MARK VAN TONGEREN, biography

Mark van Tongeren is a sound explorer and ethnomusicologist who has worked independantly for theatre, radio, clubs, universities and conservatories as a performer, music teacher, dj and researcher.

He feels equally at home ‘in the field’ to study and practice indigenous vocal techniques, as in cutting-edge experimentation in sound and vision, using his voice and a wide array of instruments small and large.


He divides his time equally between the performing arts and music research. He specializes in the performing arts of Turco-Mongol peoples and extended uses of the voice. He is well-known as an author, singer, teacher and speaker in the ancient Turco-Mongolian art of throat singing (or khöömei) and its contemporary, western variant called overtone singing.

He founded his own enterprise Fusica in 1998. In 1999 he co-founded the North Asia Institute Tengri, which is dedicated to the study, dissemination and exchange of the cultural traditions of this little-known part of Asia.

Mark gives workshops, concerts and private lessons in overtone- and throatsinging and other extended vocal techniques upon request.

Email: mark@fusica.nl

Yo-Yo Ma and Mark at the Smithsonian Silk Road Festival, Washington, D.C., june/july 2002
photo by
Shoko Sasaki