Grove Music Online: Central Asia

20/05/2019 Central Asia | Grove Music
Grove Music Online
Central Asia
Stephen Blum
https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.05284
Published in print: 20 January 2001
Published online: 2001
The musical cultures of Central Asia have been shaped by a long process
of interaction between speakers of Iranian and Turkic languages, and
by a longer history of interaction between settled and nomadic peoples.
The present article covers the three major geographic regions of what
has been called the ‘Turco-Iranian world’: the vast plain (including
steppe, desert-steppe and desert) that falls from the Altai, Tian Shan
and Pamir Mountains westwards to the Urals and the Caspian Sea; the
Iranian plateau, with the Hindu Kush on the east and the Zagros
mountains to the west; and the plateau of Anatolia, ringed by the
Pontus Mountains along the Black Sea and the Taurus along the
Mediterranean. Politically, Central Asia may be said to comprise the
republics of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Republic of,
Tajikistan and the southern third of Kazakhstan; Afghanistan north of
the Hindu Kush; northern Iran; Azerbaijan; and eastern Turkey.
The major Iranian languages are Persian, Kurdish, Pashto and Baluchi.
Di erent dialects of Persian are spoken in Iran, Afghanistan,
Uzbekistan and Tajikistan; more speakers of Tajik Persian live in
Afghanistan and Uzbekistan than in Tajikistan. Small groups of Pamir
peoples living on both sides of the Pyandzh river in southern
Tajikistan, north-east Afghanistan and the adjacent area of Pakistan
speak several di erent eastern Iranian languages (Yaghnobi, Wakhi,
Munji, Yidgha etc.). Turkic languages are spoken in much of northern
Iran and Afghanistan as well as in Turkey, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan,
Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. Unlike the political
boundaries, the principal ethnolinguistic divisions of Central Asia have
remained relatively stable since the end of the 16th century.
1. Traditions.
In the 20th century, e orts to develop musical cultures have produced

somewhat similar results in the nine nations of the region, though with
interesting local di erences. Concerted attempts to reinterpret and
modernize existing musical practices were mounted just as
ethnomusicologists from inside and outside the region began to
https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000005284 1/24
conduct eldwork. Con icts in the agendas of musicians, scholars and

government ministries have fostered continuous debate concerning
‘traditionality’ (Russ. traditsionnost′) from the 1920s to the present.
Nationalist projects have included the establishment of conservatories

and archives for traditional music, codi cation of ‘classical’ and ‘folk’
idioms with appropriate publications and institutions, suppression of
religious institutions where music was cultivated for centuries,
creation of musical emblems of national identity and radio
broadcasting policy. In Afghanistan only the last two have been
signi cant, due perhaps to the relative weakness of central authority.
Afghan nationalism in the 1930s encouraged the adoption of a national
dance, the atan-e melli, and the kiliwāli music developed at Radio
Afghanistan in the 1950s has had a profound impact throughout the
nation. Many Afghans consider the rubāb (a double-chested short-
necked lute) to be their national instrument.
The ideology of the founders of the Turkish Republic (established 1923)

supported a sharp division between ‘art’ (san'at) and ‘folk’ (halk)
music, with the latter seen as the proper basis for a secular musical
practice that would (like the Latin script adopted in 1928) help to
separate the new nation from its Ottoman past. The reconstructed
‘folk’ idiom, endowed with its own theory based on the rural long-
necked lute bağlama, has been propagated by a vast network of
institutions (conservatories, ‘people's houses’, clubs, Turkish Radio
and Television); the instrument is now mass-produced and widely
played in both cities and villages. Classical music su ered from the
abolition of religious brotherhoods in 1925, although dervishes have
continued to meet for ‘rehearsals’ (meşk) and other activities, some of
which have been subsumed under the rubric of ‘folklore’. Much of the
repertory created in dervish lodges and at the Ottoman court was
published as ‘Classics of Turkish Music’ (Türk musikisi klasiklerinden)
beginning in the mid-1920s. When Turkish classical music was
restored to the curriculum of the Istanbul Conservatory in the late
1940s, it was taught from notation according to the systematic theory
of Sadettin Arel (1880–1955). Instruction at the state conservatory in
Ankara (established 1936 with the assistance of Paul Hindemith) was
from the outset limited to Western music. An archive of folk music to
which Béla Bartók had contributed was rst housed at the
conservatory; in 1967 it was transferred to Turkish Radio and
Television, which remains the most powerful centre for collection,
notation, arrangement and di usion of tunes in the halk idiom.
Whereas the o cially sanctioned halk idiom of Turkey was de ned to

exclude the modes (makamlar) of art music, the muqam repertory was
central to conceptions of ‘people's’ (xalq) music in Azerbaijan. Xalq
musikasi (the equivalent of Russian narodnaya muzïka) likewise became
a relatively comprehensive term in the other Turkic republics of the
USSR, though genres with religious connotations were often excluded
for ideological reasons. Uzeir Hajibeyov, the dominant gure in the
musical life of the Azerbaijan SSR until his death, formulated an
innovatory theory of the structure of the muqam system. First
published in 1945 and subsequently re ned by M.S. Ismaïlov (1960),
the theory has in uenced later generations of composers and
improvisers without entirely displacing the orally transmitted
pedagogies that organize the muqamsystem by di erent principles.
Hajibeyov's own path as a composer led from operas that call for
singers to improvise within a speci ed muqam to the fully notated

opera Kyor-oglï (1936). He was also active as a conductor of choirs and
orchestras of folk instruments that performed from notation. The
creation of modern musical institutions in Azerbaijan does not seem to
have diminished the great value placed on improvisation.
Improvisation has also retained its central importance in what is now

called the ‘traditional music’ (musiqi-ye sonnati) of Iran, a high art that
is closely related to the Azerbaijani muqam but has developed quite
di erently in the 20th century. One version of the Persian radif, a
repertory of melody-types on which improvised performances are
based, was published in 1963 by the Ministry of Culture and Arts, more
as a cultural monument than as a teaching tool. Earlier versions
published for teaching purposes were highly selective. A more rigorous
version of the radif was assembled over many years of study by Nur ‘Ali
Borumand (1905–77) and taught by himself and his successors at the
University of Tehran from the late 1960s. Like several of his friends
Borumand performed only at private gatherings, and his teaching,
which avoided notation and other gestures toward scienti c
‘systematization’, was more conservative than that of Sadett in Arel in
Turkey or of Hajibeyov in Azerbaijan. Borumand's colleague Dāryush
Safvat and several of his students (among them Dāryush Talā'i, Majid
Kiāni and Mohammad Rezā Lot ) came to be recognized as
authoritative exponents of musiqi-ye sonnati. Regional music (musiqi-
ye navāhi) began to attract o cial interest in the 1990s, and major
festivals were organized in 1992, 1994 and 1997. No attempt at devising
a written pedagogy for a regional music has ever been made in Iran.
A major source of controversy in research conducted within the USSR

was the concept of ‘Professional folk music’, as outlined in Klyment
Kvitka's path-breaking dissertation on ‘professional folk singers and
instrumentalists in the Ukraine’ (1924). Kvitka's research programme
o ered an alternative to the equation of ‘folk music’ with ‘peasant
music’ in the work of Bartók, Brăiloiu and other central European
scholars. The seminal monograph on Turkmen music by V.A. Uspensky
and V.M. Belyayev (1928) contains a wealth of information on the
bagşy, a professional storyteller and entertainer who plays the dutār (a
fretted long-necked lute with two strings). Analogous gures have long
been active throughout Central Asia, but from the mid-1930s many
were forced to adopt other professions in order to avoid charges of
‘parasitism’. In Kazakhstan ideological considerations generated
denials that any professional musicians had existed prior to the
creation in the 1930s of an ‘orchestra of folk instruments’, and a
second volume on Turkmen music by Belyayev and Uspensky remained
unpublished owing to an alleged ‘exaggeration of professionalism’.
One strategy, adopted in Belyayev's essays on the musical history of the
peoples of the USSR (1962–3), was to interpret ‘professional folk
music’ as a transitional stage preparing the way for the creation of
national schools of composition.
Studies of sung poetry in Soviet Central Asia were also hampered by

nationalist concerns and by relentless e orts to suppress religion,
including the Su orders. When Uspensky notated the Bukharan
shashmaqām, he was not permitted to write down the Tajik texts sung
by his informant, and the work was published in 1924 as a monument
of Uzbek culture, with no texts in the vocal section. It was the presence
of too many dervish songs that prevented the publication of Belyayev's

and Uspensky's study of music in the Ferghana valley. In other cases
objectionable texts were revised or replaced.
As in Turkey, the construction of cultural heritages in Soviet Central

Asia made use of many institutions and media. The emphasis on
training musicians for ensemble performance that left little or no room
for improvisation required new canons of classical music and folklore,
along with extensive modi cations of instruments and performance
genres. Substantial e orts were devoted to the harmonization of folk
melodies, whereas in Turkey this project remains a deferred item on
the nationalist agenda. Musicians in the USSR confronted a powerful
system of incentives and punishments. Changes in the political climate
brought about drastic revaluations of the expertise of performers, some
of whom su ered years of o cial neglect before their services were
suddenly needed. One such gure was the Bukharan Jewish musician
Baruch Zirkiev, who served towards the end of his life as a major
informant for Yunus Rajabi (1897–1976) as the latter notated what
became the standard edition of the Bukharan shashmaqām(published in
1959).
Before they were transformed into ‘traditions’, the performing arts of

Central Asia o ered many avenues of communication with ancestors
and contemporaries. If popular preferences in every nation have been
deeply a ected by the di usion of new idioms, the resilience of older
attitudes toward music and poetry (especially those associated with
Su sm) has been no less evident.
2. Musicians.
Acknowledgment of the power of music as a medium of communication

has been one of the basic premises of Turkic-Iranian cultural
interaction throughout Central Asia. In a story that has been told for
over a millennium, a ruler promises to execute anyone who tells him
that his favourite horse has died, and a minstrel escapes punishment by
conveying the bad news through sounds drawn from a string
instrument. Bārbad, the chief minstrel of Khosrow Parviz (ruled 590–
628) in Sassanian Iran, accomplished this task on the short-necked
lute barbat, and a piece in the current dutār repertory of Khorezm tells
the same story about a di erent ruler. Pieces for the Kyrgyz komuz(an
unfretted long-necked lute with three strings) and the Kazakh
dömbra(a fretted long-necked lute with two strings) relate a similar
incident, in which a khan learns of his son's death in a hunt as a
minstrel depicts the sequence of events on his komuz or dömbra.
Programmatic compositions that evoke such episodes have been no
less signi cant than improvisations designed to meet the needs of a
particular occasion.
Before the 20th century no court, however small, could do without the
services of musicians and poets, who were often bi- or trilingual.
Verses presented to the Emir of Bukhara by the Persian-speaking
intellectual Ahmad Mahdum Kalla (1827–97) echo a long tradition in
naming seven gures whose achievements are responsible for the
honour of a state (all of which he claimed to combine in his own
person): the philosopher, doctor, astrologer, singer, poet, calligrapher

and painter. Praise poetry, whether sung or recited, served as a means
of moral instruction; as is generally the case at courts, performers and
auditors were expected to conduct themselves according to accepted
norms. Throughout most of Central Asia following the advent of Islam,
the basic models of decorum (adab) were of Persian origin.
Innumerable court musicians maintained close ties with Su religious
orders, whose meeting places remained important performance venues
as the courts disappeared. Yet the di usion of Su ideals and models of
behaviour extended far beyond court circles, which is one reason for
their longevity.
Gatherings of various kinds continue to be structured around the

o ering and acceptance of courtesies in the form of appropriate
gestures and postures, conversation, tea, food, sweets and sometimes
alcohol, tobacco and other intoxicants. Music should be produced at
just the right moment, when performers and listeners have reached the
appropriate state of readiness. The Arabic term muhabbet is used in
several languages to denote the warm feelings of conviviality generated
in gatherings that include well-timed musical performances (whether
live or recorded). The dynamics of group interaction may induce states
of ecstasy in some participants, or a group may prefer attitudes of quiet
meditation. The performance idioms suited to the Su majles and to
social gatherings held in private homes (variously called mehmāni,
ziyāfat, shau nishini, gap, saz söxbet etc.) allow participants to respond
to one another's actions and gestures: a soloist may repeat segments
that have elicited positive reactions; the group may join the soloist at
the ends of lines or in singing refrains (ex.1); an instrumentalist may
defer to a senior or more knowledgeable colleague by declining to
challenge his version of a mode. An appreciation of classical poetry,
notably the ghazal, is readily shared and transmitted in these
environments. In Iran at least one such well-established circle of
connoisseurs and amateurs has continued to meet every week for six
decades. Private homes often have a special wing in which male guests
are entertained (called dîwexan or diwanxand in Kurdistan,
mehmānkhāne in Transoxania and Afghanistan).
Ex.1 One line of a ghazal, by Mowlānā Jalāl al-Din Rumi, sung in a sufi lodge, Tehran,
1968
rec S.Blum
Amateur music-making at informal gatherings may attain the very

highest levels of technical expertise and spiritual insight.
Knowledgeable amateurs often take pains to distance themselves from
musicians who receive compensation for public performances, and it is
possible to distinguish ‘voluntary gifts’ from ‘fees for services
rendered’. The honori c title of ‘master’ (Persian ustād, Kurdish westa,
Turkic ustâ) may be applied to musicians who are not professionally
active, and titles that designate types of degrees or mastery do not
necessarily imply professionalism. A Tajik or Uzbek singer who
commands a large repertory of poetry deserves to be called a hāfez
(‘preserver’, normally conferred on a person who has memorized the
Qur'an). In north-eastern Iran some connoisseurs reserve the title
bakhshi for singers who have made noteworthy additions to the
repertory of Turkic and Kurdish verses, but popular usage is less
restrictive and extends the title to singers whose repertories include
the main Turkic narratives. The âşık of eastern Anatolia earns the right
to this title both by composing new verses and melodies and by
maintaining a high moral standard in his daily life and in the content of
his performances. In Kars, the title of ustâ (‘master’) âşık is conferred
on performers who control the full repertory of melody types (sesler,
‘tones’), said to contain 72 entities. The same number of melody types
(nameler) is supposedly available to the Khorezmian bakhshi, but in
both cases the number has been chosen for its symbolic value and does
not match the musical system.
The fact that such titles as bakhshi and âşık are not easily acquired
points to the continuing prestige of the many gures descended from
the ozan of the Oghuz Turks, who acted as both bard and soothsayer.
Most singers of tales take pride in their vocation (sometimes received
in a dream) and in the antiquity of their repertory. In the tales of the

legendary ozan Dede Qorqut, which survive in two 16th-century
manuscripts (at Dresden and the Vatican), verses interpolated within
the prose narratives represent the speech of protagonists; they were
sung or declaimed to the accompaniment of a qopuz (a long-necked
lute with three strings). The storytellers of eastern Anatolia,
Azerbaijan, north-eastern Iran, Turkmenistan and Khorezm continue
to use a modi ed version of this format: the narrative relates the events
that impelled the protagonists to speak, and their emotionally
heightened speech takes the form of strophes sung to the
accompaniment of a fretted long-necked lute (sāz or dutār), which is
joined by the cylindrical oboe bālabān and the frame drum qavāl in
western Azerbaijan, by the spike ddle gyjak in parts of Turkmenistan
and by gyjak, bulaman and frame drum in one Khorezmian style. The
subject matter of the strophes covers a wide range of topics: the
protagonists, who are often represented as experienced singers, may
quote maxims, threaten their enemies, tell of their journeys and
battles, or express the anguish of separation from a lover. Far the most
celebrated example of a singing warrior is Kyor-oglï, mentioned as such
in historical chronicles of the Caucasus in the early 17th century and
subsequently the main protagonist of narrative cycles in Anatolia,
Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, southern Uzbekistan, northern Afghanistan
and Badakhshan (where the verses are in Tajik Persian).
Sequences of strophes are often detached from their narratives and

performed as songs. Among the Turkmen, the tirmeçy-bagşy sings
lyrics taken from various narratives as well as verses of the classical
Turkmen poets, whereas the dessançy-bagşy performs entire
narratives. The bakhshi of the Surkhandarya region in Uzbekistan,
whose instrument is the unfretted lute dömbra, also distinguishes
between short strophic poems called terme (which are often
improvised, unlike the Turkmen tirme) and long narratives (dāstān),
without classifying performers as specialists in one or the other genre.
The Kyrgyz manaschi di ers from all descendants of the ozan in

con ning himself to portions of one epic: the vast Manas cycle, a
compendium of genres sung without instrumental accompaniment.
The manaschi combines a number of performing styles according to his
perception of his listeners' desires. The Kazakh zhïrau or zhïrshi
performs individual items from a large repertory of epic song (zhïr),
accompanying himself on the dömbra (a fretted long-necked lute with
two strings). Sung verse need not be attributed to protagonists in the
zhïr but may have narrative content. The Karakalpak zhïrau is one of the
few Turkic bards outside Siberia who accompanies himself on a ddle
(qopïz, with two horsehair strings) rather than on a long-necked lute.
Among the Karakalpaks, Kazakhs and Kyrgyz, the qopïz (or its Kyrgyz
equivalent, kiak) is strongly associated with healer-diviners called
baqsy, though some Kyrgyz healers play the unfretted lute komuz
instead. The functions of bard and healer, originally united in the gure
of the baqsy or bakhshi, were separated as more specialized
performance roles developed. The process of specialization has made
certain roles available to women in particular regions, e.g. the role of
bakhshi-healer in northern Tajikistan, where a frame drum (dāyre)
rather than a ddle is used in divination. Though the role of bard and
the playing of chordophones have been largely monopolized by men,
there are signi cant exceptions: in the Ferghana valley women have
long played dutār(smaller and with a softer tone than the men's
instrument), and since the 1930s a small number of Turkmen women
have followed the bakhshi's vocation (singing in the same register as
the male bakhshi, with less constricted voices). A Turkish woman who
has gained considerable recognition as an âşιk, Şah Turna (b 1953), did
so as an exile in Germany.
In both Kyrgyz and Kazakh, aqïn is an honori c term for a professional

minstrel who sings several di erent genres to his own instrumental
accompaniment (on the Kyrgyz komuz or the Kazakh dömbra). An aqïn
is expected to be a gifted improviser (Kyrgyz tökmö), capable of holding
his own in the competitions known as aytïs, where strict rules were
devised for evaluating performances in the various genres. Like the
Turkmen bagşy, the aqïn o ers moral counsel, eulogizes actual or
potential patrons and laments fallen heroes, functions that were easily
redirected to incorporate o cial propaganda during the Soviet period.
The Kazakh aqïn Jambul Jabayev (1845–1945) and the Kyrgyz aqïn
Toktogul (1864–1933) were extolled throughout the former USSR as
exemplary ‘people's artists’.
The full range of specialized performance roles in Central Asia allows

for the co-existence of several attitudes toward existing repertories. In
many cases, pre-composed verses have priority, and the performer's
task is to make e ective use of conventional musical resources in
presenting the verses, which may be considered ‘texts’ even when
memorized by illiterate singers. Mastery of a large repertory of sung
poetry generally entails a deep familiarity with historical lore
associated with the texts; this is one reason why long periods of
apprenticeship are common. Poets are exemplary gures whose names
and meritorious deeds must be remembered. A poet–musician is
occasionally credited with the invention of a mode or melody type (e.g.
the Navā'i mode attributed by some Turkmen and Iranian musicians to
Mir Ali-Sher Navā'i of Herat (d 1501)). The distinction between
‘composer’ (sal) and ‘performer’ (sere) of a lyric song is rmly
embedded in Kazakh musical culture, which stands out for the large
number of musicians whose names remain attached to their
compositions. These include composers of the instrumental genre küy,
such as Qurmangazï (1806–79) and Dauletkerei (1820–87), as well as
song-composers such as Birzhansal (1831–94).
Music that marks major stages in the life-cycle may or may not require
specialized skills. Baluchi culture is exceptional in the importance of
songs o ered to the mother of a new-born child by her female
relatives, friends and neighbours over a period that may last up to 40
days after the child's birth. Antiphonal singing during the shaptāgi
ceremony prevents mother and child from being left alone and possibly
victimized by evil spirits. Any member of the group may participate in
singing sepat, whereas vocal dexterity above the norm is needed for
singing vazbat (‘praise’); the verses of both genres praise God, the
Prophet and important religious gures. Another genre, lāro, is sung
responsorially or antiphonally on the sixth evening after a child's birth,
and as a bridegroom is carried back from his bath on the day of his
wedding. Other wedding genres are restricted to that context (e.g. hālo,
sung as a bridegroom is carried to the bath and as he bathes).
In most regions marriages provide the main occasions for women's

musical activities. The events surrounding a marriage in Herat
(western Afghanistan) move from avoidance of music during initial
visits between the two families, to the betrothal party where women of
the groom's family sing and dance to dāyre (frame drum)
accompaniment, then the engagement party where a group of female
musicians is hired to entertain women, and nally the wedding itself,
where a female group entertains women and a male group entertains
men. The female sāzande (professional musician) plays essentially the
same segregated role in Bukhara as in Herat, though elsewhere in
Uzbekistan and Tajikistan men and women often attend the same
festive gathering (bazm). The Bukharan sāzande was most often Jewish
prior to the massive emigration of Bukharan Jews, but the analogous
xalfa sāzi of Khorezm is necessarily a Muslim, since her role
presupposes some familiarity with religious law. One corollary of
sexually segregated gatherings has been the long-term popularity, in
Afghanistan and Uzbekistan, of dancing-boys (bache) dressed as
women and performing for men. In Bukhara, women have also
entertained themselves by dressing as men and enacting such male
roles as ‘dervish’ and ‘bridegroom’ with appropriate songs and
gestures.
The intricate relationships between gender and musicality in Central

Asia are an area greatly in need of further investigation. Religious
ceremonies for women are often conducted di erently from men's
ceremonies, as in the case of recitals of mevlûd (sung poetry in praise of
Muhammad) in Turkey. The texts of some performance genres, such as
the Pashto landai (see Afghanistan, §II, 1), suggest that they are more
often than not composed by women. Baluchi musicians describe such
genres as motk and zahirok (see Iran) as ‘originally’ the property of
women. Imagined dialogues between a man and a woman are
prominent in many performance genres, not least the Turkic dāstān
and hekāyat. Singers who group together sequences of Pashto landai,
Persian dobeiti or Turkish türkü can easily create or reproduce similar
dialogues. As in the rest of the world, debate concerning gender roles is
prominent in oral and written commentary on artists and styles of
popular music (e.g. the intense controversies surrounding the Turkish
genre arabesk, analysed by Stokes, 1992)
3. Structure and genre.
Conceptions of narratives, modes or modal systems with two or more

‘branches’ are found throughout Central Asia. Related conceptions are
evident in the social organization of tribes and in the plans of
encyclopedias such as the Ashjā wa athmār (‘Trees and fruits’, 1288) of
al-Bukhāri, which reviews all the ‘trees’ in the orchard of knowledge
and all the ‘fruits’ on each tree. Yet, although it was sometimes
possible for one ruler to exercise authority over all of a tribe's divisions
and for one scholar to compile an encyclopedia, the branches of some
great narratives (e.g. the 32 or 64 branches of the Uzbek Göroğly cycle in
southern Tajikistan) are so extensive that no performer can master
them all. Enumerating a number of branches serves either to situate
one master's knowledge within a larger whole or to codify a set of

options from which every competent musician makes appropriate
selections and combinations.
An itinerary adopted for all or part of a performance is sometimes

called a ‘road’ or ‘way’ (Turkic yol, Persian rāh and tariq). Some
itineraries o er a greater range of options than others; performers
decide where to diverge from and where to rejoin a well-travelled path
on the basis of various considerations, often including their
perceptions of the emotional states of listeners. A healer–diviner (or
‘shaman’) is obliged to undertake journeys, the precise course of which
cannot be predicted. Important musical terms refer to well-de ned
itineraries (e.g. Turkish seyir, a melodic progression characteristic of
one makam) as well as to improvisational ‘strolling’ (Azerbaijani
gezişme).
A roster of di erent ‘ways’ may amount to an inventory of

performance styles, though a single itinerary may easily pass through a
number of styles. The Persian poet Manuchehri, active at the court of
the Ghaznavid ruler Mas‘ud (ruled 1030–42 in what is now
Afghanistan), referred to a mode of performance that could
accommodate verses in two groups of Turkic languages, the ‘eastern’
dialect of the Qarluq and Uighur Turks and the ‘western’ dialect of the
Oghuz and Qipchak Turks:
Be rāh-e torkī mānā ke khūb-tar gū'ī
To she‘r-e torkī bar-khwān marā o she‘r-e ghuzī.
(In the Turkic mode, ‘so that you might speak better,
sing [or declaim] for me verses in both Turki and Ghuzzi’.)
From the 11th century onwards, theoretical writings in Persian posit

a nities between one rāh, tariq or parde (literally ‘fret’, by extension
‘mode’) and one class of listeners, de ned by some combination of
physical characteristics, ethnicity, age, profession and social status.
Such doctrines, which must also have been transmitted orally, served
to admonish performers not to ignore the needs and preferences of
listeners, though these cannot have been as predictable as the doctrines
claim.
The term maqām, which passed from Arabic into Persian, Kurdish and
Turkic languages, designates an entity that belongs to a larger
repertory or system and has its own proper name. The term has served
to enumerate and classify entities within many repertories, which have
included nished compositions as well as generative devices. The
proper names are helpful in teaching how to pass from one maqām to
another and how to combine them in appropriate sequences. The
names also facilitate reference to other collections of named entities
(seasons, times of day, humours etc.). One maqām may consist of (a) a
suite with several branches (Arabic shu‘ab (sing. shu‘ba), also used in
Persian, Azerbaijani and Uzbek), some portion of which is performed
on a particular occasion; (b) a scale implying certain melodic
progressions and modulatory possibilities; (c) a melody type; or (d) a
relatively xed melody, particularly an instrumental composition (as in

Kurdish meqam and Turkmen mukam). Speci c uses of the term often
exploit its multiple meanings and associations.
The identity of a maqām depends on how its contrasting tonal registers

are projected in compositions and performances; a musician who has
mastered a maqām repertory knows several ways of moving from one
register to another. The most typical melodic progressions ascend in
several stages to higher registers, then return to the point of departure
as extended melodic spans of unequal length are replaced by shorter
melodies with equal phrase-lengths and the tempo becomes quicker.
The underlying dramaturgy is sometimes described as ‘ ight’ followed
by ‘descent’ or ‘return’. Such progressions may be completed quickly,
or they may be extended through an entire ceremony or performance.
Numerous terms designate refrains or refrain-like elements that
con rm returns to the lower register and to straightforward rhythms.
There are also many verbs for the actions of respondents in
responsorial and antiphonal genres. Yet musicians often create an
intricate interweaving of structural levels that eludes the available
terminology.
The Turkmen dutār compositions called mukam are said to form a cycle
of ve units that gradually ascends from the lowest to the highest
register, though the ve pieces are usually played separately. Songs in
the Turkmen bagşy repertory are also classi ed according to register
and are performed at the appropriate point in a concert, which begins
with songs in the low register, gradually gains intensity during the long
middle section and reaches its peak with a smaller number of songs in
the high register.
A musician’s verbal description of one maqām may point simply to

three phases. According to the âşιk, Murat Çobanoğlu (b 1938) the
Turkish Garibi makam begins in a high register (tiz) and makes a
descent (inmek, analogous to Persian forud) to a low register (pest; see
Reinhard and de Oliveira Pinto, 1989, pp.88–9). The entire progression
is completed in the rst line of each quatrain that Çobanoğlu sings in
an exchange of strophes with a second âşιk, Şeref Taşlıova (b 1938).
Each singer treats the descent in a strikingly di erent manner (ex.2)
but both agree on the relationship between the makam and the syllabic
poetic metre (11 syllables, divided as 6 + 5 in the rst quatrain, as 4 + 4
+ 3 in the second): the descent begins on or immediately following the
sixth syllable, and the next three syllables are sung to the notes B♭, A
and G before the descent continues.
Ex.2 Opening lines of two quatrains sung in Garibi makam (from cassette with Reinhard
and de Oliveira Pinto, 1989)
No variable is more signi cant than the coordination of melodic

progressions with speci c poetic metres and rhythmic cycles. The
presence of a poetic metre (either syllabic or quantitative) need not
entail adherence to a rhythmic cycle (usul in the Turkic languages, from
the Arabic word for ‘elements’). Avoidance of a musical (as opposed to
a poetic) metre, or its introduction at a speci c point in the
performance, is an essential feature of many performance genres. The
Bukharan genre mavrigi, sung by a soloist to the accompaniment of a
frame drum, begins with an ‘unmetred’, highly ornamented section
(shahd, ‘honey’) followed by a sequence of songs in contrasting metres,
with one change of tempo in each song. Mavrigi (also called gharibi,
‘homelessness’) is associated with descendants of Persian-speaking
slaves captured in Khorasan by Uzbek invaders and transported to
Bukhara via Merv (from which its name derives). With the introduction
of metre after the shahd, the persona portrayed by the singer turns
from introspection to a renewed sociability.
Singers of mavrigi have several options with respect to selection and

ordering of the metric songs, but the shahd cannot stand by itself. Such
compound genres di er in this respect from conventional pairings of
genres in which the second member of the pair, but not the rst,
adheres to a constant metre or rhythmic cycle. This arrangement may
be considered a minimal ‘suite’, moving from phrases of variable
duration in parlando rubato style to phrases of more equal length in
tempo giusto. The shift to tempo giusto is sometimes optional, as in
performances of the Kurdish genres lawik, qetar, heyran and beyt, which
may or may not conclude with a metric paşbend (‘after-verse’). In other
words, musicians are not always obliged to resolve the tension they
have sustained through several asymmetrical phrases sung or played

parlando rubato. This holds true as well for the Turkish uzun hava
(‘long air’). For what is presumably a variety of reasons, ‘long song’
has proven to be an apt name for several Eurasian vocal genres,
including the Mongolian urtyn duu, Kalmyk ut dun, Tatar özen küi,
Bashkir uzun küi, Russian protyazhnaya pesnya and Romanian Hora
lunga. In most of these the absence of a xed grouping of pulses
increases the singer's options for prolonging and ornamenting a
melodic descent, not least through the interpolation of ‘extra’ syllables
at the beginning, middle or end of lines (cf ‘aman’ in ex.2). Most uzun
hava melodies are not long enough to accommodate an entire strophe,
and singers generally have several opportunities to vary the skeletal
progression as they string together a sequence of strophes. Singers are
also free to choose the melodic progressions best suited to particular
texts.
If a minimal ‘suite’ moves only once from parlando rubato to tempo

giusto, frequent shifts from one to the other occur in more extended
formats, such as those used in the classical traditions of Iran and
Azerbaijan. In Azerbaijani music a räng (in a dance metre, often 6/8)
separates each of the major subdivisions of a performance, and a täsnif
(pre-composed metric song) may be introduced at a number of points.
The standard sequence of movements in 20th-century Persian music
places the tasnif and reng at the very end of the performance, which
usually lasts between 30 and 60 minutes. In both traditions the central
portion of a performance is devoted to improvised singing of the
ghazal, where the singer's rhythmic options are constrained by the
quantitative metres of the poems.
As these examples indicate, the performance information conveyed by

names of genres pertains to the ordering of items as well as to style and
content. The options available to performers have been codi ed in a
number of di erent ways, which commonly permit more liberties in
the middle than at the beginning or end (often called baş, ‘head’ and
ayaq, ‘foot’ in Turkic languages). The Turkish concert-suite fasıl begins
and ends with instrumental genres, rst an improvised taksim and a
composed peşrev (from Persian pishrow, ‘prelude’), at the end a saz
semaî. In between come pieces in several vocal genres, which are
di erentiated by the rhythmic cycles and the types of refrain
appropriate to each genre: beste, a ǧırsemaî, more than one şarkı,
yürüksemaî and perhaps an improvised gazel at some point in the
sequence. The choice of pieces and to some extent their ordering is left
to the performers, who also decide where to modulate to a new makam
by means of a modulatory taksim. Modulation followed by a return to
the original makam also occurs within each composed piece. Each of the
main types of religious ceremonial music in Turkey (ayin, namaz and
zikir) has its own procedures for coordinating a sequence of genres with
a makam progression.
The radif (‘row’) of Persian classical music is a particularly ingenious

device for teaching the art of making connections and transitions
within each modal entity (gushe) and within larger sequences (see Iran,
§II, 3). Students cannot learn the radif in less than a decade. The
distinctive identity of each gushe has several facets: its scope and
importance, its pitch-range and the function of each pitch, in many
cases an optional or obligatory association with a speci c poetic metre,
rhythmic or melodic gures that are appropriate at the beginning or at
a later point in the gushe etc. The distinctive features of individual units
in the Azerbaijani muqam system are similar (and also require a
minimum of ten years' study), although it is not organized into a single
radif.
The most highly determined genre-sequences are the canonical suites

known as the chahār (‘four’) maqām of the Tashkent-Ferghana region,
the Bukharan shash (‘six’) maqām, the alti-yarim (‘six-and-a-half’)
maqām of Khorezm and the on iki (‘twelve’) muqām of the Uighurs in
Xinjiang and adjacent areas of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. The
Bukharan and Khorezmian suites are divided into instrumental and
vocal sections; the seventh Khorezmian suite is only ‘half a maqām’,
since it lacks a vocal section. In each movement of the instrumental
section a short refrain (bāzgu'i) is played in alternation with one or
more variable phrases (khāne), which gradually move to higher
registers. The length of the variable phrases gradually expands in the
rst three movements (tasnif, tarje and gardun), but in the mukhammas
and saqil all phrases have the same length as the refrain. Each
movement has its own characteristic rhythmic cycle (usul). The vocal
section has several ‘branches’, each in a distinctive register and
tonality; the various segments of each branch (sho‘be) are
distinguished by their rhythmic cycles and characteristic melodic
gures. A connecting passage (supāresh) e ects a smooth transition
from one sho‘be to the next.
4. Instruments.
For thousands of years the peoples of Central Asia have participated in
extensive trade between Europe and the Mediterranean and East Asia,
which has included exchange of musical instruments and of ideas about
music (Picken, 1975). While the mouth organ (mushtaq) represented on
the grotto reliefs at Taq-i Bustan, Iran (late 6th century CE), is
evidently based on a Chinese model, the idea of using pegs turned with
keys to adjust the tension of strings may have been transmitted to
China from the West, inasmuch as guration on Chinese tuning keys of
the 2nd century BCE resembles Iranian motifs of the Achaemenid
period (c550–331 BCE).
No exchange had more far-reaching consequences than the eastwards

di usion of Middle Eastern and Central Asian chordophones that
accompanied the spread of Buddhism along the Silk Road in the middle
of the 1st millennium CE. Early Buddhist orchestras of harps, lutes,
utes, cylindrical oboes and drums produced audible representations of
the musical delights of the ‘Western Paradise’. Five of the ten court
orchestras of the Tang dynasty (618–907) bore the names of Central
Asian oases and city-states: Turfan, Kucha, Kashgar, Samarkand and
Bukhara. In turn, the development of multi-movement suites at the
Tang court is likely to have a ected Central Asian conceptions of
musical structure down to the present day.
An idea that seems to have arisen in Central Asia and spread in all
directions is the use of an ensemble including long brass trumpets
(karnā, na r, boru), conical oboes (sornā) and kettledrums (one large
kus and a pair of naqqāra) as an emblem of power. Among the
instruments that have been added to this core group, in Central Asia
and elsewhere, are smaller trumpets or horns, cymbals, bells, jingles
and double-headed drums. The latter are prominent in the ceremonial
music of Hausa and Fulani courts (see Hausa music, §2, and Cameroon,
Republic of, §2, (iv)) and in the Turkish mehter (see Turkey). The
Persian and Central Asian naqqāra-khāne) played at sunrise, sunset and
other times of day, hence the most common names for similar
ensembles in South Asia (Persian nawbat, ‘watch’) and South-east Asia
(nobat). 18th-century European adaptations of the Turkish mehter (see
Janissary music) eliminated one of the most distinctive features, the
long trumpets.
The vertical angular harp (Persian chang), invented c1900 BCE,

remained one of the principal instruments of court ensembles in much
of Central Asia until the 17th century. A major technological
improvement is evident in harps pictured on the Taq-i Bustan reliefs
and in Chinese images of the mid-6th century CE: a short pin or
fulcrum is inserted between the box and the perpendicular rod attached
to a slim tail that descends from the box. We do not know whether this
design, which prevents the instrument collapsing as string tensions are
increased, was invented in China, Iran or some intermediary point.
The vertical angular harp was the only instrument of western Central
Asia whose prestige over a long period of time approximated that of the
various plucked and bowed lutes. The Pahlavi (Middle Persian) terms
for short-necked and long-necked lutes were, respectively, barbat and
tunbur; as a loan-word in Arabic the latter term (pl. tanābīr) came to
denote lyres as well as long-necked lutes. The four silk strings of the
barbat were tuned in 4ths and plucked with a plectrum. It was the
instrument of the great Sassanian musician Bārbad, who richly
exploited its possibilities through his system of seven royal modes and
their derivatives. One of its descendants, the ‘ud, played the same role
in Arabic music theory that the monochord was to assume in the Latin
West. The pipa, likewise derived from the barbat or from its prototype,
was employed by Sujīva (
570), a musician from Kucha, in demonstrating to Chinese musicians

a system of seven heptatonic ‘Western’ modes that evidently had
Sanskrit names.
al- Fārābī, who was born in Transoxania but spent most of his life in
Baghdad and Aleppo, famously described the fretting of two types of
tunbur: those of Baghdad and of Khorasan, each with two strings (see
Arab music, §I, 3, (ii)). He noted but did not analyse regional variation
in the size and shape of the Khorasani tunbur, which was also played in
Transoxania. Its successor, the dutār, is no less subject to
morphological variation in the vast region between Khorasan and
Xinjiang; the length of its vibrating strings, for example, ranges from
60 to 105 cm. A fuller list of pertinent variables in the construction of
long-necked lutes and other chordophones can be extracted from three
treatises of ‘Abd al-Qāder Marāghi (d 1435): the shape of the sound
cavity and its size relative to the length of the neck; the material used
for the soundtable (wood or skin) and strings (silk, gut or brass); the
number, relative thickness and tuning of the strings; where pertinent,
the arrangement of strings in double or triple courses; the presence of
frets, drone or sympathetic strings; and so on.
The concept of bowing is generally thought to have originated in

Central Asia and to have spread rapidly throughout the Muslim world
and the Byzantine empire, where it is widely attested by the 10th
century (see Bow, §I, 1,). Al-Fārābi provides the earliest account of the
bowed rabāb, which in his view was well suited to accompanying the
tunbur of Khorasan. Similar pairings of plucked and bowed lutes in
current use include the Turkmen duo of dutār and gijak (spike ddle)
and the standard trio of Azerbaijani classical music, consisting of
Caucasian tār, kemānche (spike ddle) and a singer who also plays the
def(frame drum). Marāghi discussed two types of tanbur that were
normally plucked but might also be bowed, and this is still the case with
the ‘great tanbur’ of Turkish art music, the Tajik-Uzbek tanbur(the
bowed version of which is called sato, from Persian setār, ‘three
strings’) and the larger Uighur tanbur (the bowed version of which is
likewise satar).
Tanbur and its derivatives (e.g. dömbra, dambura) are still the most
common names for Central Asian long-necked lutes. One playing
technique, used for the tanbur of the Ahl-e Haqq order (see Iran, §II, 2),
the dutār, the Kazakh dömbra, the Kyrgyz komuz and the dambura of
northern Afghanistan, is for one or more ngers to strike the strings in
a continuous series of down-and-up motions. Otherwise the strings are
plucked with the nail of the index nger, with a plectrum attached to
the index nger or with a plectrum held between thumb and index
nger. The technique of striking two or three strings with several
ngers is well suited to the polyphonic styles preferred by most Turkic
peoples. Long-necked lutes on which the strings are plucked
individually are e ectively used in teaching Turkic and Iranian
maqāmsystems. A notation showing each plucked note on the
Khorezmian tanbur was developed in the mid-19th century after
unsuccessful attempts at notating the strokes of the more prestigious
dutār. The tanbur is also the central instrument of the Bukharan
shashmaqām, and in Turkey the ‘great tanbur’, with up to 48 movable
frets on its very long neck, enjoys a more prominent position in art
music than does the short-necked, unfretted ‘ud. Two long-necked
plucked lutes, the setār and tār, are the main instruments used in
teaching the Persian radif.
Various forms of the Turkic word qopuz and its Mongolian cognate
khugur or khuur have been applied to both plucked and bowed lutes;
with or without a modi er (e.g. Kyrgyz temir komuz, ‘iron komuz’;
Mongol tömör khuur, ‘iron khuur’) they may also refer to jew's harps.
According to Marāghi, the qopuz of the Oghuz ozan had a skin
soundtable over half the surface of its elongated cavity, and its three
strings were plucked with a wooden plectrum. The bowed qobïz of the
Kazakhs and Karakalpaks, like the Kyrgyz kiak, has two horsehair
strings and is associated with shamanism; the lower portion of its
ladle-shaped body is covered with a camelskin soundtable. The qobïz
may have served as the prototype for the double-chested ddle known
in Baluchestan and southern Afghanistan as qeychek, sorud or sārindā
and in north India by other names as well. On all ddles of this large
family, the ngerboard extends down the middle of the upper and
wider cavity, which is open; only the lower cavity is covered with a skin
soundtable. Like the qobïz, the Baluchi instrument is essential to the
performance of healing ceremonies.
One type of double-chested plucked lute, the rubāb of Afghanistan and

Tajikistan, is rst described in the 14th-century Persian treatise Kanz
al-tuhaf. A wooden lid covers the narrower upper cavity and is extended
to become the ngerboard of the short, hollow neck; the wider lower
chamber is covered with a goatskin membrane. The most re ned
design among double-chested lutes is that of the Iranian tār and its
Azerbaijani cousin, which are usually carved from a single block of
mulberry wood so that the narrow end of the smaller upper chamber
meets the narrow end of the larger lower chamber in an elongated
gure eight. A skin soundtable covers both surfaces, and the
ngerboard of the long neck is covered with bone.
Assessing the relative faults and merits of instruments is a well-

established literary topos, not least in the munāzere(poetic dispute). In a
15th-century Chaghatay example by the poet Ahmadi, seven
chordophones (including the Mongolian half-tube zither yatugan and
the Hindustani stick zither kingra) boast in turn of their expressive
capacities and adaptability to various milieux, only to be mocked by the
tanbur, which in the end is obliged to apologise for its malicious
remarks but does not retract the claim that its own ‘lamenting’ sound
can melt stone. Six instruments of festivity (bazm) are interrogated by
the poet in a munāzere by Fuzuli (1498–1556), who concludes by
advising musicians not to trust instruments. All the same, this
particular group of six (tanbur, ‘ud, chang, qānun, ney and def) would
have formed an ensemble in which each mode of sound production was
distinctly audible. This sound-ideal has remained in uential. An
opposing sound-ideal favouring more complex sounds, the
components of which are not easily distinguished, is evident in certain
uses of aerophones and in the construction of chordophones with
numerous drone strings and sympathetic strings (a process that was
well under way in the 15th century). Production of complex vocal
sounds, rich in upper partials, is also highly valued in certain
specialized roles. Al-Fārābi's 10th-century list of contrasting sound-
qualities included ‘clarity’ (safā‘) vs. ‘muddiness’ (kudra) and
‘smoothness’ (malāsa) vs. ‘coarseness’ (khushūna); the vocabulary of
the Turkmen bakhshi is particularly rich in terms for di erent types of
vocal production that are neither ‘clear’ nor ‘smooth’.
Players of end-blown utes often hum a fundamental tone beneath the

melody, sometimes shifting to a new fundamental during a
performance. By overblowing, some players of the Turkish kaval
simultaneously sound the 2nd and (less often) the 3rd partials with the
fundamental. The two chanters of the Turkish tulum (bagpipe) allow for
various combinations of two melodies within a range of a 4th to a 6th.
The double clarinets of Turkey (çifte), Kurdistan (duzele), south-
western Iran (ney-jofti), north-western Iran (qoshme) and Uzbekistan
(qoshnay) are often tuned slightly o unison, so as to produce beats;
one of the pipes may be used to sound a drone above or below the
principal melody. In Azerbaijan (and to a lesser extent in Turkey) both
the conical oboe zurna and the cylindrical oboe bālābān (mey in Turkey)
are commonly played in pairs, one performer (dam-kesh) providing a
supporting drone for the usta (‘master’).
Drums are virtually absent from Kyrgyz, Kazakh and Turkmen musical
cultures. Elsewhere no instrument is more widely played by women
than the frame drum, which often has a central role in life-cycle
ceremonies. Manufacture and sale of frame drums is one of the main
economic activities of certain marginal groups of itinerants, such as the

Ghorbat of Afghanistan. Musical patterns played on frame drums
exploit the contrast between sounds produced by striking the centre
and the rim. Some open goblet-shaped drums take their name from the
fundamental opposition of centre and rim sounds (e.g. Turkish
dümbelek, Persian tombak). Double-headed drums (Turkish davul,
Persian dohol (see illustration)) are invariably constructed and played
in order to obtain a distinctive sound (or sounds) from each surface. A
pair of kettledrums can be tuned to produce two di erent pitches (see
Naqqāra).
Sorna and dohol players, Shustar, Iran, 1973
Veronica Doubleday
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Artistic Improvisation)’, Kongress antropologicheskikh i
etnogra cheskikh nauk VII: Moscow 1964, 6, 234–41
C. Rihtman and others: ‘Traditional Recitation Forms of the Epic

Chants’,
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(Cambridge,1969)
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Instruments
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(1962), 242–8
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(1969), 74–122
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of Western Asiatic Antiquities, British Museum (London, 1969)
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itinérant ‘jat’ (Paris, 1982)
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(1995–6), 233–75
Recordings
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Turkestan chinois/Xinjiang: musique ouïghoures, coll. S. Trebinjac and J.

During, Ocora C559092–93 (1990)
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Folkways SF 40050 (1991)
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22 (1991)
Asie Centrale: les maîtres du dotâr, coll. J. During, AIMP 26 (1993)
Asie Centrale: traditions classiques, rec. 1990–93, Ocora C560035–36

(1993)
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40432 (1993)
Tajik Music of Badakhshan, coll. J. During, Auvidis D 8212 (1993)
Turkmen Epic Singing: Köroglu, coll. S. Žerańska-Kominek, Auvidis D

8213 (1994)
Turkmenistan: chants des femmes bakhshi, Inedit W 260064 (1995)
Uzbekistan: Music of Khorezm, coll. O. Matyakubov and T. Levin, Auvidis

D 8269 (1996)
The Ilyas Malayev Ensemble: at the Bazaar of Love, Shanachie 64081

(1997) [Maqām Buzruk]
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In the 20th century, e orts to develop musical cultures have produced

conduct eldwork. Con icts in the agendas of musicians, scholars and

Nationalist projects have included the establishment of conservatories

The ideology of the founders of the Turkish Republic (established 1923)

Whereas the o cially sanctioned halk idiom of Turkey was de ned to

singers to improvise within a speci ed muqam to the fully notated

Improvisation has also retained its central importance in what is now

A major source of controversy in research conducted within the USSR

Studies of sung poetry in Soviet Central Asia were also hampered by

of too many dervish songs that prevented the publication of Belyayev's

As in Turkey, the construction of cultural heritages in Soviet Central

Before they were transformed into ‘traditions’, the performing arts of

Acknowledgment of the power of music as a medium of communication

person): the philosopher, doctor, astrologer, singer, poet, calligrapher

Gatherings of various kinds continue to be structured around the

Amateur music-making at informal gatherings may attain the very

in a dream) and in the antiquity of their repertory. In the tales of the

Sequences of strophes are often detached from their narratives and

The Kyrgyz manaschi di ers from all descendants of the ozan in

In both Kyrgyz and Kazakh, aqïn is an honori c term for a professional

The full range of specialized performance roles in Central Asia allows

In most regions marriages provide the main occasions for women's

The intricate relationships between gender and musicality in Central

3. Structure and genre.

Conceptions of narratives, modes or modal systems with two or more

one master's knowledge within a larger whole or to codify a set of

An itinerary adopted for all or part of a performance is sometimes

A roster of di erent ‘ways’ may amount to an inventory of

Be rāh-e torkī mānā ke khūb-tar gū'ī

To she‘r-e torkī bar-khwān marā o she‘r-e ghuzī.

sing [or declaim] for me verses in both Turki and Ghuzzi’.)

From the 11th century onwards, theoretical writings in Persian posit

relatively xed melody, particularly an instrumental composition (as in

The identity of a maqām depends on how its contrasting tonal registers

A musician’s verbal description of one maqām may point simply to

No variable is more signi cant than the coordination of melodic

Singers of mavrigi have several options with respect to selection and

have sustained through several asymmetrical phrases sung or played

If a minimal ‘suite’ moves only once from parlando rubato to tempo

As these examples indicate, the performance information conveyed by

The radif (‘row’) of Persian classical music is a particularly ingenious

The most highly determined genre-sequences are the canonical suites

No exchange had more far-reaching consequences than the eastwards

The vertical angular harp (Persian chang), invented c1900 BCE,

570), a musician from Kucha, in demonstrating to Chinese musicians

The concept of bowing is generally thought to have originated in

One type of double-chested plucked lute, the rubāb of Afghanistan and

Assessing the relative faults and merits of instruments is a well-

Players of end-blown utes often hum a fundamental tone beneath the

economic activities of certain marginal groups of itinerants, such as the

Sorna and dohol players, Shustar, Iran, 1973

MGG2 (‘Zentralasien’; J. During, R. Suttanova, A. Djumaev)

W. Lentz: Pamir-Dialekte (Göttingen, 1933)

S. Poladian: Armenian Folk Songs (Berkeley, 1942)

F. Arsunar: ‘Kisázsiai török pentaton dallamok’ [Pentatonic melodies

U. Hajibeyov: Osnovï azerbayzhanskoy narodnoy muzïki [The foundations

L. Picken: ‘Instrumental Polyphonic Folk Music in Asia Minor’,

PRMA, 80 (1953–4), 73–86

K. Reinhard: ‘Ein türkischer Tanzlied-Typ und seine aussertürkischen

V.M. Belyayev: Ocherki po istorii muzïki narodov SSSR [Essays on the

P.N. Boratav, ed.: Philologiae turcicae fundamenta, 2 (Wiesbaden, 1964)