The remarkable Huun-Huur-Tu, the Throat Singers of Tuva, will perform at the Napa Valley Opera House Feb. 17. This will the a second visit to the valley by these performers, who have emerged as the foremost international representatives of Tuva's remarkable musical culture. The best known genre of Tuvan music, xmei (throat-singing), comprises what one might call a lexicon of musical onomatopoeia in which natural sounds are mimetically transformed into musical representations.

Ayan Salchak, military man of urgent service from Tuva, serving in Kyakhta (Buryatia), where on February, 4, 2005 his Shoraan Shanmak and Artysh Mongush were killed in mistereous circumstances, is now reported to be kept in psychiatric hospital, as his mother told Tuva-Online correspondent. She is worried about his health as according to other Tuvans serving in the same military unit Ayan was very much distressed by the death of his fellow countrimen. He was a close realtion to the murdered soldiers who left the unit without a permission and were reported to be shot dead as they showed armed resistence when they were persuaded to come out of the basement in the 5-storeyed building where they were found.

Moscow-based Tuvans will get together to meet Shagaa on the 18th of February, almost 20 days after all the Tuvans greeted new year according to the moon calendar. The date is chosen to have all the Tuvan students back from their winter holidays spent in Tuva as the bulk of the Tuvan diaspore in Moscow is made up of the students. Moscow Shagaa will have as stars Kongar-ool Ondar and his pupils - 'Alash' musicians.

A new website, devoted to Tuva, has been recently created. TyvaWiki is a documentation project intended to collect and disseminate information about Tuva in English. As one of its organizers Stacey Borsody reported to Tuva-Online, the site is designed to promote the use and education of the Tuvan language on the Internet. She also drew a quatation by Alan Cox, famous Linux kernel programmer, if a language is not on computers in fifty years it will no longer exist.

Tuvan throat singing group Alash - one of the world's foremost practitioners of this rare musical art form - will be performing in the New York City area in early March. This will be an opportunity to hear and witness a musical craft born in the remote mountains of southern Russia and Mongolia. Alash's visit to New Hampshire, Connecticut and New York for three weeks of performances and collaboration with U.S. musicians is sponsored by the Open World Leadership Center at the Library of Congress with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. CEC ArtsLink is hosting the musicians during their stay in the U.S.