Inaugural Concert of Central Asian Music
Delights Washington
Washington, 15 March 2006
- Dignitaries from Washington’s political, diplomatic,
legal and cultural fields today joined His Highness
the Aga Khan at the inaugural concert of Via Kabul:
Central Asia Without Borders at the Freer Gallery’s
Meyer Auditorium. The concert was the first performance
of the 2006 USA tour, which will continue with another
concert on the 16th at the Freer Gallery before
moving on to the Columbia University campus in New
York for master classes and a concert (March 21
at the Miller Theatre). The tour will move on to
Texas (March 24 at the Rudder Theatre at Texas A&M
in College Station), New Mexico (March 25 at the
KiMo theatre in Albuquerque) and Ohio (April 4th
at Miami University’s Hall Auditorium in Oxford).
The tour -- presented and curated by the Aga Khan
Music Initiative in Central Asia -- features three
groups of performers: Tengir-Too, from Kyrgyzstan;
The Academy of Maqâm, from Tajikistan; and Homayun
Sakhi and Taryalai Hashimi, from Afghanistan (via
California).
The Wednesday concert marked the release, on Smithsonian
Folkways, of Music of Central Asia, Volumes 1-3.
The innovative series, which will eventually comprise
10 volumes, includes a CD, a DVD with a documentary
film on the featured musicians, as well as interactive
instrument glossaries and maps. The series is a
co-production of the Aga Khan Music Initiative in
Central Asia (a programme of the Aga Khan Trust
for Culture) and the Smithsonian Institution Center
for Folklife and Cultural Heritage.
The tour features the most celebrated Afghan rubâb
player of his generation, Homayun Sakhi, a performer
who fled his country after the Soviet invasion,
developed a new musical style while living in exile
in Peshawar, Pakistan, and now makes his home in
Fremont, California.
The Tour includes the The Academy of Maqâm, from
Tajikistan, which plays the Sufi-inspired court
music of Samarkand and Bukhara, cities that are
located in current-day Uzbekistan.
The Tour also reveals the effervescent music of
the Kyrgyz mountain nomads in the form of Tengir-Too.
The ensemble, led by Nurlanbek Nyshanov, plays oral-tradition
songs, employing instruments called the choor and
the kylkiyak, as well as the Jew’s harp. Of particular
note for those audiences who would like to experience
recitation on a Homeric scale, Tengir-Too’s Rysbek
Jumabaev channels the voice of a warrior in a thousand-year-old
Kyrgyz poem thirty times longer than the Iliad.
Mr. Jumabaev, who typically holds Central Asian
audiences spellbound for eight hours or more, often
stuns Western audiences (as he did earlier at Carnegie
Hall) with his invocation of the horsemen of the
500,000-line Manas epic. The epic’s central theme
is how the hero Manas holds off the Mongol hordes
and other enemies.
Several of the musicians featured in “Via Kabul:
Central Asia without Borders” made cameo appearances
in the panoramic Smithsonian Folklife Festival of
2002, “The Silk Road: Connecting Cultures, Creating
Trust”. The present tour, however, offers an in-depth
look at the rich and diverse musical traditions
of a region that is experiencing a cultural reawakening
after decades of Soviet rule.
For more information, please see the On-Line Press
Kit at:
http://www.rockpaperscissors.biz/go/centralasia
For press enquiries, please contact:
In the USA:
Dmitri Vietze
rock paper scissors
216 west allen street, suite 137
Bloomington, in 47403 USA
Tel. +1.812.339.1195
Fax +1.801.729.4911
Email: music@rockpaperscissors.biz
Website: http://www.rockpaperscissors.biz
In Europe:
Sam Pickens
Information Officer
Aga Khan Development Network
P.O. Box 2049
1211 Geneva 2
Switzerland
Tel: (+41 22) 909 7277
Fax: (+41 22) 909 7292
Mobile: (+41 78) 661 8714
Email: info@akdn.org
Notes
Homayun Sakhi. The outstanding Afghan rubâb player
of his generation lives in Fremont, California,
the American city with the largest concentration
of Afghans. Homayun Sakhi grew up in Kabul where
he studied the rubâb under his father in the traditional
form of apprenticeship known as ustâd-shagird. In
1992, Homayun’s family moved to Peshawar, Pakistan,
a refuge for many Afghans from the chaos that enveloped
their country following the 1979 Soviet invasion.
The unofficial headquarters of Afghanistan’s émigré
music community there was Khalil House, an apartment
building where thirty or more bands established
offices. After the fall of the Taliban in 2001,
many Afghan musicians in Peshawar returned to Kabul,
but by this time, Homayun was on his way to Fremont,
California.
Tengir-Too. The music of Tengir-Too (Too is pronounced
like “toe”)—led by Nurlanbek Nyshanov, the 40-year-old
innovator on traditional forms—fuses nomadic musical
traits with European compositional techniques. As
the Kyrgyz came under the sphere of Russian cultural
and political influence, European musical forms
and instruments supplanted local styles and traditional
folk instruments. Though conservatory-trained, Nyshanov
broke away from these Eurocentric models. His breakthrough
occurred when he understood that, rather than rely
on the academic conventions of ensemble music, he
had to let his music “speak” in its own language.
The Academy of Maqâm. In Tajikistan, the impact
of Soviet rule had a different effect on the music.
Prior to the Soviet era, musicians in the multicultural
cities of Samarkand and Bukhara drew audiences of
Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Bukharan Jews. The performers
were typically bilingual in Uzbek (a Turkic language)
and Tajik (an eastern dialect of Persian). But with
Soviet control, came a division of these intermingled
cultures, leading to two distinct repertories. The
Academy of Maqâm takes its name from the venerable
tradition of classical or court music that spans
much of the Muslim world from Casablanca, Morocco,
to Kashgar in western China. Located in the Tajik
capital of Dushanbe, Abduvali Abdurashidov’s Academy
models itself on an older ideal of Islamic learning
in which music is inseparable from poetry, metaphysics,
ethics, and aesthetics.
The Aga Khan Music Initiative in Central Asia (AKMICA).
The Aga Khan Music Initiative in Central Asia was
created in 2000 by His Highness the Aga Khan to
contribute to the preservation, documentation, and
further development of Central Asia’s musical heritage.
The Music Initiative pursues its long-term goals
both within its region of activity and worldwide.
In Central Asia these goals include revitalizing
important musical repertories by helping tradition-bearers
pass on their knowledge and craft; building sustainable
cultural institutions that can eventually be maintained
by local organizations and communities; and supporting
artists who are developing new approaches to the
performance of Central Asian music. Worldwide, the
Music Initiative strives to increase knowledge about
Central Asia’s music and culture, particularly among
students, and to nurture collaborations among musicians
from different parts of Central Eurasia and beyond.
For more information, please visit AKMICA's website:
http://www.akdn.org/Music
