Starting With Music: Central Asia between Tribal Society and Post Modernism
May 16, 2007

On the 16th of May, Professor Modjtaba Sadria led a research seminar, Starting with Music: Central Asia between Tribal Society and Post-Modernism at the Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations (AKU-ISMC).

Sadria described his involvement with the Aga Khan Music Initiative in Central Asia (AKMICA) which is part of the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN). AKMICA is a project that was established by His Highness the Aga Khan in 2000 with the aim of assisting in the preservation of Central Asia's musical heritage by ensuring its transmission to a new generation of artists and audiences, both inside the region and beyond its borders. 

Sadria spoke of his past involvement in Central Asia, when he travelled throughout the region on foot in 1991 to measure the impact of the Soviet Union on rural areas of the region.

Sadria explained the history of the Soviet Union's policy in Central Asia and the three-fold fear with which the Communist Party approached the region. "One was political, another was religious-cultural, and the third was class." These three elements made Central Asia the enemy in the eyes of the Soviet Union. "Central Asia has constantly been a place to be watched, occupied, controlled and frozen.  The primary goal was to freeze Central Asian cultures inside an academic field or as folklore, and prevent them from having vivid tradition, and instead transform those cultures into traditionalism and folk studies."

Apart from cultural homogenisation, the Soviet Union conducted large population transplants in an attempt to dilute the potency of Central Asia. "The biggest population transplant was Kazakhstan where we had at the end of the Soviet Union  42% of the population transplanted from outside Kazakhstan, mostly Russians, but also Germans who where a threat on the western front of the empire ... and Ukrainians, Poles etc. Important parts of those populations remain today."

The purpose of these policies, therefore, was to freeze the culture and inner dynamic of the Central Asian states.  Sadria explained his belief that the inner dynamic of a culture is best represented by its capacity to respond to change needed by society to create new traditions.

"Invention of tradition becomes the core indicator of seeing the vivacity or livelihood of a culture.  But the Soviet Union prevented this from happening in Central Asia, because of the three fears mentioned earlier."

These same fears were behind the Soviet Union's rapid and forceful urban modernisation programme in Central Asia, where cities existed or even where they didn't. "You had 70 metre wide boulevards where there weren't any cars ... But the boulevards had to be there with monumental buildings around them, as an indication of authority."

From the perspective of Soviet policy, this transformation had an ultimate goal, which was the creation of the 'Soviet man' - a man, according to Soviet literature, who is liberated from his past and has no spiritual, intellectual or physical difference from other people within the state. The creation of this new man involved the use of a formal education system to uniformise the kind of literature that people had access to, and the kind of music they listen to.  Therefore, this process implied that music literacy in the Central Asia of the Soviet era was based solely on Western musical traditions.

Despite the forcefulness and strength of its programmes, the Soviet Union did not succeed in freezing Central Asian cultures and homogenising their people. Sadria explained that the reason why these policies failed was that the historical capacities of its adversaries were bigger and more deeply rooted.  Testament to this is the 'tribal societies' (sub-altern cultures) that co-existed and still exist today, and which continue to aspire to create new traditions.

Last year, in a team composed of AKMICA Director Fairouz Nishanova, Senior Project Consultant Theodore Levin and Academic Assistant Hiroshi Ishiwata, Sadria went on a research and study tour of the schools supported by AKDN.  He shared his thoughts on the 'Shagerd-Ustad' (master and student) relationship that is now growing as a pedagogical model throughout the region. 'Ustad-Shagerd', or 'tutor-student' is a teaching method whereby great masters, referred to as "living treasures", transmit poetry and music and are legends for the new generations.

Sadria visited some of the most important of 30 music schools that the AKDN has either created or rejuvenated and explained how each school has different pedagogical priorities, which in itself creates an interesting dynamic. Many students who go to the schools know western classical music and use that knowledge to bring back what has been forgotten, in that they use their knowledge to restore instruments that were lost in during the Soviet era and then generate new traditions.

Sadria described the interesting ambiguity that exists in these schools - that they are not ideological yet have appropriated contemporary methods of teaching music and have indigenised them to create new culture.

The best artists from the schools are involved in an orchestra which goes abroad and meets critics and musicians in other cultural contexts, thereby being involved in active cross-cultural dialogue in musical fields.  Sadria continued to explain the hybridity of these musicians, noting that through their exposure to the contemporary world they are able to become, if they must, part of a new cultural heritage.

Sadria explained the impact of the programme on the political economy, noting that the income level of musicians has increased, making them a role model for other musicians and artists and changing their social status.  He added that musicians now conceive of themselves as being part of the global community because of the interest that AKMICA has helped generate among international audiences.

Although the policies of the Soviet Union removed the vigour from urban intellectual life in Central Asia, a hybrid culture has emerged in rural areas that has the possibility to continue to grow unique cultural sensibilities and which is objectively able to consider itself as music of the 21st century.

External Links

Professor Modjtaba Sadria's Profile