DUSHANBE, September 21, Asia-Plus — Seventeen musicians from Central Asia will share their mastery of traditions at once ancient and contemporary in an 11-city North American tour beginning on October 12, press release issued by the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) said.
The tour, “Spiritual Sounds of Central Asia: Nomads, Mystics, and Troubadours,” will provide North American audiences with a rare opportunity to hear music from Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Qaraqalpakstan (an autonomous region in Uzbekistan). Concerts will feature a panoramic range of vocal and instrumental music that showcases some of Central Asia’s finest performers.
The artists will include the legendary Azerbaijani vocalist Alim Qasimov, whom the French newspaper Le Monde hailed as “one of the most beautiful voices of our era,” and his daughter Fargana; Bardic Divas, four women from Kazakhstan and Qaraqalpakstan who demonstrate the power and beauty of the female voice; and the Badakhshan Ensemble from Tajikistan, which performs trance-inducing mystical songs from the majestic Pamir Mountains of Tajikistan and Afghanistan.
The concerts will include introductory documentary films about the featured musicians; supertitles with translations of song lyrics; and live, large-screen video close-ups. In addition, the tour will include children’s programs, university lectures and residencies, pre-concert discussions and museum presentations.
The 2007 tour is a groundbreaking collaboration between two major institutions: the Aga Khan Music Initiative in Central Asia (AKMICA), and the New York-based World Music Institute (WMI). AKMICA, a program of the Geneva-based Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC), aims to preserve and nurture the indigenous musical traditions of Central Asia, and to ensure the transmission of the region’s musical heritage to new generations of artists and audiences. WMI, a renowned performing arts presenter, is dedicated to presenting the finest traditional music and dance from around the world.
In the southeast of Tajikistan, local traditions of devotional song, mystical music, and dance have flourished among mountain-dwelling Pamiri peoples. Together with Badakhshan’s rugged geography, these practices have nourished the preservation of many aspects of traditional culture. The members of the Badakhshan Ensemble live in and around Khorog, where they earn their livelihood as professional musicians. Their repertory includes maddah – devotional songs that can embody the spiritual power known as baraka, laments with spare instrumental accompaniment called falak, and traditional popular songs, called khalqi.
AKMICA was founded in 2000 by His Highness the Aga Khan. Notable AKMICA projects range from a collaboration with celebrated cellist Yo-Yo Ma”s Silk Road Project to an ongoing partnership with the Smithsonian Institution for the production of “Music of Central Asia,” a 10-volume CD-DVD series released on the Smithsonian Folkways label. Three new CD+DVD collections, to be issued in October, will feature touring artists Alim and Fargana Qasimov, the Bardic Divas, and the Badakhshan Ensemble.
WMI is regarded as the US’s premier presenter of traditional music and dance from around the world. Since its founding in 1985, WMI has built the most comprehensive concerts series of world music and dance in the United States. In addition to presenting more than 60 concerts in New York each season, WMI organizes tours throughout North America. Tour highlights include Pakistan’s qawwali master Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Masters of Persian Music, and Gypsy Caravan.
