Oidupaa Vladimir Oyun was a Tuvan musician and a man with an amazing, but really heavy destiny, a man of unbending will and divine talent and the creator of a unique style of throat singing, accompanied by playing the button accordion. Researchers described Oidupaa’s style as blues and emphasized the complexity of this style of performance, which requires the singer to exert a lot of tension on the vocal cords. This is the author’s unique version of the deepest and most powerful type of throat singing – the Kargyraa.
Oidupaa spent 33 years of his 55 years of life in prison – in fact, this album was recorded in prison. Oidupaa himself claimed that his conflicts with Soviet legislation were slander, which often happened with other Tuvan artists of that time.
During his imprisonment, Oidupaa Vladimir became a believer and glorified God through his songs, thereby creating an unprecedented combination of Tuvan throat singing and Christian tradition: “With all my voice, throughout the whole universe, I glorify you, my Heavenly Father – among distant people, among near people, through the channels mass media, through the TV screen, through a cassette recorder, in prisons and camps, I glorify your name, my Heavenly Father!”
Oidupaa’s style is pure freedom of creativity and self-expression. His style of unconventional performance of throat singing delights both professionals and musicologists, as well as the common listener. Often living on the road, he found listeners and admirers everywhere. Performing at train stations among crowds was his distinctive feature. In the early 90s, thanks to a caring fan from Japan, the artist gained some fame and gave concerts in Sweden and Switzerland. After returning from Switzerland he was arrested and imprisoned for 15 years. During this prison time, according to Oidupaa, he achieved true mastery. He claimed to have brought his music to total perfection, in a way that no one would be able to copy his style in the next hundred years. In prison his mastery in musical performance and immersion in faith and revelation of the spirit were fused. It was in prison wherehe reorded his nowadays iconic album.
In terms of his level of performing skills, Oidupaa was undoubtedly a unique musician. Oidupaa’s immersion into the depths of his music and his emotional energy can hardly come just out just from a human, it comes much more from another dimension. It’s an unprecedented giftedness of God and nature, strongly affected by a extremely hard life.
Oidupaa is a man from other spheres, in which own concepts and values apply. It’s a tragedy that this man, having freedom as his main value, was again and again deprived from it in prison. From time to time, performers appear on the Tuvan stage who attempt to copy Oidupaa in the manner of playing and performing Kargyraa. The presence of imitators is a sure sign of the exclusivity of Oidupaa’s creative personality and uniqueness.
Twelve years after the death of that talented man, we want to honor his memory and bring his music back to today’s audience with an 25 anniversary re-release of his only full-length album, “Divine Music From Jail”. The records was remastered Grammy-nominated mastering engineir Jessica Thompson.
