Saturday, August 27, 2022

ѲЗҺАЛ MУҚАМИ

 

УӢҒУР  ''OH ИККИ MУҚАМИ''

                                                           ѲЗҺАЛ MУҚАМИ

                    THE  TWELVE  UYGHUR MUQAMS/MUQAM ÖZHAL                 

 
              Melodiya, ?, S30-13725-26 - S30-13727-28    (2 LPs issued separately)

There is a small Uyghur community in Uzbekistan  (less than 20 000 in the 2000 census) but some say that this figure is largely underestimated as many Uyghur people declared themselves as Uzbek. What is certain is that there are no political uyghur organisations and critics toward China are forbidden. China and Uzbekistan have even signed an extradition agreement. So the Uyghur in Uzbekistan can express themselves only culturally. There are programs in Uyghur on Uzbek TV several days a week. That is more or less the situation now; back to the mid-eighties the picture was probably different.
I got these two albums around 1986 from a friend in USSR.
At the time in Tashkent some musicians and scholars worked on the restoration and promotion of the Uyghur muqams by publishing series of LPs. Özhal (
ئۆزھال مۇقامى, Өжал) is the sixth mode in the series. It seems that that corpus was stabilized during the sixteenth century by Amannisahan who was a concubine as well as a poetess and musician.
The first album starts with an introduction by singer Abdurahim. Ahmadiy ans sator player Sultanmurad Razamov who was also the musical adviser for this project. Then the orchestra and male and female choirs alternate with ''dastan nagme'' and ''dastan margul''. The lyrics are based on the poem ''Garib and Senem''; each vocal dastan is associated to a specific tune played by the orchestra (dutar, sator, flute, tanbur, chang and daire) led by Hakim Helamov. They are Uyghur musicians and singers part of the Uzbek Radio-TV Orchestra at Tashkent.
The second album is the following of the first one with the poems ''Garib and Senem'' and ''Yusuf Ahmet''. As the muqam was completed by the beginning of side 4, two folk pieces were added.
The sound quality is not optimal but the melodies are great evoking sometimes India, Afghanistan and even some Western Europe traditions.
Brief text in Uzbek and Russian.



                                                            download.wav 1
                                                            download.wav 2

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