Sunday Feature: Searching for the Songs of Bukhara

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Searching for the Songs of Bukhara

BBC Radio 3 - Sunday Feature, Searching for the Songs of Bukhara

A musical journey into the ancient court music of Central Asia.

Monica Whitlock goes in search of the court music of Bukhara, now in modern Uzbekistan but once the capital of a multicultural emirate.

Bukhara, one of the holy cities of Islam, is now in modern Uzbekistan. Until the coming of Soviet power in the early 20th century Bukhara was the capital of a multicultural emirate stretching across much of Central Asia. Bukhara had its own court music, called Shashmaqam, many centuries old, in which instrumental music and classical poetry are woven together into six modes, or cycles.

What has happened to Shashmaqam over the last century? How was it changed by Soviet rule and how can we understand it today? We meet musicians present and past to find out - from the wonderful young singer Mehriniso Samiyeva just starting out in her career in Shashmaqam to Ari Babakhanov, aged 90, ‘the last keeper of Shashmaqam’.

Ari’s grandfather Levi was the favourite musician of the last Amir of Bukhara. We can still hear him today thanks to an amazing set of records kept safe in the EMI archive in London, as revealed by audio archivist Will Prentice who plans to release the recordings later in 2024.

The story of Shashmaqam is a musical journey into and through a part of the world increasingly visited but ever more underreported.

With musicologists Razia Sultanova and Alexander Djumayev; musicians Ari Babakhanov, Tolibjon Temirov and Mehriniso Samieva,  Master craftsman Anvar Zufarov, EMI archive trustee Will Prentice and Erkin Makhmudov, son of People's Artist of Uzbekistan, Berta Davidova.

Produced and presented by Monica Whitlock

With specia  thanks to Zilola Saidov and the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

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