This is a study from the only academic field which I envy tremendously, because I'm sure they have more fun than the rest of us: ethnomusicology! The dissertation does get technical, as on top of a generative grammar framework it includes a fair deal of musical scores. So far the caveat...However, the core of the study is anthropological, and this is where the fun starts.

In a nutshell, Leotar claims that the melodies used by Uzbek and Tuvan pastoralists to tame the animals are derived from a common symbolic and shamanistic background.

The lyrics of the melodies are also given in the back as appendices, in Tuvan and Uzbek and with partial translation into French (for inexplicable reasons, some pages seem to be missing there...not my fault, that's how it was submitted. However, if you look carefully, you'll see that the missing pages only affect the French, the Uzbek and the Tuvan texts are complete). Of course, a lot is onomatopoeic anyway...

NB: Even though he renders "melodies huchees" elegantly as "taming songs", hucher, as far as I'm able to tell, means to call an animal by whistling. Well, we have enough French native speakers here to enlighten us on this particular semantic field.

Tuvan, Music