Music—Central Asia | Research & Encyclopedia Articles

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Music of Central Asia Summary

Music—Central Asia

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 and Turkic cultures and languages. Central Asian music has close links with the music of the bordering regions of northern Afghanistan and Xinjiang (an autonomous region in western China) and more broadly with the music of Iran, Azerbaijan, and Turkey.

The construction of national musical canons, begun in the early twentieth century under the Soviets and continuing in the new Central Asian states today, cuts across a complex historical picture of exchange, coexistence, and blending. For example, Jewish professional musicians (Uzbek sazande) of Bukhara in Uzbekistan used to sing bilingual Tajik-Uzbek love songs (ghazal). These Jewish musicians have now largely emigrated to Israel or the United States.

In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries conservatory-trained professional musicians in Central Asian towns and cities largely replaced musicians who trained by apprenticing to a master (ustad), but the practice of handing on musical skills in the family continues. The use of written scores has partly supplanted the old system of oral transmission. Probably the most numerous professional musicians today are the wedding singers and pop singers, whose cassette recordings now enliven the teahouses and restaurants of Central Asian towns, formerly contexts for live musical performances.

Performances of Folk Music

Along with informal gatherings ( gap in Tajik and Uzbek, meshrep in Uighur) where music is commonly played for entertainment, weddings are perhaps the major contexts for musical performance throughout Central Asia. Singers and instrumentalists are employed to play a range of music from classical to popular songs at wedding banquets, while kettledrum-and-shawm bands (naghra-sunay) escort the groom on his way to fetch the bride. These bands also play at religious festivals, especially Qurban and the end of Ramadan. In Sunni Central Asia there is little concern about the Islamic proscriptions against music common elsewhere in the Islamic world; indeed, music is an integral part of religious life and is thought to form a link between the sacred and the secular.

Storytellers sing tales from the Qur'an during Ramadan and on pilgrimages (mazar). Musicians may also be mullahs or wandering holy men (ashiq). Sufi influence in particular pervades music and thought. Music is found in the chants (zikr) and sometimes in the instrumental music of Sufi ceremonies. In the nineteenth-century Tarikhi Muziqiyun (History of Musicians) by Mujiz, one of the few surviving historical documents on Central Asian music, stories linking music and ecstatic trance abound. In the tale of the master musician Balkhi, for example, a nightingale perched on Balkhi's tanbur (long-necked lute) as he sang, and the people at the festival shouted, wept, and rolled about.

Maqam

Song lyrics are also deeply imbued with Sufi thought, especially in maqam, the most prestigious genre of Central Asian music. In Central Asia, the term maqam refers to a series of large-scale musical suites, including sung poetry, popular stories, and dance music. As with songs and instrumental pieces, maqam are associated with specific regions; there are, for example, the Bukharan Shashmaqam, the Khokand Chaharmaqam, and the Kashgar Muqam. A scholarly debate has raged over whether Central Asian maqam are a local variation of a Near Eastern form (as evidenced by the Arab-Persian terminology associated with them) or the continuation of ancient Central Asian traditions carried to the Chinese imperial court and thence to Japan. It is probably more helpful to think of Central Asian maqam as arising from a fusion of these two sources.

Each instrumental or vocal piece in a maqam derives from a rhythm (usul), which is marked by the frame drum; "limping" irregular rhythms (aksak/lang ) are common. Pieces with the same names appear in different maqam, but their melodies vary depending on the modal characteristics of each maqam; thus the term maqam in Central Asia to some extent denotes the idea of mode, as it does in Arab-Turkish traditions.

Much use is made of ornamentation, shifting, or leaning on the notes to produce subtle effects. Central Asian maqam have not traditionally been improvised in performance, but are rather precomposed; that is, a personal interpretation is developed and fixed in memory.

Many instruments are used for playing maqam, especially the long-necked lutes, such as the tanbur with three metal strings. The bowed lute (sato/satar), with up to twelve sympathetic strings, is particularly linked to maqam; thought of as a noble instrument, it is often played by older men. The frame drum (dayera dap) is also an important instrument for maqam, as it forms the rhythmic basis; often associated with women and religious beggars, it is sometimes thought to have magical powers. The Kashgar rawap is a small lute with five metal strings. A virtuosic instrument, it is usually found in an accompanying role, as is the ghijak spike fiddle with its four metal strings, related to the Iranian kemenche, but now tuned to resemble the violin. The dutar lute, strung with two silk strings, is the most common instrument among the Uzbeks and Uighurs, found in almost every home and played by men, women, and children alike, often to accompany songs.

Nomadic Peoples

Among the nomadic peoples of the region, the main musicians are poet-bards, like the Kazak akhun or the Uzbek bakhshi. Among some peoples a special class of bards sing long, heroic epic tales, such as the Kyrgyz Manas epic. There is a great deal of interchange between these bards and the shamanic ritual healers who are still common across the region. Bards are often said to learn their epics from spirits in their dreams, and their performances are also thought to have healing powers. The bards usually accompany themselves on plucked lutes (like the dombra) or fiddles (such as the three-stringed qobuz).