Throat Singing's Shamanic Associations and Contemporary Revival

Throat singing developed within Siberian and Mongolian pastoral and shamanic religious contexts, and in several regional traditions it carries a recognized connection to indigenous shamanic practice, understood by some practitioners as a vocal technique capable of connecting the singer to specific places, natural features or associated spirits, a framing distinct from, though not always sharply separated from, its parallel identity as a widely appreciated secular folk art form performed for entertainment and competition.

During the Soviet period, state policy toward religious and shamanic practice across Siberia and Mongolia was frequently repressive, and throat singing's more explicitly shamanic or spiritual associations were in some contexts downplayed or suppressed even where the vocal technique itself continued to be performed and transmitted as folk music, a pattern that has complicated later efforts to fully reconstruct how uniformly the practice was understood as spiritually significant across different communities before that disruption. Since the late twentieth century, following greater openness in the region and substantial international scholarly and popular interest, throat singing has undergone a significant revival and gained wide international recognition, including UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage listing for Mongolian khoomei specifically, a recognition that has supported renewed attention to the practice's religious and shamanic dimensions alongside its now well-established identity as a celebrated folk and concert art form.