Turkmen Music Loses Out to Hip-Hop

Sitting cross-legged on a carpet, Araz Baghshi strikes up the first notes in a mournful song about love on a “dutar” or traditional Turkmen lute.

Araz, 62, who recently gave what he said would be his final public concert, is regarded as one of the last remaining classical singers of the ethnic Turkmen of Afghanistan.

“I am not optimistic about the future of this music in Afghanistan,” he said.

Araz, whose title “baghshi” denotes a solo singer, belongs to the high-art Turkmen classical tradition rather than the folk music of the villages.

“The classical songs performed by baghshis always held an important place in Turkmen culture,” he explained. “Performances by baghshis were an especially important part of wedding parties, where they used to sing late into the night.”

Serdar Antep, a music professor at Bilkent University in the Turkish capital Ankara, is an expert on Central Asian music who fears that the Turkmen classical style and the oral tradition it preserves are under threat.

Professor Antep says very little is known about the musical forms of the Turkmen of Afghanistan, Iran, and Turkmenistan.

Most of the Turkmen minority in Afghanistan belong to the Ersari tribe and inhabit a thin strip of territory running nearly the entire length of the north of the country, from Herat in the west to Kataghan in the north-east. They live a rural farming life, while smaller numbers reside in the capital Kabul, where they work in the carpet trade, which is dominated by the famous red-coloured Turkmen rugs.

These days, there are very few professional baghshis and top-notch players of the dutar. Where musicians exist, they are generally rural folksingers or flute players, while women are restricted to the tambourine and jew’s harp – and they can be seen playing and dancing only in the special all-female area at a wedding party.

The cultural disruption of the last two decades, in which many Turkmen left their homes in northern Afghanistan to live as refugees in Pakistan, was compounded by the imposition of Taleban rule in this region in 1998. The Islamic movement proscribed most art forms, including the secular tradition of the baghshi.

But Araz Baghshi argues that Turkmen music is now in worse shape than it was in the Taleban years, when at least there was a covert demand for it.

“Today’s younger generation think it’s a sign of backwardness to listen to classical Turkmen music, and such views have meant baghshis have been replaced at weddings by pop singers who can’t even sing in the Turkmen language properly,” he said.

Pop and rock music, and even hip-hop, are increasingly popular and are displacing the older styles.

Kabul-based social worker and Turkmen language expert Parween Tahir says such modern influences are unavoidable. But she believes increased cultural contacts with Turkmen communities abroad could help revitalise the old forms.

However, Muhammad Mousa, a former baghshi now living in Turkey, blames Turkmen community leaders in Afghanistan for failing to support an indigenous art form whose professional performers found it hard to survive the years of war and poverty.

And he holds out little hope that help will come from abroad. “The young Turkmen generation in Pakistan and Iran are especially far removed from our musical culture, since they’ve grown up under the influence of many other entirely different cultures such as Punjabi and Indian,” he said.

Inside the country, Turkmen singing styles have been modified by the influence of the more numerous Uzbeks, who speak a related Turkic language but have their own musical forms.

That influence was dictated by the harsh politics of the time, argues Abdul Nabi, who runs a music shop in the Kunduz region.

“During the two decades of mujahedin struggle against central government, Turkmen [militia] commanders always served in a low-ranking capacity under the leadership of Uzbek and Tajik commanders,” he explained.

“This fact automatically led them to choose Uzbek-style songs at their late-night musical parties, which were attended by their Uzbek and Tajik bosses. Since these dancing parties were the only form of entertainment for the military, this [style] was soon transmitted to the whole Turkmen community via these young soldiers.”

Even Ahmed Baghshi, who died in 1995 and is regarded as perhaps the pre-eminent baghshi of the late 20th century, is said to have adopted a more Uzbek style in his latter years.

Mousa Baghshi says it made sense for singers to change their style both to earn more money and to please the Uzbek warlords who called the tune in every sense.

There are some signs of interest in keeping the music alive. Apart from Araz, at least two other recognised master musicians give performances, Hemra Baghshi and Server Baghshi. And after decades of silence, at last some of their music is being broadcast on the Turkmen-language service of Radio Kabul.

In his Kunduz shop, Abdul Nabi is busy converting aging tape recordings into digital-format CDs. But apart from such private projects, there are no efforts to carry out more comprehensive archiving to prevent old recordings deteriorating and being lost forever.

As Professor Antep said, “There is no proper institution teaching and promoting musical culture in northern Afghanistan. There are just a few individuals trying to keep it alive, entirely on their own.”

Published in Institute for war and peace reporting [London-UK]