![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Dec. 2nd, 2003 08:52 pmOof - I am sitting in Javat aka's office (the rich guy who I met the other day). I just finished typiug my conference paper for tomorrow - actually his secretary typed the half of it that I had written out. The other half I very slowly typed out myself. It isn't very good - I hope I don't insult any of the people in the audience by my analysis of their musical situation. And I feel guilty because in Russian I don't feel like I'm able to be very specific or to really say what I want to be saying. It is a very awkward situation, but hopefully good will come of it. Hopefully I will get some very useful feedback - I only wish that I could have done a better job of writing it. Maybe the reason that Russian and Uzbek musicology has gone the direction that it has is because there doesn't seem to be a way to discuss music in the same terms that I am able to in english. Or maybe Americans are just wishy washy unscientific wimps. I did translate some Appadurai in my paper, maybe that will be useful to the people in the audience - I'm pretty sure he hasn't made it into Russian scholarship yet.
So tomorrow will be very busy - conference in the morning and maqom competition in the afternoon.
The conference opened today with a concert by the chamber orchestra of the conservatory - it was an interesting group comprised mostly of gijaks (uzbek fiddles) with cellos and bass komuzes (basically the reconstructed Uzbek version of the cello). It basically sounded like a string orchestra but the intonation was pretty iffy - I didn't think that they were from the conservatory. The repertoire was very iuntersting - a combination of european classics and arranged folk tunes from Uzbekistan and other places. They opened with J. Strauss's Persian March, then played an arranged Turkmen melody, then the concertmaster played a Munajaat (trad. Uz. melody) on the gijak while the rest of the orchestra harmonized (Uz. melodies are not harmonic usually), then they brought out a vocalist and he sang a different munajaat while the orchestra played an arrangement, then the Conductorplayed a Tanovar (an Uzbek dance tune) on the gijak while the orchestra accompanied him, then they brought out a girl vocalist who sang another song in European operatic style but with Uzbek words, then they ended the concert with an arrangment of an Uzbek tune that I know on the dutar, Dilhorozh.
It was really interesting to watch the gijak players because some of them would switch up their technique between a more traditional Uzbek style (leaning the spike forward and bowing underhanded) for the more uzbek sounding pieces to the violin-style technique that they used for the euro-sounding music. Not all the gijakists did this and it made the ensemble look very odd to me. Also the bass komuz players never used the uzbek style technique,perhaps because the gijak is used in both reconstructed and tradition settings, the bass komuz is only reconstructed (i.e. more european influenced). Also botht the vocalists sang in head voice and sounded incredibly european.
So tomorrow will be very busy - conference in the morning and maqom competition in the afternoon.
The conference opened today with a concert by the chamber orchestra of the conservatory - it was an interesting group comprised mostly of gijaks (uzbek fiddles) with cellos and bass komuzes (basically the reconstructed Uzbek version of the cello). It basically sounded like a string orchestra but the intonation was pretty iffy - I didn't think that they were from the conservatory. The repertoire was very iuntersting - a combination of european classics and arranged folk tunes from Uzbekistan and other places. They opened with J. Strauss's Persian March, then played an arranged Turkmen melody, then the concertmaster played a Munajaat (trad. Uz. melody) on the gijak while the rest of the orchestra harmonized (Uz. melodies are not harmonic usually), then they brought out a vocalist and he sang a different munajaat while the orchestra played an arrangement, then the Conductorplayed a Tanovar (an Uzbek dance tune) on the gijak while the orchestra accompanied him, then they brought out a girl vocalist who sang another song in European operatic style but with Uzbek words, then they ended the concert with an arrangment of an Uzbek tune that I know on the dutar, Dilhorozh.
It was really interesting to watch the gijak players because some of them would switch up their technique between a more traditional Uzbek style (leaning the spike forward and bowing underhanded) for the more uzbek sounding pieces to the violin-style technique that they used for the euro-sounding music. Not all the gijakists did this and it made the ensemble look very odd to me. Also the bass komuz players never used the uzbek style technique,perhaps because the gijak is used in both reconstructed and tradition settings, the bass komuz is only reconstructed (i.e. more european influenced). Also botht the vocalists sang in head voice and sounded incredibly european.
