Sainkho Namtchylak - Career

Career

After graduating, Sainkho worked with several ensembles: the Moscow State Orchestra; the Moscow-based jazz ensemble 'Tri-O' (since 1989); School of Dramatic Art under the direction of Anatoly Vasiliev (Moscow), various orchestras in Kyzyl, the Tuvan 'folkloric orchestra'—a far less sanitised example of folk baroque than, say, existed in pre-independence Kazakhstan—that has housed many of Tuva's other important singers. However, for several years Sainkho annually invited foreign musicians to Tuva to promote Tuvan culture.

Based in Vienna far from her beloved homeland Tuva, Sainkho sculpted "Stepmother City" to reflect her ambivalent feelings about European metropolis. Calling herself “first and foremost a woman from the Steppes,” Sainkho’s first musical inspiration came from her nomadic grandmother, who would sing lullabies for hours. She grew up in a culture where people just sing when they feel like it—singing when they’re happy and singing when they’re sad. Denied professional credentials from a local college where her explorative nature led her toward forbidden male-dominated overtone singing styles, Sainkho transferred to Moscow where she discovered Russian improvisation & where she also continue to study about vocal techniques of Siberian lamaistic & shamanistic traditions. Audiences are astounded by the diversity of sounds Sainkho can produce with her voice, from operatic soprano to birdlike squawks, from childlike pleas to soulful crooning; which at various moments elicit comparisons to Zap Mama, Patti Smith, Billie Holiday, and Nina Hagen. In 1997, Sainkho was horrifically attacked by Tuvinian racketeers which left her in a coma for two weeks. Again, sources regarding this contradict- others maintain that she underwent surgery for a severe malignant brain tumor; regardless, 1997 marked an appreciable change in her life. Since then, she has been resident in exile in Vienna, and has also recorded more prolifically as a solo artist- although she has released over thirty albums in the past twenty years, only seven have been entirely solo.

Sainkho claims that music and spirituality are related by desire, or the tension that yells to reawaken people. Eager to take part in the process of remembering what has been forgotten, "Stepmother City" presents itself like a map, proposing routes to connect Western physicality with Eastern spirituality... http://www.ponderosa.it/downloads/0000/0134/SAINKHO_NAMTCHYLAK_BIO_ENG.pdf

In 2005, the Italian publishing house Libero di Scrivere released a book of poetry Karmaland. In 2006 in Saint Petersburg, a book Chelo-Vek (in Russian, "A Human Being") was published in Russian, Tuvinian and in English.