Andy Kershaw in Turkmenistan
Politics and Society, TurkmenistanOne Comment
If anyone missed Andy Kershaw’s BBC Radio three Christmas day programme the link can be found to play on the BBC radio player here. Andy Kershaw is a world-renowned specialist on world music. His Christmas day programme featured an on location documentary from Turkmenistan. The programme features an extra large seasonal helping of traditional folk music from Turkmenistan. Music, I should imagine, that is unheard by many Western ears.
Kershaw’s radio documentary offers a realistic example of the difficulties facing a westerner travelling in Turkmenistan, let alone a BBC documentary maker, as his programme was organised by the government, he is minded at all times, and is advised not to leave the hotel in the evening. Instead he wiles away the evenings in his hotel reading the Rukhnama in the company of Americans from an oil company. The programme is less judgemental than the previous BBC on location World Service documentary (see previous post). Kershaw travels to the places on his itinerary meeting musicians while all the while constantly noting the omnipresence of Turkmenbashi. There is lots of discussion on the Rukhnama, Niyazov, public holidays and carpets. However there is a deeper and more insightful discussion on how music has been co-opted by the government to service the Turkmen national identity. Kershaw and his producer struggle to find more modern Turkmen music and musicians not in the service of fostering national identity. It is of course difficult for them as modern music tends to be illegal and considered ‘un Turkmen’ by the president. Nevertheless, it is a good programme and worth the listen if not to here some of the remarkable field recordings and the traditional Central Asian instrument, the dutar. The dutar is a two string pear-shaped long-necked lute which is considered to originally be from Western China, but is now widely played throughout Central Asia.
RSS Feeds
Podcasts
Thanks for the tip-off. Interesting stuff. I’m trying to build up my Central Asian music library but am a bit thin on Turkmen music. Cheers.
Reply