Ah, spring! oh wait, nevermind....

Just a quick post to highlight the capricious nature of springtime weather in Almaty:

This photo was taken two days ago, with the sun shining and tulips blooming -- sure signs of spring, right?
















Ok, this one was taken today, after an unexpected morning snow shower - the temperature was easily below freezing all day (brr, guess I'll be getting the winter coat back out...). Argh, this happened last time I was here - just when you think winter's been over for a month, it comes back and bites ya. And wouldn't you know it, the heating in my apartment building was shut off two weeks ago!

Meeting with a master

Yesterday was kind of an adventure - I went to see a "master" maker of kyl-kobyz, Tolegen-agha*, who was referred to me by an instructor at the Conservatory as "the best." Many of the most accomplished kobyz performers in Kazakshtan use his instruments, including my teacher Raushan and my friend Akerke.

However, finding this guy was a bit of a challenge - he lives in a little collection of houses located in the mountains right outside Almaty. The place is called "Sheber Aul" (Village of Masters), because when it was founded it used to be home to many different artists and craftspeople. Now it's kind of fallen into disarray, although some people still continue their work. I took a bus to a distant micro-region of Almaty, and then was instructed to catch another bus to Sheber Aul. But after waiting and looking around for this bus for about half an hour and asking several people who had never heard of Sheber Aul, I was about to give up. I called Tolegen-agha and told him that maybe I could try again the next day, but he said "No, no, I'll pick you up!" He drove down the mountain, met me at the bus stop, and we headed to Sheber Aul.

We sat and talked in his apartment for over an hour - his mother was there too, pouring tea for us and occasionally adding comments to Tolegen's answers to my questions. Unfortunately, he didn't want me to record him talking, and he wouldn't allow any pictures taken of him - so I just took a few photos of his work. He didn't have any finished instruments on hand, but he showed me five kobyz-in-progress that he had finished carving, made of either pine (lighter color) or elm (darker, and apparently the best wood for this purpose). They have to dry for several months, during which time, he said, some of them develop cracks -- these would end up as "souvenirs," he said, but couldn't be professional instruments due to the flaw in the wood. Of course, the souvenirs bring in significantly less income than the professional instruments. Out of the five he showed me, only two of them were in good enough shape to become "professional" -- imagine putting in all that work, only to find after out much later that all your effort will only bring in a fraction of what you were hoping for! (Come to think of it, actually, I guess the same could be said for grad school. Hmm....)

Tolegen-agha is very into the spiritual aspects of kobyz making. He said that soon after he starting trying to make instruments, he had a dream in which his ancestors showed him how to do it properly, and he complained about modern man's separation from nature. In his opinion, the kobyz the the most "ecological" of Kazakh instruments because it's the only one that's still made out of all natural materials - a hollowed-out block of wood, horse hair, leather, and sometimes metal pieces for decoration. He also complained about lack of government support for artists such as himself, which is really too bad because even though everyone seems to agree that he's extremely talented, he only sells an average of five instruments per year (they are apparently at the top of the price range for kyl-kobyz due to their high quality), which doesn't amount to much more than a living wage.

After our long chat, Tolegen-agha kindly drove me to the bus stop at Sheber Aul (the bus I wasn't able to find earlier was fortunately waiting at the entrance to the village). On the bus ride down the mountain, I saw lots of cherry trees in full bloom and a beautiful mist over the hilltops where the snow still hasn't melted. Hard to believe that a place like this sits just a fifteen minute drive outside the smoggy, car-choked streets of central Almaty...!

* agha - means "uncle" or "older brother" but is used among Kazakh-speakers to show respect

Time flies....

Wow, two weeks flies by fast when you're trying to get your fieldwork done in record time...!

A lot has been going on, so I'll try to just sum up a few of them here:

1. I went with a friend to the State Republican Uyghur Theater of Musical Comedy (love the names of these places, don't you?) to see a show in celebration of Nauryz. The show started with a song by a Kazakh folk singer, which I thought could be interpreted either as a sign of "international friendship" or as symbolic of Kazakh cultural predominance ("okay, do your show, but only after we do our song."). The show was great - I love Uyghur music - although it was tough to take photos in the dark theater (sorry if this one's blurry). There was a man sitting right behind us who was really excited that a couple of non-Uyghurs (and foreigners, no less!) were attending the show - he provided a running commentary and pointed out the director of the Theater to me. He also recruited us to give a sound-bite for several local Uyghur community news programs and newspapers! So after the show, my friend and I basically got passed around to all these journalists who asked us to "say something." What do you say??? I just made some blithe statement about how it's important for Uyghur traditions to continue and how important the theater was in this regard, blah blah blah....I never saw myself on the news, but when I went back to talk to the theater director the next week, he definitely remembered me. Score!

2. I've started giving English lessons to a very prominent figure in the music industry here - the owner of one of Kazakhstan's biggest music labels and distributors. Another score! Well, maybe not yet, but I'm hoping that it will yield some good contacts further down the road. For now, I'm learning a lot about business and anti-piracy efforts in Kazakhstan (and getting paid for it!).

3. I've been doing an average of two interviews per week for the past three weeks -- so far I've spoken to three kobyz players, one pop star, one musicologist, and one student ensemble that's doing some really interesting new music. I should be happy with this, but the pressure is seriously on at this point to talk to ask many people as possible in a fairly short amount of time!
Another musicologist that I spoke to asked me to translate a couple of articles for her, and I'm still struggling over whether or not I should do this - on one hand, it's good to give back and I would like to establish a good rapport with her; but on the other hand, it's A LOT of work that I really don't have time for (plus, she should really find a PAID professional to do this kind of thing).

4. The Olympic torch came through town on April 2 - Almaty was the first stop on the torch tour after being lit in Athens, Greece. The city officials basically went apeshit in trying to spruce things up for the arrival of the torch -- and the throngs of Chinese journalists. A lot of things suddenly appeared, like lane and crosswalk lines on the main roads (but only those roads that were part of the torch route!), country and city flags on the lamp posts, old bus stops mysteriously being dismantled and replaced with snazzy new ones... I couldn't resist checking it out, so I hung out at a main intersection where lots of other people were waiting, and got to see the torch passed from one runner (actually walker) to another. It was so fun that I walked to another point on the torch route and got to see it passed again. :) People got really excited when the torch passed by - even though a large portion of the crowd were students at the state universities who were REQUIRED to be there! Anyway, there was a nice ceremony and concert in the Old Square where the "ethno-pop" band Ulytau performed (they're one of the groups I'd really like to talk to for my research).

5. Lots of concerts this week, mainly due to the 3rd annual "Nauryz 21" festival of new music at the Conservatory. Last night a chamber orchestra from Uzbekistan performed the original soundtrack to Charlie Chaplin's film "City Lights." The film was shown on a big screen behind the orchestra - it was great! Everyone, not only the foreigners, really enjoyed it. (Chaplin's pretty well-known here because many of the older generation watched his films during Soviet times.)

6. One small last thing: My refrigerator's been breaking down about three times per day/night for the past week, and I finally asked my landlady to replace it - they're supposed to be delivering the new one today, hurray!

Nauryz Kutti Bolsin! (Happy Nauryz!)

Today was the celebration of Nauryz, locally referred to as "Kazakh New Year" but actually having roots in the Persian/Zoroastrian celebration of spring. Usually this holiday entails a big public event in Almaty, and today they had a day-long concert in the "Old Square" where the parliament building used to be. At noon they did an interesting show all about the various animals in the Asian zodiac (see my post about Asian New Year) - they explained the significance of each animal, then someone (an actual or aspiring pop star) sang a song in their honor.

I wandered around for a while taking in the semi-organized chaos. Lots of people were selling food, toys, and Muslim artifacts (prayer beads, Korans, etc.). Others were selling the traditional holiday soup Nauryz-kozhe -- supposedly it should contain seven ingredients (this refers back to the Persian Noruz tradition of placing seven items on a table, each representative of new life). Unfortunately, though, it tastes pretty nasty. And even worse is the fact that many of these vendors re-use the bowls and spoons used for serving the kozhe without washing them (or only quickly rinsing them in questionable water).

A couple American friends and I walked around the Old Square checking out the scene, watching a little bit of the main stage show, then went around to the back of the square, where there were several traditional Kazakh felt houses (yurts, in Kazakh "kiez ui") where apparently the mayor of Almaty was hosting a day-long feast for the day's performers and other notable guests. Almost by accident, I saw Akerke's friend Sabir, who works in the mayor's office in the department of culture - he was working as a sort of guard/logistical support guy for the day. He told me that Akerke was there, because she had played for the mayor earlier, and invited me into one of the yurts!
I ended up spending about an hour just talking with the people there, including several British journalists who were covering the day's events. I gave one of them a crash-course in Kazakh music history (hopefully she will credit me!!) and sat in on some of the photo opps. Woo hoo! Oh, and of course was served a huge bowl of Naruyz-kozhe... I tried to be polite and eat a few bites, but was conveniently distracted by the various conversations going on.

So, with Nauryz now over and done with I guess it's officially spring here in Almaty - the weather's growing steadily warmer and I'm starting to pine for the cool mountain air...

Museum or museum-ization?

Today I headed to the National Museum of Musical Instruments to see what the staff there might be able to tell me about the kyl-kobyz. I'd been to this museum a number of times, but never with any real goal in mind. The place is always empty and the guy who usually does the guided tours (the director of the museum) is kind of obnoxious and always trying to sell you his CDs. So I went in expecting the worst, but was pleasantly surprised to find a nice, young lady working in his place - who turned out to be the director's niece. When I told her that I was interested in the kobyz, she told me that she actually plays kobyz and is herself a graduate of the National Conservatory.

She showed me around the entire museum (which is actually quite small, and housed inside an historic building from the 1800s) and gave me the neat, scripted explanation of each instrument and its function. I noticed that when I asked specific questions, she just kind of vaguely responded and then continued with her well-rehearsed speech.

After the guided tour, she asked if I'd like a demonstration of the kobyz. I of course said yes, so she took me to her office and played a series of pieces on two different instruments: the kyl-kobyz, and the modernized prima-kobyz (which was created during Soviet times for use in folk orchestras).

A note on museums: there are studies in ethnomusicology that look at the "museum-ization" of culture. Basically it means that when elements from a musical culture are placed in museums, it separates them from actual living tradition - thereby sealing them into a kind of permanent past and rendering them more as symbolic icons than something actually relevant to the culture. I think that this museum is a perfect example of this phenomenon - but that's not all: I also suspect that a number of instruments in this museum are based either partially or totally on dubious historical and/or archaeological sources -- in other words, made up. But, of course, no one can really say for sure, since there are no written records of Kazakh culture that go further back than the 1800s.
So, I guess if the folks at the Museum of Musical Instruments say that these are ancient Kazakh instruments, who am I really to argue?

Oh, a funny ending to the kobyz demo -- when she was done playing, the director's niece took out a bag and asked if I'd be interested in buying one of her uncle's CDs. He's got quite a racket operating out of that little museum...!

We made the top ten!

Ah, but unfortunately not for anything good... The Mercer Health and Sanitation Report recently released its list of the dirtiest cities on the planet -- they looked at 215 of the most populous cities, and rated them according to water supplies, air pollution, garbage management, etc. And guess what -- surprise, surprise, Almaty is NUMBER NINE. We are officially the 9th dirtiest city in the entire world.

This fact was made all-too-clear to me today when my friend and I tried to jog at a local stadium -- the air was so smoky and the haziness almost completely obscured the view of mountains and the Almaty TV tower. It's not usually so bad, but there's no denying that the air here is horrible. In a way it's like LA, I guess, but at least twenty times worse...

So I guess this means that above-average respiratory health isn't in my distant future. O well! All in the name of research and the pursuit of truth through music, right....?

For a nice explanatory slideshow of the world's top 25 dirty cities, just click here.

Concert poster politics?

Here's the deal when it comes to advertising cultural events in Almaty: if it's Kazakh music or theater, the posters for it will most likely be in the Kazakh language (the official "state language"). If it's ANY other kind of music or theater - European, Russian, Korean, German, etc. - the poster is always in Russian (the official "language of inter-ethnic communication").

In this photo, there are five posters (excluding the bottom left-hand corner) advertising events that are all related to the same "Plenum of the Composers' Union of Kazakhstan" -- but the one in the top right-hand corner is in Kazakh because the program is being performed by the Kurgmangazy Kazakh Folk Orchestra (see my earlier post about this).

You are probably asking me why this is true. Well, I'm kinda of asking myself the same thing -- my impression is that 1) the advertisers figure that only Kazakhs (and only those Kazakhs who speak Kazakh, which is not all of them) would be interested in such an event, OR 2) the advertisers, performers, and/or composers involved are intentionally excluding non-Kazakhs (or non-Kazakh speakers) from the event. Maybe option #2 isn't realistic, since why would they exclude a large part of the paying public? Perhaps government subsidies are somehow involved, maybe also intended to show (official) preference for Kazakhs and Kazakh-speakers?

ALSO, why wouldn't a non-Kazakh speaker be interested in Kazakh music or theater? Music doesn't require translation, and they have translation devices at the theaters - so what's stopping them from marketing to the (sizeable) non-Kazakh speaking portion of the Almaty population?

Ah, the never-ending cultural politics of formerly Soviet Central Asia...gotta love it.