The HU, “Wolf Totem”

by Helen Li | April 15, 2021

In his famous essay “The Grain of the Voice”, Roland Barthes describes the idea of the “grain” as an individual excitement that people experience while listening to singing, an “erotic” relation between the listener and the body of the man or woman singing or playing. In order to theoretically demonstrate the idea of the “grain”, Barthes adapts the definition of pheno-song and geno-song from Julia Kristeva. Pheno-song contains features that belong to the structure of the language being sung, the rules of the genres, the coded form of the melisma, the composer’s idiolect, the style of the interpretation – all standard aspects of performance that communicate or express traditional cultural value and “phenotypic” quality of music ( “subjectivity”, “expressivity”, “dramaticism”, “personality” of the artist). Geno-song is the “materiality” of song that has nothing to do with communication of feelings, expression or representation, but the quality of the sound itself, how it shapes the letter and how it deals with the volume of the voices – essentially the diction of the language. Barthes argues that the performance of pheno-song is accompanied by the soul (the way of breathing in the lungs), not with the body. However, it lacks the “grain” that brings listeners to jouissance. Performance of geno-song is able to bring jouissance to audiences through proper use of the throat, the tongue, the glottis, the teeth, the mucous membranes and the nose.

“Wolf Totem” by the HU is a great example of geno-song. It possesses “grain”. The heavy employment of throat singing in the performance makes listeners at once resonate with the vibration in the body of singers. The overall musical style of the piece is a fusion of heavy metal music and traditional Mongolian music. It combines throat singing ( “overtone singing”), the use of traditional Mongolian instruments such as Morin Khuur (horsehead fiddle), Tovshuur (Mongolian guitar), and Tumur Khuur (jaw harp) with the bombastic bass and drums of rock. It is undoubtful that the majority of my attention is drawn by the “grain” of singers’ overtone singing when I watch the performance. Overtone singing is an extraordinary vocal technique in which a single performer simultaneously produces up to three separate vocal lines which can be clearly distinguished by listeners. In “Wolf Totem”, I can hear the lead singer sings the melodic line whilst sustaining the sounding of a fundamental drone. I can clearly sense parts of the singer’s body that vibrate or move, such as the resonance in the larynx, the articulation from the lip, tongue and teeth, the airflow in the nasal cavity, sound production mainly happening in body parts above the throat.

The overtone singing by the HU not only produces a grainy quality of sound that is raucous, vigorous, wild and original. It is able to free our imagination so that we can relate to any object we think of while listening to the singing. Without the understanding of Mongolian language, only through listening to the performance, I can think of a picture of open and continuous grassland with birds flying in the sky, or an image of a group of courageous men preparing for a fight. My imagination is not limited by the text of the song; it is inspired by the “grain” of the voice. It appears to me that there is a spiritual symbol carried in the voice and in the Mongolian language, which is worship of nature and the tradition of animism. Mongolian people live in nomadic life, and they believe in thepower of different forms of nature. Birds, mountains and rivers, each of them has its special power, and their spirituality is manifested through not only physical shape but the sounds they produce. And people believe that they can assimilate the power of nature through imitating their sounds, which becomes the origin of overtone singing. The voice in “Wolf Totem” indeed carries the nature of animism in terms of its timbre and articulations, hence, listeners can deeply connect with the nature of the voice and the symbolic meaning behind it while watching the performance.

Lyrics

(Horsehead fiddle’s solo)

If lions come, we'll fight until the end

If tigers come, we'll fight and battle

If elephants come, we'll fight in rage

If humans come, we'll fight and obliterate

We, If lions come, we'll fight until the end

If tigers come, we'll fight and battle

If elephants come, we'll fight in rage

If humans come, we'll fight and obliterate

If you come as snakes, we'll become Garuda birds and fly over you

If you come as tigers, we'll face you as Lions with blue mane

HU HU HU HU HU HU HU HU

(Horsehead fiddle’s solo)

If you come with evil intentions, we'll give you a fight!

Ten of us will strike you as thunder

Hundred of us will shatter your hearts

Thousand of us will destroy and obliterate

Ten thousand of us will hand you the wrath of heaven!

If you come as flood, we'll fight until the death

If you come swarming, we'll scatter you around

If you come flying, we'll shoot you down with our archeries

If you come charging, we'll slice you with our swords

HU HU HU HU HU HU HU HU

Let's cut through them as speed of flying falcons

Let's burn within as the hearts of wolves!

Let's stampede with our horses

Let's defeat them with the wisdom of our Great Khaan, Chinggis!

HU HU HU HU HU HU HU HU

(Horsehead fiddle’s solo together with the voice)

Besides the “grain” in singer’s voice, the “grain” in the instrumental voice cannot be ignored. According to Barthes, although there is no speaking language in instrumental playing, we can still evaluate the existence of the “grain” in instruments by the same idea – the image of the body given us in the performance. The horsehead fiddle’s solo is an important part of the song. It appears in the introduction (1:19 to 1:49), in the break after the first three stanzas (3:17 to 3:40), and in the ending (5:45 to 6:06). Horsehead fiddle is considered as the “sibling” of overtone singing; it produces similar sound and possesses the same nature in terms of the tradition of Mongolian music. In “Wolf Totem”, the entrance of the horsehead fiddle’s solo in the introduction sets up the ethos of the upcoming vocal music. I can sense the movement of the arm and of the upper body of the artist from the sound produced. The horsehead fiddle’s solo in the middle section takes over the articulation from the voice, such as the friction between the body and the instrument, with accents played on the downbeats. It creates a sense of aggressiveness and wildness, which can also be found in the “grain” in the voice. The horsehead fiddle’s solo in the ending, however, is much softer than that in previous sections. It echoes the singing through less movement in the artist’s body. I can sense the body gradually calming down while the sound diminishes. The “grain” in both voice and instrument of this music provides thrills and excitement to listeners through reaching into their instinct and unlocking their imagination.