Chalib tanbur qachon kelgai

To me, who plays the Dutar,

When will he who plays the Tanbur come?

The passivity of the female role is expressed in the idea of the woman waiting for her loved one. The romantic notion of the appropriate pairing of musical instruments (that will play together) is also implied. The early twentieth-century author Abdulhamid Cholpan (whose novel is mentioned above) was also a poet. He makes an analogy between the fate of an Uzbek woman, imprisoned within the four walls of her house, and the sorrowful sounds of the Dutar, whose music itself is limited within the range of two strings (Cholpan 1991:86).

Men dutor gberlan tug’ungan, kuhna bir devonaman

Ul tug’ushgonim bilan utda doim yenaman

Dallarida g’am tula bechoralarga yerman

Vaqti hush g’amkurmaganlardan tamon bezorman

I [a woman] was born to be like a Dutar,

with restlessness inside me

We burn with the same flickering flame

I try to find a place to hide my sorrow

4. Dutar’s transformations in the Soviet time

The Dutar underwent significant changes in image and musical role during the early Soviet period of the 1930s. Instead of playing traditional Sufi music, musicians were expected to adopt an optimistic style, playing new pieces that expressed Soviet values, which ran counter to the melancholic and spiritual ethos of Uzbek classical music. Sovietisation brought revolutionary changes to Uzbek musical and social life, and the authority in Central Asia has always emphasised the emancipation of women as an extension of the aspirations of the October Revolution. In Uzbekistan, there was a dramatic rise in female education and women were incorporated into the paid workforce. A positive outcome for women was the fact that female professional musicians felt encouraged to become poets. In Ferghana, several women musicians – Lutfihonim Sarymsakova, Mehro Abdullaeva and Bashorat Hojaeva – sang the poetry of Mukimy, accompanying themselves on their Dutars. Another musician, Mavluda Agzamova, sang pieces by the female poets Toshmapulat and Furkat.But at the same time Mavluda Agzamova was a singer who maintained the Sufi tradition of playing Dutar and singing Sufi songs throughout the whole Soviet period. Archives of the Uzbek State Radio house her recordings of Sufi songs such as “Topmadim” (“Couldn’t find”), Munojot (“Ascend to God”), among many others.

The new Soviet cultural policy favoured popular art on a large scale. According to the Communist slogan, art should be “taken out of narrow national confines and opened to boundless internationalism”. The government encouraged female music-making, and female Dutar ensembles were created. However, these new ensembles were quite out of character with Dutar traditions. The Dutar’s silk strings were replaced by nylon ones, which were stronger and gave a louder, brighter sound, but the silk-stringed Dutar’s spirit and distinctive sound was lost. Male musicians appointed by Communist authorities implemented the new Soviet policy. They recruited inexperienced girls to project an image of female emancipation, regardless of their musical talent. These girls were taught to play the Dutar in a class, playing in unison and reading from sheet music. This had never been done before, and these innovations eliminated the traditional improvisational style. Sometimes, when official performances were prepared at short notice, the musical director might give the girls a simple Russian melody such as an easy tune “Svetit mesyaz” for Balalaika to play within these ensembles, sight-reading from the sheet music. For local audiences, the results were musically unsatisfactory. Commenting on the first Uzbek women’s Dutar ensemble, formed in 1939, the leading Uzbek musicologist Professor Ilyas Akbarov remarked: “Most of the girls had [only] a very vague idea of their instrumental technique.” (Interview, March 1982, Tashkent) In fact, the technique was that of the Balalaika, not the Dutar. Suddenly, the Dutar was expected to be loud and artificially lively, and its soft and lyrical nature was completely destroyed. Across the Soviet Union, similar innovations were taking place in other Soviet republics, with the development of massed instrumental ensembles and the recruitment of female performers to create an image of emancipation.

Later, in the 1950s, the Dutar underwent further reconstruction and innovation. In line with the expectations of his Soviet masters, the professor of Tashkent State Conservatory of Music, Professor Ashot Petrosyants, tried to adapt Uzbek traditional musical instruments for use in Western-style symphony orchestras. A family of ten different-sized Dutars was created, paralleling the orchestral string family of violin, viola, cello and double bass, but this experiment did not gain popularity. The situation changed for the better in 1972, when the Tashkent State Conservatory established its department of Oriental Music, whose aim was to revive Uzbek traditional styles, free from outside influences. The eminent Uzbek musician, performer, composer and teacher, Fahriddin Sadykov, who was brought up in a Sufi musical tradition (his name means “Pride of Faith”), was appointed to teach the Maqam repertoire on the Dutar. For the first time, students of the Maqam, learning classical Uzbek Sufi music, performed on authentic instruments (rather than the new ones with their different sizes and nylon strings). One of these students from the Ferghana area, Malika Ziyeyeva (b. 1955), became a celebrated performer, teacher and innovator of Dutar traditions in her own right. Malika Ziyeyeva has made many recordings as a soloist, both with the State Radio of Uzbekistan and with the Moscow Recording Company, Melodia, who awarded her a Golden Recording Disk. Her recordings include traditional regional style pieces, which she learnt from Professor Sadykov, and many of her own arrangements of folk tunes. Since 1991 Malika Ziyeyeva has been teaching at the Tashkent State Conservatory, reviving the old traditional and classical repertoire by its genuine soft and delicate ornamentations and decorations. Her new female Dutar ensemble consist mostly of girls - performers, creating forgotten image of “minstrels’ typical for local culture.

Conclusion

The image of the Dutar in Uzbek traditional culture was and is very important because the instrument is of the highest importance in the local cultural identity. As the most popular Uzbek musician in Afghanistan, Usto Gafar Qamolitdin (1908–2008), had claimed during our recording session in 2006 in Mazari-Sharif, in Afghanistan, “What kind of Uzbek are you if you don’t play Dutar?” (From my interview with Usto Qamolitdin, 20 October, 2006, Afghanistan) It has become apparent that the very image of the Uzbek was always associated with music-making skills and the ability to play the classical traditional instruments like Dutar. The Dutar performance was considered the genuine proof of “Uzbekness”, because, as we seen above, many distinguished Dutar’s features made the instrument one of the most favourite and unique in Uzbek and whole Central Asian culture.

Bibliography:

Akbarov, Ilyas, (1987), Myзика лугати, Tashkent, Gafur Gulyam,

Cagatay, Ergun (1996) Once Upon a Time in Central Asia, Tetragon, Istanbul. Cho’lpon (1991) Kecha va Kunduz, G’afur G’ulom, Tashkent.

Djumaev, Alexander, (2004) Kambar-ata (Kambar, Baba Gambar) I muzykal’nye tradizyi narodov Srednei Azii, Kurak, Bishkek

Interviews: Razia Sultanova with Ilyas Akbarov, March 1982, Tashkent

Ibid: Razia Sultanova with Turghun Alimatov, April 2007, Tashkent.

Ibid: Razia Sultanova with Rihzhon Hodjahanov: November 1999, Tashkent,

Ibid: Razia Sultanova with Usto Qamollitdcin, October 2006, Afghanistan

Nodira, She’riyatidan (1980), Tashkent.

Qadiry, (1974) Kecha va Kunduz, G’afur G’ulom, Tashkent.

Uspenskyi, Victior and Belyaev, Victor (1979.) Turkmenskaya Musika, Ashhabad, “Turkmenistan”

Uvaysiy, Jahonotin (1980) Uvaysiy she’ritidan, Tashkent, Izdatel’stvo ZK KP Uzbekistana.

[1] An example from female repertoire of the Ferghana Valley area is the tune called Chertmak, played in 2/4 rhythm. “ Chertmak” is a general name for plucked lutes in Central Asia (in southern regions of Kyrgyzstan, for example, the lute, Komuz, is also called “Chertmak”). In translation, “chert” means to flick or to snap, producing a sharp cracking sound. Chertmak is a piece where the main beat (Usul) provides the colour, tempo and energy of that particular character of music. The melody gives you a sense of direction, the flow of energy distributed through each stage: beginning, development, culmination and recapitulation. Usul’s energetic beats echo the energy of a dance.. The repetitive melody ascending in fourths, with short phrases leading with dynamic development towards the culmination. Suddenly, in the middle of the flow of music, the soloist strikes the wood of the Dutar’s belly with a lightning effect. It sounds as if drums are interrupting the lute’s performance. Such alternation of string sounds and percussion sounds, performed on the same instrument, brings extreme power to this piece of music. So, as we see from this analysis, even the Dutar, with its gentle and tender sound, can at times become emotionally dynamic and expressive.

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 1342