Soriah

Soriah (born Enrique Ugalde; April 1, 1971) is an American overtone singer, performance artist, multi-instrumentalist, and shamanic ritualist headquartered in Portland, Oregon and the Tuvan Republic. His music is a synthesis of traditional forms such as Tuvan throat singing, Shamanic music, Raga, and pre-Columbian Mexica music and language; with avant garde musical styles like Industrial, Ambient, Noise, and Goth. Likewise, his live performance is a fusion of costume and ritual from Tuva Read more on Last.fm …read full bio

Soriah (born Enrique Ugalde; April 1, 1971) is an American overtone singer, performance artist, multi-instrumentalist, and shamanic ritualist headquartered in Portland, Oregon and the Tuvan Republic. His music is a synthesis of traditional forms such as Tuvan throat singing, Shamanic music, Raga, and pre-Columbian Mexica music and language; with avant garde musical styles like Industrial, Ambient, Noise, and Goth. Likewise, his live performance is a fusion of costume and ritual from Tuva, Mexico, North American Native cultures, and Western Ceremonial Magic traditions; as well as chaos magic, butoh, and modern primitive movements of the 20th century. His lyrics, when there are any, are often written in the Nahuatl or traditional Tuvan languages. He won the title of "Best Foreigner" at the 2008 Ustuu-Khuree Festival in Chadanaa Tuva, and in that same year placed as "Third Laureate" at The International Throat Singing Symposium, which remains the highest award given to a non-Tuvan in the history of the Symposium. He also won 2nd Place in the Tuvan Nation Kargyraa Competition in 2014, was given a special award as "Great innovator of the art of Tuvan Throat Singing" in 2016, and won Best Kargyraa Performance at the Khoomei in the Center of Asia Festival 2019. As a solo artist, and with various collaborators and musical ensembles, Soriah has toured throughout the United States, Europe, Asia, and Mexico. He is considered the highest-ranked non-native practitioner of Tuvan throat singing. Enrique Ugalde was born in San Bernardino, California and moved to Oakland at a young age. His father was the drummer for a popular rock and roll band in Mexico called Los Sputniks. As a child, he was exposed to traditional Mesoamerican cultures on frequent family trips to Mexico City with his father, and by his Mexican grandmother. He describes himself as having sung and played guitar in a church choir as a child, begun his study of opera and other Western classical singing shortly thereafter, and being inducted into the State of California Honors Chorus in his high school years. His interest in the "goth" subculture led him to music like Bauhaus, Einsturzende Neubauten, Crash Worship, and Psychic TV; which influenced his shift from classical music to a more experimental and industrial direction. He studied vocal performance at California State University, Long Beach in 1990 before moving first to Berkeley, then to Oakland. It was in Oakland that he made his first recordings of looped vocals and ambient electronics, which he regards as the roots of the Soriah project, He first invented the name Soriah in early 1995 for the title of a song, "The Course of Soriah." This is the name he gave to his "timeless essence outside the body." In Oakland, he performed with various industrial and experimental music projects, and was known for hosting illegal "Trespass Parties" in abandoned factories and shipyards. Ugalde relocated to Portland, Oregon in 1996. There he met and studied the Kirana style of raga with famed instructor Michael Stirling, and encountered throat singing for the first time in recordings and a subsequent live show by Huun Huur Tu. He provided percussion, guitar, and vocals for numerous music and performance projects during the late 90s in Portland included Sumerland, Big Milk Bath, Black Orchid, Feral, PANDrogynous Ad Nauseum, Flail, Mesmer; and the collective known alternately as 2Gyrlz and Pan/Zen. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.

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…shrink me down again