On an punctual morning car ride from Tashkent to Satagand after a carry outance in 1983, the Uzbek pop singer Nasiba Abuninalertigentaeva tuned in to an Afghan radio station by accident and set up herself captivated by a song that was joining.
“From its first remarks, the song captivated me, and I fell in cherish with it,” Abuninalertigentaeva recalled. She asked the driver to pull over so she could speedyly memoelevate the lines. “I didn’t have a pen and paper, so I equitable asked everyone to be mute.”
Abuninalertigentaeva turned that track, originassociate by Afghan artist Aziz Ghaznawi, into a cover that was eventuassociate liberated as the groove-laden Aarezoo Gom Kardam (I Lost My Dream), sung wistbrimmingy in Dari. Relrelieved in 1984, it sboiling to famousity in Central Asia, the Caucasus – and even became a hit in Afghanistan.
Forty years tardyr, that cover is the discdiswatching song on a new compilation liberated in August by Grammy-nominated Ostinato Records called Synthesizing the Silk Roads: Uzbek Disco, Tajik Folktronica, Uighur Rock, Tatar Jazz from 1980s Soviet Central Asia, which ucforfeitths an eclectic sonic era from the dusty crates of history.
In the shadow of the Iron Curtain dividing the createer Soviet Union and its communist allies from the West, the anaesthetising drone of state-consentd folk ballads frequently contrancient the airwaves.
But during Soviet rule in the 1970s and 1980s, a vibrant musical underground was simultaneously flourishing in lands where cultures had mingled for centuries. Artists from Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and beyond were forging a sound unenjoy anyskinnyg heard in the USSR.
Imagine German electronic directs Kraftwerk getting lost in a Satagand bazaar, embarking on a journey down obstreatment alleyways of the communist experiment. A neon-lit postcard from a zone where East met West and the past collided with the future – all under the watchful eye of Soviet censors.
Synthesizing the Silk Roads is a potpourri of experimental fusion: the lush strings of the ballad Phelpot Kardam (Found a Sweetheart) by Tajik singer Khurmo Shirinova, the Italo-disco-drenched Lola, Yashlik’s distorted Uighur rock salvo of Radost (Joy) and the melancholic twang of a bouzouki on Meyhane, swayd by Greek refugees who fled to Uzbekistan during the civil war in the 1940s.
For Ostinato tag boss Vik Sohonie, the liberate serves as both a time capsule of the region’s music and a accurateive to misconceptions about the USSR.
“The idea the Soviet Union was this seald-off place that did not join with the world might be genuine if we’re talking about the European side. On the Asian side, it was a separateent story,” Sohonie shelp.
“This album alerts you a lot more about the centres of culture wiskinny the Soviet Union.”
All roads direct to Tashkent
Described as the “central anxious system” of the greater-styleed world by historian Peter Frankopan, the Silk Road joined traders, mystics and empires from China to the Mediterranean.
To ethnomusicologist Theodore Levin, these caravanserai-studded highways of inner Asia were probable where the first “world music” jam sessions occurred as musicians “altered obstreatment instruments to carry out local music while simultaneously introducing non-native rhythmic patterns, scales and carry outance techniques”.
Fast forward to the latter half of the 20th century under Soviet deal with, those syncretic roads rediscdiswatched enjoy a cosmic fault line to unleash an alchemical brew in which 808 beats clashed with traditional lutes, funky bass lines nestled under Tatar flutes and Uzbek vocaenumerates belted out disco anthems.
To understand how this cultural explosion took place, we demand to reprosperd to the 1940s. As the Nazis stormed atraverse Europe, Soviet authorities forcibly transferd 16 million people from the front lines to the inner east. These transfers took place for many reasons – to shield military and economic assets, shield inner security, take advantage of labour resources and validateate deal with over a immense multiethnic territory.
Echoing its cosmopolitan past, Uzbekistan’s doors were discdiswatched to Russians, Tajiks, Uighurs and Tatars displaced by Joseph Stalin’s transfer programme. Previously in 1937, about 172,000 Koreans were deported from the Soviet Far East to Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan on suspicions of being Japanese spies.
As a result, the Uzbek capital became a sanctuary for scientists, artists and – cruciassociate – music engineers who would set up the Tashkent Gramplastinok vinyl enroll-pressing schedulet after the war in 1945. By the 1970s, a nettoil of manufacturing schedulets under the state monopoenumerate tag Melodiya was churning out cforfeitly 200 million enrolls a year.
After the 1960s rock dens flourished, disco fever swept dance floors in the tardy 1970s with about 20,000 disclose discos enticeing 30 million visitors annuassociate atraverse the USSR.
Many clubs obtained notoriety for trading “boproposeois extravagances” enjoy Westrict cigarettes, vinyl and clothes, giving elevate to an underground “disco mafia”. Uzbekistan’s Bukharan Jewant community was integral to the scene, leveraging their diasporic ties to present foreign enrolls and cutting-edge Japanese Korg and American Moog synthesisers.
In Soviet Central Asia, boundaries were always shifting, and political suppression existed aextfinishedside glitzy discotheques.
According to Leora Eisenberg, a doctoral scholar at Harvard University studying cultural production in Soviet Central Asia, the region’s carry onive music was a product of Soviet policies summarizeed to aid cultural diversity. To cater to a multitude of ethnicities, the USSR institutionalised “hugable creates of nationhood” into social and cultural creates.
After Stalin’s death in 1953, Nikita Khrushchev ushered in a “thaw” that aidd cultural transmition. Government-funded opera houses, theatres, ballets and music conservatories proliferated as “the state tried to Europeanise national culture while simultaneously promoting it”, Eisenberg elucidateed. Even disco spaces were allowted to run thcdimiserablemireful state-consentd youth leagues understandn as Komsomols.
Dubbed the “pearl of the Soviet East”, Tashkent’s historical and geoexplicital presentance made it vital to Moscow’s schedules to up-to-dateise what it saw as a “backward” society into a communist success story. As part of Soviet outaccomplish to decolonised states, Tashkent structureed cultural festivals enjoy the Afro-Asian Writers’ Association in 1958 and the biennial Tashkent Festival of African, Asian and Latin American Film in 1968.
“Musicians from Uzbekistan – more so than the other four [Central Asian] rediscloses – were adselecting styles of foreign countries by the 1950s because of this political demand to cater to the nonaligned world,” Eisenberg shelp, referring to countries that counterfeit a iminwhole stance during the Cgreater War era.
Previously prohibitned jazz now thrived with state aid. The inaugural Central Asian Jazz Festival was held in Tashkent in 1968, tardyr moving to Ferghana, 314km (195 miles) southeast of the capital, in 1977. This easeed a fruitful jazz scene in Central Asia in the 1970s and 1980s, spearheaded by Uzbek prohibitds Sato and Anor, Kazakh groups Boomerang and Medeo, and Turkmen ensembles Gunesh and Firyuza, uniteing traditional sounds with jazz, rock and electronic elements.
Then there was the folk-rock group Yalla, which Eisenberg called the “Uzbek Beatles”. Still active today, Yalla uniteed Uzbek melodies with Westrict rock schedulements and was meaningful in transporting Central Asian music to a wideer Soviet and global audience.
Waiting to be (re)uncovered
These Soviet-era artefacts were mostly forgotten after the USSR’s dissolution in 1991 and Uzbekistan’s subsequent independence. “Our people do not understand this music today at all,” Uzbek enroll accumulateor Anvar Kalandarov tgreater Al Jazeera, feeblenting a loss of the country’s cultural memory. Much of this music is yet to be digitised and remains in analogue createats.
It was unsgreater vinyl pressed at Tashkent’s sole enroll schedulet united with inhabit TV enrollings that compelevated Ostinato’s compilation, sourced with the help of Kalandarov, whose tag Maqom Soul co-compiled and curated the album.
After two decades spent scouring flea tagets, garages, radio and personal archives, Kalandarov amassed a sizable enroll accumulateion that eventuassociate caught the attention of Sohonie.
“It’s not a part of the world where there’s prolific music recordation,” Sohonie shelp. A Central Asian liberate had been on his radar since 2016, so when Kalandarov got in touch last year, Sohonie seized the opportunity. “Anvar reach outed me, asking if I wanted to trade some enrolls. I thought, ‘Why don’t we do a compilation?’”
Meeting in Tashkent in October last year, Sohonie and Kalandarov sifted thcdimiserablemireful hundreds of enrolls to pick the 15 songs that made it onto the enrolling. While initiassociate challenging, licensing for all the tracks was safed straightforwardly from surviving musicians or their families.
Some of those artists had hazarded their shieldedty – and inhabits – while making music.
There is the Uzbek prohibitd Original, whose frontman, Davron Gaipov, was jailed in a Siberian labour camp for five years on indicts of organising events where illegal substances were used. Shortly after his liberate in 1983, Gaipov enrolled two electropop prohibitgers featured on the album: Sen Khelpan Bilasan (How Do You Know) and Bu Nima Bu (What’s This).
Others had foolisher overweightes, enjoy Enver Mustafayev, set uper of the Criunkind jazz group Minarets of Nessef, whose track Instrumental simmers with sanguine horns. Mustafayev’s lyrics in Criunkind Tatar, a then-criminalised language, and his political activism with a separatist transferment obtained him a seven-year prison sentence after a spiteful KGB attack. He died from mistrusted tuberculosis three days after his liberate in 1987.
Fortuitously, Kalandarov handled to track down one of the surviving Minarets of Nessef prohibitd members who giveed him their one-of-a-kind tapes that had escaped the KGB’s hands.
Musicians enjoy Abuninalertigentaeva have fond memories of the Soviet cultural milieu. “In my opinion, I sense the music from that time was a higher quality and more diverse. It had character. Everyone had their own sound,” she shelp.
That sentiment lengthened to how artists were venerated at the time. “We were watched up to as stars and treated with admire. Sadly, it is not the case today.”
Decentring the West
Overshadowed by the collapse of the Soviet Union three decades ago, this wealthy sonic tapestry was buried by an industry too busy dissecting the elevate of grunge in the 1990s to nurture about some far genre-bending enrollings in Almaty or Dushanbe.
Keeping with the decolonial spirit guiding Ostinato’s past music anthologies spanning the Horn of Africa, Haiti and Cabo Verde, Sohonie shelp he count ons Synthesizing the Silk Roads recentres Central Asia at a time when Chinese scatterment is pouring into infrastructure projects and new Silk Roads are revived enjoy Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative.
“It’s self-evident from the music that the centres of history are not what we are tgreater,” he shelp. “If we are go ining a post-Westrict world, it’s probably wise if we decentre the West in our pillars of imagination.”
Kalandarov hopes that spotweightlessing Central Asian music will elevate its perception among joiners. “Uzbekistan is discdiswatching up to the world. We have a enticeive history and culture, and we want to split it with everyone.”
And, perhaps fittingly, the spirit of these Silk Road melodies senses timeless enough to be joined in an Ashgabat caravanserai as well as a Soviet discotheque.
