Name: Sainkho Namtchylak
Nationality: Tuvan
Occupation: Singer, artist, actor, writer, composer, teacher
Current release: Sainkho Namtchylak's new album where water meets water: bird songs and lullabies, produced by Ian Brennan, is out via Ponderosa.
Recommendations: I recommend nothing. It’s individual for each new coming artist, singer, musician.
But I would like to invite the famous electronic artist Ruichi Sakamoto from Yellow Magic Orchestra to create absolutely acoustic music with me without any electronics. I am sure it would turn out to be a great album because among many electronic artists he has unique way of composing all sounds and his own playing into magic moments of musical harmony.

[Read our Ian Brennan interview]

If you enjoyed this Sainkho Namtchylak interview and would like to know more about her music and work, visit her on Instagram, and Facebook.  



When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening? Do you listen with your eyes open or closed?

It’s different every time. But often I won’t actually use my imagination - I just analyze. I listen with my full consciousness, that’s all.

If it’s dance music, however, I have to be a part of it and dance or enjoy the rhythms.

According to scientific studies, we make our deepest and most incisive musical experiences between the ages of 13-16. What did music meant to you at that age and what’s changed since then?

It was the time of communism. You could only hear the music played on the radio - good old classics and patriotic songs.

And then, there was my own fantasy when I was listening or playing with nature in the steppe.

Over the course of your development, what have been your most important instruments and tools and how have they shaped your perspective on music?

In the beginning, the most important instrument for communication was the radio. I'd have it on from 6 in the morning until midnight.

Later on, the turntable and the grand piano – this big magical black box with its own universe of possible sounds. Already in my youth, I was trying to see how a prepared piano could sound like. But because I had no idea what notes were, I was creating my own pictures about scales of the grand piano. That’s an other long and complicated story … An entire universe of sounds in a big big magic box!!!

Then I was listening to the acoustic guitar and it was more about songs (not my own ones, but many other songs in the Tuva language). I studied at music high school and then at the Genesis Academie and I learned all academic classical instruments.

The biggest discovery for me were my very first concerts of Stockhausen's music at the Moscow University concert room. I learned that different instruments can be like personas and acoustic music can have a conceptual presentation like drama at the theatre. I remembered my entire childhood by listening to this first live concert of Stockhausen's music.

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music and what motivates you to create?

It's all about the expressive means to keep that magic energy inside beyond words or without words.

Paul Simon said “the way that I listen to my own records is not for the chords or the lyrics - my first impression is of the overall sound.” What's your own take on that and how would you define your personal sound?

Maybe my voice already has its own personality. No matter what I sing it has its own sound behind the sound.

Yes, listening to my own albums is not that easy for me. They are like your own children and they all have a different story and biography.

Sound, song, and rhythm are all around us, from animal noises to the waves of the ocean. What, if any, are some of the most moving experiences you've had with these non-human-made sounds? In how far would you describe them as “musical”?

Music is what we organize in our consciousness and receive as the completed composition of music

For some people free jazz still sounds like chaos or noise. But it is depends how you organize your mind – whether you're receiving these noises as the universal choir of sound or as something that disturbs you …

I try to harmonize to the sound around me and to become part of this big big orchestra of live music.

From symphonies and traditional verse/chorus-songs to linear techno tracks and free jazz, there are myriads ways to structure a piece of music. Which approaches work best for you – and why?

Depending on what I need to express, I try to decide what is best in terms of  form, scales or sound.

The underlying concept is important. Concepts of style, for example, are vital for understanding if something should be elegant or naïve - like songs - or whether it should be a pure explosion of improvisation.

It all depends on what I need to express.

Could you describe your creative process on the basis of one of your pieces, live performances or albums that's particularly dear to you, please?

My discography comprises 60-70 albums. Most of my song albums (15-16 in my discography) are the result of at first writing lyrics, then starting to select melodic lines and trying different combinations of instruments, samples etc. It's a difficult process because a song is kind of a short form of a story. It is honestly very difficult tor express deep ideas within 1-3 minutes.

The rest, therefore most albums from my discography (40-50 albums), are created from live improvised music and can be filed in the genre of contemporary or experimental music. To me, making these is a bit easier.

Song albums have a more immediate effect on the audience and they may reach the charts. Experimental music on the other hand, may take some time. It can need years and years to be discovered and accepted.

For example, my album Lost Rivers was released 1983 on FPM Berlin. But it  got very famous in Asia and rest of world only now. In China it has a much higher number of downloads than all rest of world and we had to create Lost Rivers II. It is an almost half an hour long single piece which includes that famous Sainkho-scream.



Sometimes, science and art converge in unexpected ways. Do you conduct “experiments” or make use of scientific insights when you're making music?

No.

How does the way you make music reflect the way you live your life? Can we learn lessons about life by understanding music on a deeper level?

My experience is maybe not the best.

I pay a high price for being a successful singer and author of my own music. People can learn to live music but they don’t know what is costs in terms of feelings, and how it affects your privat life when you are on your own.

I have the feeling that if I had not become a singer and creator of my music, poems and art, I would be much happier as a woman, mother, and wife.

Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

Complicated question. I never try to make the best coffee but I do like the Asian tradition of tea.

Every time I listen to "Albedo 0.39" by Vangelis, I choke up. But the lyrics are made up of nothing but numbers and values. Do you, too, have a song or piece of music that affects you in a way that you can't explain?

Yes but mostly it is traditional music or recordings of some music-ethnographists archive.

From pop and rock music what impresses me most, are acoustic effects that you can not explain why they are touching you and staying forever.

If you could make a wish for the future – what are developments in music you would like to see and hear?

If the music industry can keep deep interest in acoustic music and live singing, this would ensure that a human touch could be passed on to the  next generations. As robotization spreads, music is also getting effected

I don’t know what future of human music is. I don’t know. But I hope we survive.