Central Asian music, that is, the music of the former Soviet states of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkmenistan, is based on the interaction of nomadic and sedentary cultures and on the blending of the region's Persian...

The music of Central Asia is as vast and unique as the many cultures and peoples who inhabit the region. Principal instrument types are two- or three-stringed lutes, the necks either fretted or fretless; fiddles made of horsehair; flutes, mostly open at...

Sixteen years after the fall of the Soviet Union supposedly threw open the doors to travel and cultural contact with the republics of Central Asia, the vast region of deserts, steppes, and mountains that stretches from the Caspian Sea to the edges of China...

The cataclysmic events that occurred in the 1980s and the 1990s greatly impacted the literature of Central Asia. Civil wars, environmental disasters and the disintegration of the Soviet Union into independent nation-states, all had profound effects and the writers are still coping with the...