THERE ARE THROATY singers and there are really throaty singers There ...

The Tuvans of central Asia make some of the strangest, most unlikely sounds on earth. These range from guttural warbles with resonant overtones to high, piercing whistles that don't seem as though they could possibly come from a living being. They can sing two or three distinct notes at the same time. The result is eerie as hell but, somehow, friendly?perhaps because it grew organically from their sheep-herding life.

Though known primarily for throat singing (especially through tours of the Huun-Huur-Tu troupe), the singers recorded on Tuva: Voices from the Center of Asia cover an amazing range. They imitate and sing along with the wind, they echo their native Jew's harp, and some of the village songs even remind me of Scottish waulking (tweed-working) tunes. The CD notes go into excellent detail on how the sounds are produced and how they fit into Tuvan life and history.

Though you can pick up CDs of Tuvan music easily enough, the best introduction may be the superb movie documentary Genghis Blues (1999). It follows Paul Peña, a blind American blues singer, who figured out the Tuvan throat technique from a radio broadcast and recordings, then traveled to Tuva to sing in their national competition?and won first place.

Beyond the mesmerizing sight and sound of the music itself, this is a tale of humanity at its best: the unwavering determination of an often frightened and sometimes befuddled man; the grace and support given by the filmmakers, who arranged the trip; and the joyous tolerance of the Tuvans, who took this foreigner to their hearts and cheered him to victory. It's a rare antidote to the rank viciousness of so much of the world today. Genghis is also something of a textbook on how to put together a documentary.

The Tuvans happen to serve as background to the only other documentary I've seen in recent years that can match Genghis?Werner Herzog's Little Dieter Needs to Fly. Dieter Dengler, a child of WWII Germany who came to the U.S. at age 18 with less than 50 cents in his pocket and a determination to be a pilot, is a monument to endurance.

Shot down and tortured in the Vietnam War, he stumbled out of the jungle, the sole survivor of his POW camp. Loquacious yet contained, obsessed with food but unconcerned with his obsession, he somehow surmounted fear and animosity alike. He seems, through his trials, to have reached enlightenment. Herzog uses the Tuvan singers as background for segments shot in Vietnam?an unlikely but wholly successful choice. It's hard to take your eyes off this movie for a second.

The resonant-overtone technique, used to a very different end, is also droned by Tibetan monks?who once had a Tuvan connection?as a meditation or trance device. Some years ago I heard the Gyuto (sometimes "Gyoto") monks in a museum auditorium in Philadelphia. Though they chant in a much narrower spectrum than the Tuvans?no whistles or animal calls here?it's easy to see how it puts their minds in a restful state. (I have a tape with no notes handed to me by a friend, couldn't tell you the title. I find that I spout far fewer obscenities if I put on the monks while hammering siding onto the house.) The monks occasionally peek out from behind the Philip Glass score to Martin Scorsese's Kundun.

I mentioned "visual music" a while back, and I'm sad that I missed a chance to see the Inuit throat-singing team of Alacie Tullaugaq and Lucy Amarualik in action. Frankly, I don't get much from their CD, where they huff and hawk rhythmically. That's not surprising, since it's as much a game as an art form: They sing into one another's mouths until one of them laughs.

I would too.

What's Out There: Luckily, there's a good selection of it all at Amazon.com.