Throat Singing and Nar Sur: A Comparative Literature-Based Ethnomusicological Study of Global and Balochi Vocal Traditions

Throat singing and overtone vocal production constitute a globally distributed family of specialized vocal practices that have attracted sustained scholarly attention, particularly within Inner Asian traditions such as Tuvan khoomei and Mongolian khuumii. Despite this established body of scholarship, the Balochi tradition of Nar Sur, practiced in the Koh-e-Sulaiman region of Balochistan and adjacent areas of Dera Ghazi Khan, remains largely absent from international comparative ethnomusicological discourse. This study addresses that gap through a qualitative, literature-based comparative analysis, examining Nar Sur across three analytical dimensions: vocal technique and production, cultural and social function, and symbolic and identity function. Drawing on peer-reviewed ethnomusicological scholarship, acoustic and physiological studies, and available primary ethnographic documentation, the analysis suggests that while Nar Sur appears to converge with Inner Asian traditions at the level of overtone vocal production, it diverges substantially in its structural subordination of technique to narrative text, its constitutively dyadic Nari-Suri performance structure, and its role as a vehicle for community historiography and political resistance. These findings challenge prevailing definitions of throat singing, support a convergent evolutionary account of cross-cultural biphonic vocal development, and introduce narrative throat singing as an original theoretical contribution: a category of vocal practice in which overtone production and extended poetic narration are structurally inseparable. The study further identifies a pressing agenda for primary acoustic fieldwork and ethnographic documentation in support of an endangered tradition of considerable cultural significance.