merchimerch (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
merchimerch) wrote2005-02-11 05:35 pm
merchimerch) wrote2005-02-11 05:35 pm
(no subject)
Today was cold and snowy and I feel like doing nothing.
I didn't get to - had a rather productive lesson and made some notes about it:
Historical Aspects of Uzbek Music and Malika opa’s early music education:
(as well as more on Sufism and Hang)
At my lesson this afternoon (February 11, 2005), Malika opa said a few things that I think really say something about how people perceive Uzbek music and their complaints about the ubiquitous Estrada. She praised Rich for really liking the piece from Buzruq that I am playing – she claims that it is too complicated for ordinary people to understand and that only people with musical talent like and understand it. She also made a connection to Sufism, saying that the rhythm is slow and steady 1 and 3 with rests on 2 and 4. She says that this rhythm is connected to the human pulse and is one of the rhythms used in zikrs. When I asked if this music was connected to zikrs she said no, but the rhythm is the same. The hang (vocable sections, usually a vocalize “o”), she says is very special in this music and isn’t the same “o” as sung by “vocalistlar” (Western style singers) as opposed to “ashulachilar” (maqom and Uzbek style singers). The “o” has to have pulsations and movement much like the pulse and it is in the hang that singers show their talent and their soul, according to Malika opa.
I also got a chance to ask about history and how she managed to get interested in maqom. In terms of history, she said that the music comes from the time of Amir Timur and the Khans, when women were not allowed in public, but still some amazing “sozandas” were around and they were taken to court to play for the Khans.
I asked how she got interested in maqom if all she was taught was western style music in school up to conservatory level. She said she found it so confusing because the music she would listen to on the radio (Farkhiddin Sodikov’s ensemble with Yunus aka as she calls it) and the sound would be completely different. She said that back then people listened to a lot more of the classics and because of that more people understood maqom. Now she claims that all that happens is Estrada with easy fast 1-2 rhythms and maqom is too complicated. Plus it is played at inconvenient times on the radio, only after 11PM and before 8 AM. The TV shows some maqom, but only in 5 and 10 minute chunks. She really paints maqom as a dying art in terms of the levels of the old masters. People are losing interest because of all the pop music.
This is an interesting theory and one that is similar to a lot of the complaints about the lack of classical music knowledge in the American or European public. I’m really not sure what to think about it. I am not entirely sure that there was ever a time when ordinary people listened to a lot of Shashmaqom or a lot of Beethoven. In both cases they seem like the music of the elite, both coming from court genres.
I didn't get to - had a rather productive lesson and made some notes about it:
Historical Aspects of Uzbek Music and Malika opa’s early music education:
(as well as more on Sufism and Hang)
At my lesson this afternoon (February 11, 2005), Malika opa said a few things that I think really say something about how people perceive Uzbek music and their complaints about the ubiquitous Estrada. She praised Rich for really liking the piece from Buzruq that I am playing – she claims that it is too complicated for ordinary people to understand and that only people with musical talent like and understand it. She also made a connection to Sufism, saying that the rhythm is slow and steady 1 and 3 with rests on 2 and 4. She says that this rhythm is connected to the human pulse and is one of the rhythms used in zikrs. When I asked if this music was connected to zikrs she said no, but the rhythm is the same. The hang (vocable sections, usually a vocalize “o”), she says is very special in this music and isn’t the same “o” as sung by “vocalistlar” (Western style singers) as opposed to “ashulachilar” (maqom and Uzbek style singers). The “o” has to have pulsations and movement much like the pulse and it is in the hang that singers show their talent and their soul, according to Malika opa.
I also got a chance to ask about history and how she managed to get interested in maqom. In terms of history, she said that the music comes from the time of Amir Timur and the Khans, when women were not allowed in public, but still some amazing “sozandas” were around and they were taken to court to play for the Khans.
I asked how she got interested in maqom if all she was taught was western style music in school up to conservatory level. She said she found it so confusing because the music she would listen to on the radio (Farkhiddin Sodikov’s ensemble with Yunus aka as she calls it) and the sound would be completely different. She said that back then people listened to a lot more of the classics and because of that more people understood maqom. Now she claims that all that happens is Estrada with easy fast 1-2 rhythms and maqom is too complicated. Plus it is played at inconvenient times on the radio, only after 11PM and before 8 AM. The TV shows some maqom, but only in 5 and 10 minute chunks. She really paints maqom as a dying art in terms of the levels of the old masters. People are losing interest because of all the pop music.
This is an interesting theory and one that is similar to a lot of the complaints about the lack of classical music knowledge in the American or European public. I’m really not sure what to think about it. I am not entirely sure that there was ever a time when ordinary people listened to a lot of Shashmaqom or a lot of Beethoven. In both cases they seem like the music of the elite, both coming from court genres.