THE MUSIC OF CENTRAL ASIA

Ed. Theodore Levin, Saida Daukeyeva & Elmira Köchümkulova

Indiana University Press ISBN 978-0253-01751-2 704pp (hb)

This magnificent book has been many years in gestation, but it has been worth the wait. Its editorin-chief, Theodore Levin, is the world’s leading authority on the music of Central Asia, and any region’s musicians would be lucky to receive such close and authoritative scrutiny. But this music cries out for such treatment: until the collapse of the Soviet empire, few outsiders were granted access to it, and its richness is unparalleled.

Levin and his team of 27 writers are all either ethnographers or musicians, or both: they offer a wealth of insights into a huge variety of forms and styles, each rooted in its social and cultural context. Their intention is to provide a textbook for students both in the West and in Central Asia, where much traditional music withered under Soviet rule, but accessible presentation means no prior knowledge is required to enjoy it.

And enjoy is the word. The chapters are short, vivid and packed with human interest, and the recordings and videos on the associated website are kaleidoscopically diverse. We encounter the cloistered mystery of maqom in medieval cities, and many kinds of virtuosity from the nomadic tribes on the Kazakh dombra lute, and – with close-ups of lips and fingers – on the jaw harp which is the region’s most ubiquitous instrument. Funeral laments, shamanic recitations, and wedding songs in Kyrgysztan; Karalpak ballads, and bridal celebrations in Bukhara. I was riveted by the contrapuntal sweetness extracted from the Turkmen two-string dutar lute, and by the melismatic beauty of an unaccompanied falak sung in remote Badakshan, whose entire melody unfolds within the interval of a single whole tone.

The chapters are short, vivid and packed with human interest