Central Asian Film and Music Event in Prague
On October 19, Prague’s Lucerna cinema hosted Central Asian gala event within MOFFOM, “Music on Film - Film on Music” festival. The event featured three music documentaries by Uzbek film director Saodat Ismailova: “Revitalizing Shashmaqam, Court Music of Central Asia”, “Homayun Sakhi: The Art Of The Afghan Rubab” and Tengir-Too: Mountain Music Of Kyrgyzstan”. Films were followed by live music performances by Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Tajik and Afghan musicians. The event was well attended, by international and Central Asian audience, who represented vast Czech Central Asian community – staff of the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and students of English language universities in Prague.
“Festival organizer Keith Jones attributes the enthusiasm of the audience to the exotic nature of the music and to outstanding musicianship…There’s also a political side underlying this — that people want to know more, especially in Europe, about the Islamic world , … about secular cultures from Islamic countries because they are sort of attacked in the media with unfair stereotypes. And a lot of people are searching for stories that lie underneath the headlines and underneath what is just on the surface. And so Central Asian music has attracted relatively strong support within a certain community which is interested in world music and international cultures generally”, wrote RFE/RL.
The films were very picturesque and interesting. Read the RFE/RL description of the films:
The film “Revitalizing Shashmaqam, Court Music of Central Asia” offers a glimpse into “shashmaqam” - one of the primary styles of ancient court music that flourished in Silk Road cities of Central Asia like Samarkand, Bukhara, and Tashkent. “Homayun Sakhi: The Art Of The Afghan Rubab” is a detailed portrait of the life and work of a master of Afghan traditional music. Sakhi, the subject of the film, fled his native Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion. But he developed a new musical style while living in exile in Pakistan. Eventually he moved to Fremont, California, a small American town that has a large population of Afghan expatriates. “Tengir-Too: Mountain Music Of Kyrgyzstan,” depicted the relationship between the Kyrgyz people, their traditional music, and the landscape.
I remember one of the characters of the “Tengir-Too”, “komuz” player, told that he grew up in a family where playing komuz was from generation to generation. “We are nomad people”, he said, and historically we played individually, we did not have orchestras. Now that we live in the cities, we still play our traditional music, but in ensembles, in a modern Western way.”
Live performances were vivid and touching: having similar instruments, Central Asian music has different styles. When musicians were playing one after another, there was a feeling that it was not only the Western audience that was getting exposed to different sounds of Central Asia, but also that Central Asians themselves were learning more about each other’s cultures. We were pleased to speak to Murad, a Turkmen musician who played at the event, and publish his story on neweurasia Turkmenistan, available here.
on March 8th, 2007 at 9:17 am
Hi, i am the manager of syrian female oriental group they have performed all ove the world as classical and oriental instrumental music if you need there performace in the next event or festival just send an email on gmail account then i let you know the avialbilty for there participation in the event, right now they are in italy and they will be back on 11th in damascus
Thanks a lot
Masood Ahmad
mayamasood@gmail.com
00971 50 5740948
Dubai, UAE.