The throat singers taking an old game to new stages
It started as a contest between friends to see who would laugh first. Two cousins are now taking it from the community hall to festival stages.
- Desk
- Culture
- Format
- Feature
- Reading time
- 9 min
- Published
- Oct 10, 2026
The rules are simple. Two singers stand close, face to face, and trade short rhythmic sounds back and forth, faster and faster, until one of them runs out of breath or bursts out laughing. Whoever laughs loses.
For generations it was a game, played in kitchens and community halls through long winters. The cousins who learned it from their grandmother did not think of it as performance until a festival booker heard them warming up backstage at a fiddle night.
A game first
They still insist it is a game. On stage they keep the same rules, and they really do try to make each other laugh. Audiences who expect something solemn are often surprised by how much grinning goes on.
It is a game first. Whoever laughs loses, and I usually lose.
Learning it again
The practice nearly disappeared within living memory. The revival has come mostly through elders teaching small groups after school, recording what they know and making sure the younger singers learn the old pieces before they invent new ones.
The cousins now teach a weekly class. Their youngest student is seven and, by all accounts, very hard to beat.
What travels
At festivals far from home they find that the laughter translates even when nothing else does. People who have never heard the form before lean in, catch the rhythm and wait for the moment one singer cracks.
“It is a game first. Whoever laughs loses, and I usually lose.”
— One of the cousins
Up next · Outdoors The long wait for the bears Keep reading
All posts →
Culture Inside a late-night jazz revival Basement clubs, borrowed pianos and a scene that plays until the last bus is long gone. Ravi Chandran 6 min 
Dispatches The ice road that appears every winter Each January a highway forms on a frozen river. By April it is gone again, and the towns along it plan their whole year around those few months. Leah Spence 12 min 
Food The great bagel détente Two bakeries, one street, seventy years of argument over wood-fired dough. A truce, of sorts, has finally been reached. Ravi Chandran 6 min join the club.
The week’s best posts and one great photo, every Thursday morning. Unsubscribe whenever, no hard feelings.