Uyghur: Traditional Vocal And Instrumental Music

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The Uyghurs

The Uyghurs, a Turkic Moslem people, are the largest ethnic minority group in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in the distant Northwest of China. Until the 1930s the term Uyghur was not in general usage as an ethnonym but rather denoted a steppe kingdom on China´s northwestern borders of the eighth to ninth centuries. Chinese rule of the region has been intermittent; only during periods of great imperial strength-during parts of the Han dynasty, the Tang dynasty, and the later part of the Qing-could China exert control over the Western Regions (xiyu), as Xinjiang was known up until the late 19th century. In times of peace the oases dwellers of this region traded in the goods which passed along the Silk Road from China to the Near East, while the nomadic peoples frequently held the Chinese empire to ransom with sporadic raiding within China´s borders. Traders and settlers started to arrive from central China in significant numbers in the 18th century and maintained an uneasy coexistence with the local peoples. An independent East Turkestan Republic was established with Russian support in northern Xinjiang in the 1940s, but this was absorbed into the People´s Republic of China in 1949 after the leaders of the Republic were all killed in a plane crash over Lake Baikal on their way to meet Chairman Mao in Beijing.

In the first half of the 20th century the inhabitants of the desert oases of Xinjiang identified themselves by their home town-Kashgarlik, Turpanlik-or by their Moslem religion. Travellers in the region in this period termed them Sart or Turki.5 The concept of the Uyghur nation was first promoted by Xinjiang intellectuals in the 1930s, a period when nationalist, anti-imperialist, and reformist currents filtered into Xinjiang both from the Soviet Union to the west, and from the major Chinese cities to the east.

The widespread use of the term Uyghur dates from as recently as their formal designation as an ethnic minority nationality under the People´s Republic of China (PRC) in the mid-1950s. As sinologist Dru Gladney notes in his study of the Hui Moslem Chinese, the PRC´s classificatory system of nationalities has had the long-term effect of conceptually linking scattered groups whose identity was most strongly tied to the locality and genealogy, and transforming them into broad-based self-aware communities, or "nations," linked not so much through time but across space.6 Uyghur identity as a conceptual block has now achieved an almost unquestioned status in public discourse in Xinjiang and China, reaching across the spheres of politics, history, and culture.

Uyghur Music

In the field of musicology in Xinjiang, equally, nationality has become the major category for the classification of music. Uyghur music as a broad category embraces three rather diverse traditions based on geographical divisions. The musical traditions of the Southern oasis towns of Khotan and Kashgar are thought to be more closely allied to North Indian and the classical traditions of Bukhara and Samarkand. The music of the taranchi, 18th century settlers in the Ili valley to the Northwest, developed out of the music of their home region of Kashgar, but now owes much to the musical traditions of the nomadic Kazakhs or Mongols to the north. The music of Eastern Xinjiang, centred around the city of Qumul (Hami), has more in common with Han and Hui song styles of Northwest China. The most famous genre of music to have emerged from Xinjiang is the Kashgar Muqam, a set of twelve suites.

The Uyghur Muqam is allied to the Persian and Central Asian maqam modal system; each Muqam suite is based on a particular scale and melodic pattern, but a Muqam is also characterised by its suite structure which comprises a set of vocal and instrumental pieces organised in an overall tri-partite structure, which generally begin with a meditative, free solo vocal piece and culminates in faster dance pieces.7 Other parts of Xinjiang also claim their own regional styles of Muqam. The major site for listening to music in Xinjiang is at wedding feasts where traditional or popular music may be performed as the guests eat and dance. A popular instrumental form, played on kettle drums and shawms (naghra sunay) can also be heard as part of the procession which weaves its way through the town, usually on the backs of open trucks, to fetch the bride.

Since 1949 a system of state-sponsored song-and-dance troupes has promoted a revised form of staged Uyghur music, based on the conservatory styles of China and the Soviet Union. This music, the most prominent and the most readily available of all the musical styles emanating from Xinjiang, is rather distanced from the musical traditions it claims to represent. It is also rather distanced from the people it is supposed to represent. Song-and-dance troupe music is promoted on the state-controlled media, it is performed live at state occasions, revolutionary anniversaries and for visiting delegations and tourists, it can be purchased in state-run shops on cassette and CD, but during my time in Xinjiang I never once heard it played by choice in Uyghur homes or in the bazaars which serve as barometers of popular musical taste.

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