Uzbeks

Afghanistan is home to a large Uzbek population, representing more than one wave of immigration. The first, around 1500, established the group in the North. The most recent, from the 1930s, paralleled the influx of other Central Asians (Turkmens, Kazakhs, and Kirghiz) fleeing Soviet power.

Uzbeks have two kinds of repertoire. One, which a minority play or listen to, connects Afghanistan to the world of the ancient Central Asian cities that hosted old court musics since ancient times: Bukhara, Samarkand, Khiva. A few well-off people deeply interested in maintaining that style patronized the handful of musicians who were familiar with that classical tradition. I worked with two players closely: Zia Khoja in Kabul, who had himself emigrated to Afghanistan, and Ghafur Khan in Andkhoi, from an older Afghan Uzbek population. A soundclip of "Sowt-i Miskin" highlights Zia Khoja's mastery of the Uzbek dutar, yet another two-stringed fretted lute, larger than the Turkmen dutar. A second example, "Girya," shows Ghafur Khan's attempt to carry on the classical vocal and instrumental style in a standard-repertoire piece of Transoxania (Central Asia beyond the Oxus, or Amu-Darya, River). The text is in the ghazal form rather than the teahouse quatrains of the local Afghan Uzbek tradition. It has many of the poetic tropes common to the classical style: roses and nightingales, burning, lost love, drunken despair, and a fervent appeal to the beloved to turn her attention to the poet.

More typical than this classical style of Transoxania is the teahouse music, with its two basic genres: solo instrumental dance tunes, and songs with small ensemble. For the solo tradition, there are two soundclips. One is an Aqchai, or dance tune from the town of Aqcha, played by the fine performer Aq Pishak, a Turkmen who learned the Uzbek and Tajik styles. I recorded several versions of this very Uzbek tune from Aq Pishak, and each time he played it he found new ways to vary and beautify the seemingly very simple components of the tune: a first section, played mostly on one string delicately while knocking on the lid to add a percussive beat; a second section, in which he strums vigorously on both strings with three fingers, using the stroke pattern to create off-beat rhythms; and a short transitional section in which he flicks the neck of the instrument with his forefinger. This bridge section relates to the way the tunes are danced to: the flick signals the dancer to change position, for example from kneeling to standing. A filmclip, shot in Andkhoi, shows the basic Uzbek dance style suited to this Aqchai tune, used as background music for the scene. Mowlanqul, a retired dancing-boy, was coaxed to perform wearing only part of his old costume, in the privacy of the hotel room. Another filmclip shows an uncostumed Faiz Andkhoi, backed by the celebrated Bangecha Tashqurghani, in the garden of our house in Kabul, another private space.

These performances are all on dambura, the two-stringed long-necked lute without frets favored by the Uzbeks and Tajiks. Certain Uzbek tunes were very popular, so I happened to record them more than once; for one in particular, I ended up with twelve variants. A set of these are on a soundclip, to give a sense of the very different ways musicians in a number of towns play the tune they all recognize as being roughly "the same." Somewhat flippantly, when I wrote Music in the Culture of Northern Afghanistan, I dubbed this tune "the Uzbek Rag," referring to the kind of lively, variable tunes of the ragtime era, realizing later that my term might be confused with the Indian word rag or raga, to which this Uzbek style bears no relation.