Siberian Khatru
| "Siberian Khatru" | |
|---|---|
| Song by Yes | |
| from the album Close to the Edge | |
| Released | 1972 |
| Length | 8:55 |
| Label | Atlantic |
| Songwriter(s) | |
| Producer(s) |
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| Close to the Edge track listing | |
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"Siberian Khatru" is the third song on the album Close to the Edge by English progressive rock band Yes. Live versions of the song are included on the albums Yessongs, Keys to Ascension, Live at Montreux 2003 and In the Present – Live from Lyon. Multiple performances of the song are included on the 2015 boxed-set Progeny: Seven Shows from Seventy-Two, which features seven complete consecutive concerts recorded on the band's late 1972 North American tour. According to an interview with Yes vocalist Jon Anderson, "'Khatru' means 'as you wish' in Yemeni. When we were working on it, I kept singing the word over and over again, even though I had no idea what it meant. I asked somebody to look it up for me, and when they told me the meaning, it worked for the song."
"Siberian Khatru" is written in the key of G major and is typical of Yes' music of this period, featuring abstruse lyrics, complex time signatures and polyrhythms, and it is divided into multiple sections, with alternating vocal and instrumental passages. The album version begins with an introductory guitar riff, after which the main instrumental theme (played by the keyboards) is introduced. The structure of the main theme is a four-measure phrase consisting of three bars in common time (4/4) and the last bar in 3/4. This theme is repeated until the verse section begins. The lyrics start at about 1:05. The song progresses through various sections, featuring solos by Steve Howe and Rick Wakeman. There is a polymetric section featuring the guitar, playing in a meter of 12, and bass and drums playing in a meter of 8. Jon Anderson begins singing seemingly random two-syllable words and phrases, which has since become a Yes tradition. The conclusion is similar to the introduction, returning to the main instrumental theme with a guitar solo on top of it, which fades out to the end of the track.
In live performances of the period, when it was regularly used as the opening number, the final chord of the pre-recorded "walk-on" music (the closing passage of Stravinsky's The Firebird) was cross-faded into a bridging minor-key Mellotron passage, followed by the opening guitar riff, and was usually concluded with a reprise of opening riff.
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