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May. 22nd, 2005 09:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
merchimerchI'm feeling really numb and tired - I don't do well on too little sleep. I'm amazed at R for his ability to just truck through his insomnia. I've had 2 days of 5 hours of sleep and I feel all fuzzy in my brain.
Last night the concert was really good - It was a different crowd, smaller than for the big names, and a lot more women in either Uzbek style head scarves or hijab. That is because Gulzoda is a farily popular traditional singer who is crossing over into pop music. I heard her sing last year at the conservatory's maqom competition. I think she's doing her masters degree now in voice. She really does illustrate the point that Malika opa made to me a while ago: "Maqom is difficult, and if you can sing maqom, you can sing anything - you can sing composed pieces and estrada. If you study estrada or halq cholg'u you can't cross over to maqom." It seems true on both ends - The halq cholg'u majors I know from music history classes struggle to comprehend the maqom and don't really grasp how to perform it. The students I know in the an'anaviy department can pick up a lot of different styles. They've learned to learn music by roat and by reading notes.
The concert was pretty low budget. It didn't have the elaborate sets that some of the more popular pop stars have had. However she was singing "jonli" which literaly means from the heart, but in this case it means she wasn't lip synching. She also had a decent sized band that played mostly Uzbek instruments. There was a doira player, a barrel drum player, a nayist, gijakist, tanburist, and Bekzod, one of malika opa's star students was playing the dutar (Gulzoda is Bekzod's girlfriend's older sister). She also had a trap set, synthesizer, and electric guitar to round out the mix. I really need to get one of her albums, because she is the first person whose pop songs have a distinctly Uzbek sound to them. She uses the same ornamentation and sound production for her pop songs as well as the folk and traditional songs she sang during the concert (it seemed like an even split of about 5 or 6 of each). Funnily, like all the pop concerts this year, there was one number with Spanish dancers. Gulzoda wasn't even singing a song with Latin rhythms in it, but none the less, there had to be a pair of dancers in flamenco outfits doing their thing at least once during the concert. Anyway, back to Uzbek sound in pop songs. Sevara Nazarkhan seems to be doing something similar on the international stage. She's singing uzbek traditional tunes with french produced pop tracks layed over them. Interestingly, the result is not something that Uzbek audiences seem to like. Their either want their pop tunes poppy or their folk tunes folky. Of course Nazarkhan's goal at this point does not seem to be to please the Uzbek folks anymore. I haven't seen her videos in a while, and she hasn't given a concert in UZ this year. Plus, she does have a repertoire of very poppy pop tunes to sing for Uzbeks - they just bear little resemblance to what she puts out internationally. Gulzoda is the opposite. I hear maqom vocal style in everything she sings. Plus, the pop elements that are layered into the traditional tunes she sings are the elements that Uzbeks like - the casio keyboard synthesizers and faster arabic style drumming. I think maybe the French production is a little two alternative for most Uzbek audiences.
Last night the concert was really good - It was a different crowd, smaller than for the big names, and a lot more women in either Uzbek style head scarves or hijab. That is because Gulzoda is a farily popular traditional singer who is crossing over into pop music. I heard her sing last year at the conservatory's maqom competition. I think she's doing her masters degree now in voice. She really does illustrate the point that Malika opa made to me a while ago: "Maqom is difficult, and if you can sing maqom, you can sing anything - you can sing composed pieces and estrada. If you study estrada or halq cholg'u you can't cross over to maqom." It seems true on both ends - The halq cholg'u majors I know from music history classes struggle to comprehend the maqom and don't really grasp how to perform it. The students I know in the an'anaviy department can pick up a lot of different styles. They've learned to learn music by roat and by reading notes.
The concert was pretty low budget. It didn't have the elaborate sets that some of the more popular pop stars have had. However she was singing "jonli" which literaly means from the heart, but in this case it means she wasn't lip synching. She also had a decent sized band that played mostly Uzbek instruments. There was a doira player, a barrel drum player, a nayist, gijakist, tanburist, and Bekzod, one of malika opa's star students was playing the dutar (Gulzoda is Bekzod's girlfriend's older sister). She also had a trap set, synthesizer, and electric guitar to round out the mix. I really need to get one of her albums, because she is the first person whose pop songs have a distinctly Uzbek sound to them. She uses the same ornamentation and sound production for her pop songs as well as the folk and traditional songs she sang during the concert (it seemed like an even split of about 5 or 6 of each). Funnily, like all the pop concerts this year, there was one number with Spanish dancers. Gulzoda wasn't even singing a song with Latin rhythms in it, but none the less, there had to be a pair of dancers in flamenco outfits doing their thing at least once during the concert. Anyway, back to Uzbek sound in pop songs. Sevara Nazarkhan seems to be doing something similar on the international stage. She's singing uzbek traditional tunes with french produced pop tracks layed over them. Interestingly, the result is not something that Uzbek audiences seem to like. Their either want their pop tunes poppy or their folk tunes folky. Of course Nazarkhan's goal at this point does not seem to be to please the Uzbek folks anymore. I haven't seen her videos in a while, and she hasn't given a concert in UZ this year. Plus, she does have a repertoire of very poppy pop tunes to sing for Uzbeks - they just bear little resemblance to what she puts out internationally. Gulzoda is the opposite. I hear maqom vocal style in everything she sings. Plus, the pop elements that are layered into the traditional tunes she sings are the elements that Uzbeks like - the casio keyboard synthesizers and faster arabic style drumming. I think maybe the French production is a little two alternative for most Uzbek audiences.
