can connect to chi, the Asian principle of life energy. "What fascinated me is that overtones are everywhere, in every musical sound, vocal or instrumental. Chi is everywhere, too. Unless someone happens to be born in China or India, they don't realize this, particularly not in our Occidental sphere. The only time when chi ceases to exist is when you die. There is chi throughout you, circulating in your structure, whether you want it or not. Just like with overtones, it's there, there for you to be aware of, to amplify and to use. What do you think people who do acupuncture, acupressure or tai chi are doing? They're simply more sensitive to this domain of chi, and use it to re-circulate the energy within the body."

It's the control of one's breathing that links up singing and chi. "Posture, centering and breathing are common elements of singing, martial arts and working on chi," explains Dubreuil. "If you're a beginner, you fool around, impress your friends--'Ha ha, I can touch you without touching you, I can create sounds that I do not sing.' Very superficial. If you move a little further and control overtones, not just sing them randomly, then you can create music. The equivalent with chi is the re-balancing of the body's energy system, the basis of Chinese, Tibetan, Nepalese and Indian medicine."

Dubreuil has moved far enough to not only master the discipline of throat-singing, but organize a festival of workshops and exchanges, and also form a quartet called the Globe-glotters, who have performed numerous concerts and collaborated with Wetfish on their live re-scoring of the films Nosferatu and Metropolis. "We're trying to make a name not only for ourselves but for throat-singing too. You don't have a second band of multicultural throat-singers. We're the one and only," he says proudly.

Moreover, he offers a private, day-long workshop which will introduce students to throat-singing and chi. "It's the first step, opening a door that has always been there but you never saw. There were overtones but you never heard them, there was chi but you never felt it. You're not going to levitate or come out singing the way I do. I would never make promises like that. It takes time, commitment, effort and discipline."

The workshop happens this Saturday, Sept. 15, 9:30am-4:30pm, at 353 St-Nicolas in Old Montreal. Registration is $80 and space is limited, so reserve a spot at 285-2050 or e-mail info@chantdegorge.com