Is the Mongolian Hula a World Intangible Cultural Heritage?

Mongolian Hula is a world intangible cultural heritage.

Huomai is a highly skillful form of singing in which a single person emits polyphonic singing, unique to Mongolians, and it is a kind of throat singing art, and huomai is an ancient way of singing, which is an intangible cultural heritage of the world. Ancient nomads sang hula on different social occasions such as grand ceremonies, or family festivals, and they also sang hula on the way of herding or putting babies to sleep in yurts.

Humai is a magical singing art created by the indigenous peoples of the Altai Mountains, in which a singer sings two or more parts of a song at the same time, purely using his or her own vocal organs. The basic structure of the relationship between the vocal parts of the hula is a combination of a sustained bass and a melody flowing above it, which can be further divided into overtone hula, vibrato hula, composite hula and so on.

Humai Artistic Characteristics

Humai is produced under special regional conditions and production, lifestyle, its vocal method, sound characteristics are relatively rare, unlike the world-famous Mongolian long tune singing. Hula vocal principle is special, sometimes the vocal folds vibrate, sometimes not vibrate, is the amount of gas in the cavity to produce **** sound.

It uses a special sound technique, one person at the same time singing two parts, forming a rare polyphonic form. The singer utilizes a closed-breath technique that causes the breath to slam into the vocal cords, emitting a thick, bubbly sound that creates a bass voice part. On this basis, the skillful adjustment of the oral **** sound, strengthen and focus the overtones, sing a transparent and clear, with a metallic sound of the soprano voice, to obtain an incomparable sound effect.

Reference: Baidu Encyclopedia - Hula