Turkic Soundscapes

From Shamanic Voices to Hip-Hop

Razia Sultanova, Megan Rancier

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781351665957
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Ethnomusicology

The Turkic soundscape is both geographically huge and culturally diverse (twenty-eight countries, republics and districts extending from Eastern Europe through the Caucasus and throughout Central Asia). Although the Turkic peoples of the world can trace their linguistic and genetic ancestries to common sources, their extensive geographical dispersion and widely varying historical and political experiences have generated a range of different expressive music forms. In addition, the break-up of the Soviet Union and increasing globalization have resulted in the emergence of new viewpoints on classical and folk traditions, Turkic versions of globalized popular culture, and re-workings of folk and religious practices to fit new social needs. In line with the opening up of many Turkic regions in the post-Soviet era, awareness of scholarship from these regions has also increased. Consisting of twelve individual contributions that reflect the geographical breadth of the area under study, the collection addresses animist and Islamic religious songs; the historical development of Turkic musical instruments; ethnography and analysis of classical court music traditions; cross-cultural influences throughout the Turkic world; music and mass media; and popular music in traditional contexts. The result is a well-balanced survey of music in the Turkic-speaking world, representing folk, popular and classical traditions equally, as well as discussing how these traditions have changed in response to growing modernity and cosmopolitanism in Europe and Central Asia.

1 Introduction

Traditions and transformations in Turkic musical cultures

Razia Sultanova

The Turkic people today

In July 2007 the group Tashkent arrived in London with ancient, six-foot-long Karnay trumpets to participate in Peter Wiegold’s commissioned piece He Is Armoured Without for the BBC Proms Brass Day. As they finished the first rehearsal at the Royal Albert Hall everyone present was full of praise, but later that evening a phone call came from the Royal Albert Hall’s managers: “We are all in a panic! The sound that the Karnay make is too loud and has gone off the scale despite the fibre-glass acoustic diffusers. They are performing with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, who at their loudest reach half way up the peak scale; the Uzbek musicians overloaded our system at the rehearsal. They will damage the fabric of the Royal Albert Hall if they play that loudly again. Please ask them to play softly!” When the Uzbek musicians heard this, they laughed. “What is strange,” they said, “is that we were playing at only half of our usual volume!” So the concert went ahead with a notice warning of high sound levels. This story demonstrates an essential difference in music and sound perception between the West and the Turkic world, when not only the music elements like rhythm, dynamic, melody, harmony, texture, form but the very concept of music performance based on their cultural past, its time and place, and etiquette, is distinctive in the Turkic-speaking world – a highly original but little known music culture that demands further scholarly study.

Today the Turkic peoples are a group of ethnicities that live in Central, Eastern, Northern, and Western Asia as well as parts of Eastern Europe. They speak languages belonging to the Turkic language family. They share, to varying degrees, certain cultural traits and historical backgrounds. The term Turkic represents a broad ethno-linguistic group of peoples, including existing societies such as Altai, Azerbaijanis, Balkars, Bashkirs, Chuvashes, Crimean Karaites, Gagauz, Karachays, Karakalpaks, Kazakhs, Khakas, Krymchaks, Kyrgyz people, Nogais, Qashqai, Tatars, Turkmens, Turks, Tuvans, Uyghurs, Uzbeks, and Yakuts, as well as ancient and medieval states such as Dingling, Bulgars, Chuban, Göktürks, Khazars, Khiljis, Kipchaks, Kumans, Ottoman Turks, Seljuk Turks, Tiele, Timurids, Turgeshes, and possibly Huns, Tuoba, Wusun, and the Xiongnu.

Ethnic, cultural and historical origins

Turkic peoples embrace a millennium and a vast geographical area. Their ability to travel and assimilate connects distant times and places, cultures and traditions. Their cultural achievements reflect the lives and beliefs of nomadic communities on the steppes of Central Asia and the cultural traditions of the sumptuous beauty of the Babur and Timurid empires. From the scorching deserts to the longest mountain ranges, Turks lived in a world of demons and campfires and storytellers. The basic identity of the Turks as gnarled nomads, tough traders, raw people of the road, found its expressions in shamanism. Historically, Turkic tribes were involved in shamanic experience in various settings such as healing or foretelling rituals, with the loud sounds of drumbeats, resounding voices and sharp cries announcing help for people and communities to overcome their difficult times. Centuries later, religiously associated music in the Turkic-speaking world took the form of the rhythmical ecstatic repetitions of Sufi rituals where, to the accompaniment of solo or choir singing, enraptured participants whirled and danced in large circles, inside or outside mosques, or in the open air on the banks of rivers or lakes.

In medieval times the highly professional culture of maqam/mugham/makam performance was growing at the emperors’ courts. Its slow and deep philosophical flow, long hours of canonized music performed by highly professional musicians, echoed under the spacious arching halls of palaces. Folk music in the area was represented by songs, instrumental tunes and dances filled with joy to mark times of peace and celebrations, turning in times of war into mourning laments and sorrow at the loss of family members. State celebrations had their own thrilling sounds of penetrating trumpets with drumbeats.

However, the establishment of the USSR brought many changes; the centuries-old system of music performance was going through the colonial encounter, racism and later nationalism. The USSR cultural politics could be characterized by a set of binarisms: Moscow/East of the USSR or Central Asian republics; secularism/religion; modernity/tradition; centre/periphery, with the mega-power of the Kremlin transforming Moscow into a mega-metropolis with communist authorities, media, culture and industry, military centres, and so on united in one place. Therefore, Turkic-speaking people at the time of the Soviet Union adapted to the new state-engaged system of entertainment when the new cultural infrastructure required the appearance of “suggested national” genres of music, content, sounds. So, music had to survive and to adjust or protest at times when “music speaks louder than words”. It is towards this end that this book has modestly contributed a beginning.

Looking back at the history of the Turkic-speaking world, one can find that wars, conquerors and different rulers and governments have deeply influenced the history and geography of the Turkic-speaking world, changing shapes of nations and ethnicities, their world perception, attitude to heritage and national identity and sense of belonging, as they were affected or influenced by the prevailing ideology and following freedom of expressing themselves or nationalist feelings inside of the communities’ circles. The music was also affected by the history of the Turkic-speaking world.

Who, historically speaking, are the Turkic-speaking peoples? The Turkic languages – Turkish, Uzbek, Tatar, Uighur, Kazakh and nearly thirty others – are spoken these days from Siberia to the Mediterranean, from the Balkans to the Baltic. They belong to the Altaic language family, which originated in Mongolia and Siberia.¹ According to historical-linguistic research, the Turkic languages interacted with other groups of languages like Uralic, Indo-European and Yenisseic over thousands of years.² The presence of some Turkic words in the remnants of the European Hunnic language³ is the basis for some theories that the Turkic-speaking tribes were Huns who at the start of the first millennium moved westwards from the Asian steppes and appeared on the Volga around 350 ce.⁴ There are also theories proposing that the early Turkic-speaking peoples mixed with the Mongolian population in the area of present-day Mongolia and Altai,⁵ and that the Iranian-Turkic symbiosis that began during the Scythian period (ninth‒fourth centuries bce)⁶ and was later reflected in Firdausi’s “Shahname” as an Iran‒Turan relationship, played a very important cultural role. The first Turkic ethnonym appeared by 460 ce in the steppes between the Volga and the Black Sea. “Oghur” and “Onoghur” (“Ten Oghurs”), clearly Turkic names of the tribes, are mentioned at that time, and later these tribes gave birth to Balkan and Volga Bulghars.⁷ Some research states that these Oghur people spoke a specific form of Turkic, close to the contemporary Chuvash in the Volga region.⁸ Oghur (sometimes pronounced Oghuz) tribes had by the sixth century created a poly-ethnic confederation that spread from the steppes of Mongolia to the Black Sea, known through historic Chinese manuscripts as “Tiele”.⁹ The ethnonym “Turk” (as many believe, originally pronounced “Turuk”) was first mentioned at that time. In 545 ce, a people with this name established a relationship with the Western Wei dynasty of Northern China.¹⁰

Though there are many different Turkic and Iranian etymologies for the ethnonym “Turk”, no single one was considered acceptable. Yet, from that time the ethnonym Turk emerged fully into the light of recorded history. The Turks rapidly expanded westwards, taking over territories with Mongolian, Iranian and other populations and creating a multi-lingual, poly-ethnic, multi-faith state which was a mix of nomadic, semi-nomadic and sedentary peoples. Between the sixth and eighth centuries Turks created Western and Eastern Turkic qaghanates or empires extending from China to Europe. Culturally, this period of Turkic history is marked by the Orhon, Yennissei and many other inscriptions, which not only glorify the military might of Turkic Qaghans (kings), but also give a glimpse of their culture, poetry and arts.

When the blue sky above and the reddish earth below were created, between the two of them the son of man was made. Over the sons of man my ancestors Bumin-khan and Istami-khan became rulers. Becoming the rulers they kept the unity of the Turkic people. The four corners of the world were enemies. They conquered the four corners of the world and implemented peace. Whoever had heads on their shoulders ‒ they bowed their heads, whoever had knees – they kneeled in front of them. They were wise khans, they were brave khans, their orders were wise, and their people were brave. Therefore they ruled long. Then they perished. I became a Khan, not over the wealthy people, but over the people without food inside them and without clothes outside. I became a Khan over the poor and miserable people. My younger brother Kul-tegin and I spoke, and in order that the name and the fame gained by our ancestors should not disappear I did not sleep nights for the Turkic people, and did not relax during the days. With my younger brother Kul-tegin I worked to death … I conquered the four corners of the world and the people obeyed me … O, Turkic people, listen to that. All I had to say I carved on this eternal stone … Bilge-khan …

(Inscription of Bilge-qaghan,¹¹ trans. Hamid Ismailov)

Here one can find words such as “sky”, “earth”, “unity”, “world” and “Khan”, all of which are symbolic of Turkic culture. This period of Turkic history is also interesting due to the fact that people of that empire, following different religions, created those inscriptions as well as manuscripts in Turkic languages. Though the leading religion among the Turks was monotheistic Tengrianism – belief in Tengri, the God of Heaven, supreme entity, correlated with Earth and Mankind – yet the Manichean text Xuastuanift, a Buddhist “Book of Meeting with Maitrea”, Nestorian Christian books, as well as Zoroastrian texts were all present in Turkic language.

The emergence of Islam in the seventh century and the following Arab conquest of Transoxiana or Maverannahr opened a new era in the history of Turkic people as a part of Islamic civilization. By the tenth century, after the fall of the Turkic Khazar Empire, mass conversions to Islam began. That period of history witnessed the rise of two Turko-Islamic dynasties: the Ghaznavids (977–1186) taking over Afghanistan, Northern India and Khorasan, and the Qarakhanids (992–1212) in Transoxiana or Central Asia. Yet the eastern part of the Turkic world (Altai, Siberia) was not touched by Islam and continued to practise Tengrianism and shamanism.

The tenth century witnessed the rise of another Turko-Islamic Seljuk dynasty, which began in Central Asia and later expanded to Iran and further to Anatolia, with the help of Oghuz tribes. Then the process of Turkization of the complex mix of peoples in Anatolia started.¹² The Mongol invasion of Central Asia and Iran in the thirteenth century brought more Turkic people (especially Oghuzs) to the Middle East. The Timurid epoch (fourteenth–sixteenth centuries), named after Amir Timur, also known as Tamerlane (1370–1405), was a “golden period” for Islamic Iranian-Turkic symbiosis in science, arts, architecture, literature and professional classical court music. It existed in a vast territory from India through Central Asia and Iran, in parallel with another great Turko-Islamic empire – the Ottoman (thirteenth–twentieth centuries) extending in different periods from Iran through Anatolia to the Middle East and Central Europe. Both empires played an immense role in bringing different ethnicities, faiths, beliefs, cultures and traditions together, amalgamating them into a common culture. During that “Eastern Renaissance” the Sufi movements or tariqats, which had adapted Islam to the local cultures of Central Asia, Iran and Anatolia, came to life with their different forms and rituals like zikr, the musical forms that paralleled those professional Sufi movements just as maqam/mugham/makam had been created in the palaces.

Another period of Turkic history that is important for the themes of this book is the Mughal period (sixteenth–nineteenth centuries). Babur (1483–1530), one of the Central Asian Timurids who was also a descendant of the Mongol Emperor Ghengiz-khan on his maternal side, was a founder of that empire, which occupied the territories of modern Afghanistan, Pakistan and Northern India. Then the Turks of Central Asia invaded those territories in great numbers, bringing their own culture, which eventually mixed with the local cultures, creating new forms and traditions. The Tatars formed the Turkic-speaking population of Tartary, the territory ruled by Mongol rulers from the fourteenth century until their conquest by the Russian Empire in the eighteenth to nineteenth centuries.

The largest group by far that the Russians have called “Tatars” are the Volga Tatars, native to the Volga and Ural region (Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, Orenburg province), with their language known as the Tatar language. As of 2002 they had an estimated population close to 6 million. The Crimean Tatars are a Turkic ethnic group that formed in the Crimean Peninsula in the fourteenth–seventeenth centuries, primarily from the Turkic tribes. Crimean Tatars constituted the majority of Crimea’s population from that time until the mid-nineteenth century, and the largest relative ethnic population until the end of the nineteenth century when it became part of Russia. In May 1944, the USSR State Defence Committee ordered the removal of all of the Tatar population from Crimea, including the families of Crimean Tatars serving in the Soviet Army. They were take...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of musical examples
• Notes on contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Map of the Turkic-speaking world
• Foreword
• Foreword
• 1 Introduction: traditions and transformations in Turkic musical cultures
• Part I Cultural foundations in music of the twenty-first century
• Part II Turkic music in popular culture and mass media
• Part III Cross-cultural encounters in the Turkic-speaking world and beyond
• Part IV Turkic music and national identities
• References
• Index