November Collective Collaborative Blog: Striking Vocal Harmonies

Whether it's coming from classic 50's crooners or Mongolian throat singers, there's nothing quite as captivating as a beautiful vocal harmony. For this month's collab blog, the collective curated a playlist of songs with the most striking vocal harmonies across all genres.

​T&E contributor Parisa Eshrati on her pick “Five Heroes” - Hanggai: “There’s something about the sound of overtone chanting that pulls from your gut - like an ancestral type of awakening that occurs when you hear the booming resonance of an “OM” mantra. The art of overtone chanting, or throat singing, is an ancient practice from southwestern Mongolia which allows singers to reach more than one pitch at a time, and selectively amplify the sound by changing the shape of the resonant cavities in the mouth. This particular track from Mongolian-folk sextet Hanggai is a stunning example of this type of singing, and the raw, emotional pull these sounds can bring forth in us. The vocalists’ harmonizing overtone chantings soar over the warming drone of the morin khurr (house hair fiddle), grounding the listener in a captive meditative trance. Despite not being able to understand the lyrics, the deep resonance of the vocal harmonies let you feel the storytelling in a way as if you’re hearing it straight from Mongolian grasslands.” 

​More recommendations recommend that aren't available on Spotify:

Playlist curated by Parisa Eshrati, Noe Loyola, Brian Denton, Jasper Avery, and Noa Martucci.