Even in the Rain: Uyghur Music in Modern China 9780824895020

Table of contents :
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Notes on Style and Translation
Map
CHAPTER 1 Ethnography and Music Scholarship
CHAPTER 2 The Modern Sound of “Minority” Music
CHAPTER 3 Muqam: Between National Heritage and Local Practices
CHAPTER 4 Singing Muqam in Uyghur Pop
CHAPTER 5 Modernist Reform and Uyghur Instrumental Music
CHAPTER 6 Sounding Indigenous in the “Original Ecology”
CHAPTER 7 Conclusion
Notes
References
Index
ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Citation preview

Even in the Rain

Series Editor: Frederick Lau

Even in the Rain UYGHUR MUSIC IN MODERN CHINA CHUEN-FUNG WONG

University of Hawai‘i Press Honolulu

© 2023 University of Hawai‘i Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First printed, 2023 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Wong, Chuen-Fung, author. Title: Even in the rain : Uyghur music in modern China / Chuen-Fung Wong. Other titles: Music and performing arts of Asia and the Pacific. Description: Honolulu : University of Hawai‘i Press, [2023] | Series: Music and performing arts of Asia and the Pacific | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2022061326 (print) | LCCN 2022061327 (ebook) | ISBN 9780824895013 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780824895617 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9780824895020 (pdf) | ISBN 9780824895037 (epub) | ISBN 9780824897116 (kindle edition) Subjects: LCSH: Uighur (Turkic people) —China--Xinjiang Uygur Zizhiqu—Music--History and criticism. | Music—China—Xinjiang Uygur Zizhiqu—History and criticism. | Maqām—China—Xinjiang Uygur Zizhiqu—History and criticism. Classification: LCC ML3746.7.X56 W65 2023 (print) | LCC ML3746.7.X56 (ebook) | DDC 780.89/94323—dc23/eng/20230207 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022061326 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022061327

Cover photo: Awut Guli singing and playing the dutar in Lükchün, Turpan. Photo by author. University of Hawai‘i Press books are printed on acid-free paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Council on Library Resources.

Tughulmighanlargha

To The Unborn

Ot öchmigen qazanlargha oxshaydu alem, Ottin ulugh küreshlerge chidisang kelgin.

The world is like a burning cauldron; If you can endure battles that are fiercer than fire, then come.

Chinpütmigin: “Paraghetke tughuldung” dése, Salqini yoq chöl-deshtlerge chidisang kelgin.

Don’t believe you’ll be born into comfort; If you can endure deserts and wildernesses—nowhere is cool, then come.

Gahi rizqing aq nan bolsa, gahi tériqtur,

Sometimes you’ll be blessed with a big piece of naan, sometimes only millet; If you can endure eating naan that is burnt in the ashes, then come.

Küldin alghan kömechlerge chidisang kelgin. Gah künlerde yoqtur sanga kündüz rahiti, Eski tamda tüneshlerge chidisang kelgin.

Sometimes there won’t be comfort during the day; If you can endure also spending nights between ramshackle walls, then come.

Kim éytidu: “Dost tartqanning jimisi dost!” dep, Chörengdiki kündeshlerge chidisang kelgin.

Every enemy comes in the name of a friend; If you can endure foes all around you, then come.

Hayat dégen mewj urup aqqan bir derya, Üzmek üchün örkeshlerge chidisang kelgin.

Life will be like a turbulent river; If you can endure drifting in the waves, then come.

Her kim kélip söyüwermes ikki mengzingge,

Not everyone who comes will kiss you on your cheeks; If you can endure also their vicious slanders, then come.

Gah hem qara sürkeshlerge chidisang kelgin. Siylash emes, tatilash üchün tirnaqlar teyyar, Qusur tépip jöndeshlerge chidisang kelgin.

There’re no caresses; nails will be ready to scratch; If you can endure being nitpicked and chastised, then come.

Ejel bardur séning üchün maxtashlardimu, “Til tegmisun,” sözleshlerge chidisang kelgin.

In life there too will be praise for you; If you can endure all the treacherous flatteries, then come.

Bir tal tükke aylinisen bilmey bezide,

Sometimes, unaware, you’ll become like a strand of hair. If you can endure being blown this way and that, then come.

Uchurghili püwleshlerge chidisang kelgin.

Ching baghlinip tirikchilik arqanlirigha, Xalighanche söreshlerge chidisang kelgin.

Muhemmetjan Rashidin1

Life will be tightly tied to thick ropes; If you can endure being arbitrarily dragged here and there, then come.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments  ix Notes on Style and Translation  xi Map xiii CHAPTER 1  Ethnography and Music Scholarship  1 CHAPTER 2  The Modern Sound of “Minority” Music  30 CHAPTER 3  Muqam: Between National Heritage and

Local Practices  60 CHAPTER 4  Singing Muqam in Uyghur Pop  101 CHAPTER 5  Modernist Reform and Uyghur Instrumental

Music  129 CHAPTER 6  Sounding Indigenous in the “Original

Ecology”  165 CHAPTER 7  Conclusion  196

Notes 203 References 221 Index 241

vii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

T

his book is being published at a time when over one million Uyghur and other indigenous peoples in their homeland have disappeared into mass internment camps or suffered from other forms of incarceration, torture, forced labor, and family separation—including a number of individuals anonymously mentioned in the text. Having contact with foreigners and even family members living abroad would be grounds for arrest and detention. I wish there were a way to acknowledge all the Uyghur musicians, scholars, and acquaintances who have guided and helped my study over the past approximately two decades without having to fear for their safety. To my teachers, informants, and other acquaintances in the Uyghur homeland, thank you for generously accepting me into your lives and teaching me how to be resilient even in the most difficult times. I particularly want to thank the many musicians and friends in Ghulja and the broader Ili valley for your friendship and sharing with me your vast knowledge and infectious love of music. Above all, my heartfelt thanks to Alimjan Abduqadir (1956–2017), who taught me Uyghur instruments and introduced me to the world of Uyghur music in an early stage of this study. I regret that he did not live to see the publication of this book, which I dedicate to his memory. A number of generous individuals and organizations have offered crucial help in the various stages of the research. At UCLA, I am grateful to Ali Jihad Racy, Timothy Rice, and Anthony Seeger for their comments on the early work that has shaped and led to the research presented in this book. My deepest thanks are due to Helen Rees, whose tutelage and mentoring have benefited me greatly over the years. I count myself fortunate to have worked with her. I had the privilege of studying with several Uyghur and Turkish language teachers, and I want to thank for their patient instruction: Mehmet Süreyya Er at UCLA; Tursunjan Sawut at Shinjang uniwérsitéti; and Aygül Muhemmet, Rena, and ix

Polat at Shinjang sen’et inistituti. A number of institutions have provided financial support for different portions of this research. For their confidence in my work I thank the American Research in the Humanities in China Fellowship (ACLS and NEH); Hong Kong Research Grants Council; UCLA Chancellor’s Fellowship; Macalester College; Hong Kong Baptist University; Edna and YuShan Han Charitable Foundation; and Hong Kong Jockey Club Music and Dance Fund. In completing this research, I have been helped by a number of colleagues, students, and other friends who were especially giving of their time, knowledge, and resources: Erkin Abliz, Ashley Chung, Rena Ekrem, Gülnar Eziz, Rivi Handler-Spitz, Rachel Harris, Kwan Yin Yee, Aston Law, Martin Lee, Eugene Leung, Ted Levin, Nathan Light, Abliz Mahsut, Ahoo Najafian, Ian Price, Eric Schluessel, Reeve Tang and his crew at Radio Television Hong Kong, Tung Tsz Ching, Wong King Chung, Jessica Yeung, and, above all, Yu Siu Wah, to whom I owe a sincere debt of gratitude. I also want to thank the members of the Nur Collective and the student musicians of Macalester Asian Music Ensemble for your willingness to take part in a number of my experimental performances of Uyghur music. I apologize to anyone whose name I might have missed. I would like to thank executive editor Masako Ikeda, managing editor Gianna Marsella, copyeditor Lori Rider, and series editor Frederick Lau at the University of Hawai‘i Press for their help and support of this project. I am also grateful to the anonymous readers, whose comments proved invaluable. Any missteps and errors in this book are mine alone. Finally, I owe my undue gratitude to my family for their unwavering support and love.

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Acknowledgments

N O T E S O N S T Y L E A N D T R A N S L AT I O N

A

ll Uyghur terms and names are transliterated using the Uyghur Latin Yéziq (ULY) system, including the use of “x” for the guttural consonant that is more commonly spelled elsewhere as “kh.” Exceptions include geographical names that are more familiar to English readers in other spellings, such as Kashgar (rather than Qeshqer) and Khotan (rather than Xoten). Chinese terms and names originated in the People’s Republic of China are romanized using pinyin; others are spelled according to their own systems or in ways that are most familiar to English readers. Uyghur, Chinese, and other foreign terms are italicized throughout the text, identified by abbreviations such as “Uy.” and “Ch.” as needed. I follow the local practice of referring to Uyghur individuals by their given names; surnames are mentioned only the first time they appear in a chapter. Bibliographic entries of Uyghur authors are arranged alphabetically also by their given names. In citing sources authored by Uyghur and Chinese individuals, I try to provide entire names to avoid confusion. Russified Uyghur names are spelled in ways that appear most frequently in Uyghur-language publications today (e.g., Yüsüpjan Ghapparuf; Lutpulla Mutellip). The same is true for most names in the Chaghatay (East Turki) and Persian languages, which are spelled in transliterated forms in modern Uyghur (e.g., Yüsüp Qadirxan; Newa’i), except when they are more familiar to English readers in other spellings (e.g., Yūsuf al-Sakkākī). The identities of many Uyghur individuals mentioned in the text are concealed for obvious safety concerns. The dates and locations of interviews, performances, and other encounters, however, are provided in the notes in as much detail as possible without compromising protection of the informants. I generally avoid using the term “minority” to refer to specific nationalities or ethnicities identified as such in modern China: to be clear, Uyghur, Tibetans, xi

and other non-Han peoples are the majority in their homelands, and there is nothing “minor” about their art, music, and culture. The term is used here exclusively to refer to minoritizing discourses, and quotation marks are liberally used. I also refrain from using the colonial toponym “Xinjiang” to refer to the Uyghur homeland unless alternatives are less accurate. All translations and transliterations of terms, quoted texts, interviews, poems, and lyrics are mine. I also transcribed all music and lyrics, and prepared the musical notation. All photographs and maps are also mine unless otherwise stated.

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Notes on Style and Translation

xiii

Map of the Uyghur homeland (East Turkestan or Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region).

CHAPTER 1

Ethnography and Music Scholarship

T

his book studies Uyghur music over the past seven decades or so in what is known today as Xinjiang (a.k.a. Sinkiang or Shinjang, lit., “new territory”), a colonial toponym that has been used since the late nineteenth century to refer to the Uyghur homeland in China’s far northwest. A Central Asian Turkicspeaking, predominantly Muslim people, the Uyghur are identified in China today as one of its fifty-five officially designated “minority nationalities” (Uy. az sanliq milletler; Ch. shaoshu minzu). The incorporation of the Uyghur homeland—known by many of its natives as East Turkestan (Uy. Sherqiy Türkistan)—into the People’s Republic of China in the mid-twentieth century marked the beginning of an era when music and performing arts underwent major changes in contexts, practices, and aesthetics. This research focuses on the styles, genres, and other aspects of Uyghur music that have incorporated intercultural influences and encountered the state’s maneuvers of its “minority” performing arts in the modern era. The basic premise of the book revolves around two interconnected realms through which Uyghur music has been performed and listened to in modern China. First, for many Uyghur musicians and audiences, music serves as a metaphor of the nation—as heritage (miras), culture (medeniyet), and tradition (en’ene)—as it struggles to survive and interrogate the state’s manipulation, while also responding to broader regional and global influences. Second, as an everyday practice and routine, music constitutes the modules of Uyghur social life where subaltern experiences of ethnicity, race, and nationhood are indexed. “Minority” identities in China’s socialist and post-socialist eras, this book suggests, may usefully be listened to as processes of sound reorganization, through which the Uyghur and other marginalized peoples adopt a wide variety of performing and listening strategies as they navigate life in modern China.

1

This opening chapter explains the background of the research and contextualizes my ethnography against the politics of music scholarship in modern China. I discuss how Uyghur music and sound have been heard as both desired and abject, a representational dualism that has characterized much of how minoritized peoples have been received in modern China. I then look at modern Chinese scholarship on “minority” music as intertwined with post-1949 ethno-racial politics and the party-state’s governing needs. Lastly, I interrogate aspects of my positionality as implicated in the ethnographic encounters that have shaped this study. Anecdotes, fieldnotes, and other research findings are deliberately drawn from the period between the early 2000s and the late 2010s, during which the majority of my fieldwork was conducted. The second chapter provides the historical and theoretical contexts in which to listen to Uyghur music in the trajectory of cultural modernity. I sketch the modern Uyghur musical life in the early twentieth century and examine how Uyghur music has been minoritized since the 1950s under the state’s dual discursive frame of multiculturalism and cultural enlightenment. An assumption that undergirds this and subsequent chapters is that the Communist takeover in 1949 and the establishment of the “autonomous region” (Uy. aptonom rayoni) of Xinjiang in 1955 inaugurated not the condition of music modernity itself but rather an expanded, intensified, and more systematic implementation of modernist ideas that had already been implicated and set in motion, albeit in nascent forms, during the first few decades of the twentieth century. The next four chapters are organized around a number of prominent and overlapping genres as popularly heard and framed in Uyghur music today: the Central Asian court tradition of muqam as both a reconstructed repertoire of art music and a constellation of local genres; the reinterpretation of traditional music within pop; reformist-style instrumental music against ideas of virtuosity, progressivity, and professionalism; and folk singing under the intertwined discourses of indigeneity and heritage. As cultural capital, these genres are not bound to stylistic genres or historical periods. A centuries-old classical muqam melody may appear as a love song covered by a best-selling pop idol while simultaneously being included on an album that promotes tourism and rearranged into an orchestral work played by a state-sponsored folkloric ensemble at official ceremonies preaching patriotism and ethnic solidarity. The same is true for musicians. A conservatory-trained vocalist employed by a professional performing troupe may keep a part-time job as a rock star singing pop songs at nightclubs while also running a business that provides young artists to perform exotic “minority” songs and dances to affluent Chinese tourists at restaurants and tourist sites. I approach each of these genres as a contested field where multiple modern musical identities are tried on, negotiated, and ultimately established or discarded, or somewhere in between. Each of these aesthetic experiments 2

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takes place at the intersection of music’s vulnerability to the relentless state control and its promises as a proxy for the various dimensions of individual and collective identities. Last but not least, this book is committed to an analytical understanding of music as both a symbolic system that references social processes as well as a codification of indigenous performing practices and their changes in the modern time. As such, I include examples that address Uyghur musical expressivity and sound organization as they are shaped by a broad range of creative processes, through which musicians participate in the collective pursuit of a subaltern identity.   I first encountered the sound that is identified by most Chinese listeners today as “Uyghur music” as a primary school student in Hong Kong during its final decade or so as a British colony. In most public schools, students in music classes were taught to sing and sometimes play on instruments a small repertoire of “Chinese folk songs” in a curriculum that had otherwise been based almost exclusively on European art music. Among these were a handful of catchy, uplifting tunes, which, despite being labeled “Uyghur folk songs” or, often indiscriminately, “Xinjiang folk songs,” sounded hardly different from other “Chinese” tunes. Sung in Mandarin, the assumed “national” language most of us, including our teachers, still struggled to acquire, these songs were often marked by a minor/Aeolian-like modality, regular meters, symmetrical phrasing, and largely diatonic harmony, resembling modern Chinese songs more than anything even remotely Central Asian. The songbooks describe the Uyghur as “minority” people who are “hospitable” and “good at singing and dancing.” Little is said about their Central Asian heritage and Islamic belief, let alone the Turkic language they speak and their struggle and conflict with the Chinese state and its majority Han, a nationality to which, we were told, most of us belonged. These songs reveal Uyghur music by concealing it. A good number of these “Uyghur folk songs” are attributed to the controversial Chinese songwriter-folklorist Wang Luobin (often respelled Wang Lobing or Wang Nobing in Uyghur) (1913–1996), whose notorious appropriation of Uyghur and other non-Han melodies in his oeuvre of some seven hundred songs raised vexing questions of misrepresentation and cultural ownership. An unmistaken icon of cultural dispossession and exploitation, Wang is detested as a “song thief” (naxsha oghrisi) by many Uyghur, who accuse him of stealing and benefiting from their traditional music (Sadiqhaji Rozi 2017). Meanwhile, many of Wang’s songs have enjoyed monumental popularity among Chinese listeners, being frequently covered by pop singers, presented in tourist performances and propaganda shows, and imposed on school music curricula. The melodies of some of his songs were also taken indiscriminately as an authentic source of Uyghur and other non-Han music as they were adapted or referenced

Ethnography and Music Scholarship

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by contemporary composers inside and outside China in their works. Dubbed a “song king of the western regions” (Ch. xibu gewang) in Chinese media, Wang played a major part in the modern Chinese construction of minority exoticism. One of the best known and earliest of his songs is “Daban cheng de gu’niang” (Girls from the town of Daban; Uy. Dawanching qizi), written in 1938 purportedly based on a Uyghur song. Here is the first verse of the lyrics: The pebble roads in the town of Daban are hard and flat; the watermelons are big and sweet. Girls from the town of Daban have long braids; and a pair of beautiful eyes. If you want to get married, marry me, not others. Bring your dowry; sing your songs; come ride on the horse cart.1

The imagined otherness and masculinist gaze flaunted in the lyrics is emblematic of the modern repertoire of “minority”-themed Chinese compositions, which portrays a remote borderland of China’s geographical and racial Others, where delicious fruits, enticing women, and untamed “minority” lives await consumption. The diatonic melody and its uplifting duple meter are typical of modern Chinese songs, embellished with brief excursions into syncopated rhythms and perhaps one or two accidentals that marginally invoke bitonality. To the singing schoolchildren in the British colony that would soon be reclaimed by China, these songs concocted a musical perspective on the Uyghur that aligned closely with that of the rest of the Chinese-speaking world. The “minorities” were rendered audible as yet another regional variety of a homogenous Chinese nationality that would, in a few years, be imposed on us. For a moment, this music—and the country that claimed to own it—appeared to be ours too. The music sold to us in these songbooks as “Uyghur” or “Xinjiang” contrasted starkly with what was put on stage in a series of concerts by the touring group Shinjang muqam sen’et ömiki (Xinjiang Muqam Art Ensemble), which I had an opportunity to attend after Hong Kong had been handed over to China in 1997. The state-sponsored performing troupe was founded in the mid-1980s in the provincial capital Ürümchi to perform the centuries-old tradition On ikki muqam (lit., “twelve muqam”), a set of canonic vocal and instrumental suites related, to some degree, to the Burkharan emirs’ Central Asian court tradition of shashmaqām in today’s Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Research and performance reconstruction of On ikki muqam had been undertaken with extraordinary verve and generous state support since the early 1980s, as a part of the post–Cultural Revolution resumption of earlier scholarship on “minority” music. Uyghur music was a novelty to most in the primarily Cantonese-speaking audience in Hong Kong.2 The only Uyghur name an average Hong Konger might have ever heard of was likely Örkesh Dölet (b. 1968) (better known by the 4

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Mandarin respelling of his first name, Wu’er Kaixi), a student leader of the Tiananmen movement in 1989 whose Uyghur identity was at best obscure at that time. Meanwhile, the ex-British colony was a favorite venue for the Chinese state to relay its preferred discourse of multiculturalism to not only the outside world but also the locals as a part of its assimilationist scheme. The audience in the concert hall was greeted, from the stage, by the cheerful grins of approximately two dozen musicians and dancers gaily dressed in “ethnic costumes” and holding instruments inlaid with lavishly decorative patterns— both, I would later understand, outcomes of reengineered “minority” musical bodies. I was enthralled by the sympathetic-string timbre on the bowed fiddle satar and the plucked lute rawap, the elaborated microtonal modal inflections, and the multisectional suite structure. None of these reminded me of the fabricated “minority folk songs” I had learned in school. As the muqam suites unfolded into sections and episodes of contrasting motives, tempi, instrumentations, and metrical-rhythmic cycles over the next two hours or so, many in the audience were alerted to a few sonic attributes and music devices that raised critical questions about authenticity. Several instruments in the ensemble, for example, appeared strikingly similar to their European and Chinese counterparts: the bowed fiddle xushtar, an instrument created in the 1970s at the pinnacle of progressive political movements, was made to look and sound effectively like a violin played upright on the lap; the hammered dulcimer chang also looked almost identical to its modern Chinese counterpart, the yangqin, armed with a gamut of three or four octaves comprising all chromatic notes. On a closer listen, it was also not difficult to spot passages of deliberate dynamic contrast, arpeggiated figures, contrapuntal inner voices, countermelodies, and bass lines that outlined functional harmonic progression. The bright, uplifting timbre produced by the tightly stretched steel strings on the plucked lutes also cast an aural quality that diverged from muqam’s assumed antiquity. These were accompanied by flamboyant choreography as well as the colorful uniforms and accessories the performers put on, which were redolent of Soviet-style folkloric shows. Somewhere between the reformist practices and the claim to authenticity—and between the performers’ colorful outfits and the uniformity of their expressions—lies a Chinese mediated “minority” cultural world where conflicting aesthetics and trajectories of power relations are writ large.

The Desired and the Abject For centuries, the musical styles and practices identified with the Uyghur have been a part of the broader Eurasian intercultural continuum. Traditional Uyghur music, as a whole, is characterized by a range of performing procedures,

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techniques, and aesthetic preferences that have forged an aesthetic common ground with a number of Central Asian and Middle Eastern traditions. Devices such as microtonal inflections and modal formulas (both metrical and melodic) are widely employed in the repertoire of classical songs and instrumental music known as muqam, as well as other folk and sacred traditions. Most genres and repertoires may be performed on solo instruments or a consort of long-necked plucked lutes (such as rawap, tembur, and dutar) and bowed strings (such as ghéjek and satar) that are noticeably a part of the broader sedentary Central Asian soundscape. Likewise, emotional intensity is achieved through melodic contour, climactic gestures, and other musico-poetic devices. Improvisation and heterophony, at least in most art genres, are notably more restrained compared to some of its Arab, Turkish, and Persian counterparts. The invocation of sacred textual and sonic elements in many folk and classical genres also attests to an extended history of transnational Sufi influences in Uyghur performing arts. Last but not least, Uyghur muqam songs share with Uzbek and some other Central Asian classical genres the common repertoire of poetic texts—the best known being the ghazal of the poet Newa’i (Ali-Shir Navā’ī, 1441–1501)—in Chaghatay, or East Turki, the classical Turkic literary language (written in Perso-Arabic script) that is generally considered the ancestor of modern Uyghur and Uzbek. Notwithstanding the stylistic integrity identified in Uyghur music today, regional or local (yerlik) differences are notable and often important identity markers. Roughly speaking, the Tengritagh (or Tianshan/Tienshan, the Celestial Mountains) cut across the Uyghur territory and divide it into the northern, southern, and eastern regions.3 In the south, Kashgar, the great seat of Uyghur civilization, is the centuries-old cultural epicenter of a constellation of large and small oasis towns built on the rim of Tarim Basin (or Taklamakan Desert), including Yéngisar, Yarkand, Atush, Aqsu (Aksu), Kucha, and sometimes also Khotan and other towns in the “deep south.” Known collectively in history as Altishari (lit., “six cities”) or Kashgaria, the south is identified with at least three subgenres in music: (1) the Kashgar-based repertoire, especially its muqam, is revered for its perceived classicism and grandeur; (2) the styles found in Khotan and its neighboring towns, such as Qaraqash, Chira, and Keriya, are associated with a rustic sense of authenticity; (3) the towns of Maralbéshi, Merkit, Awat, and sometimes also Aqsu (Aksu) along the Yarkand River are identified with the Dolan (a subethnicity of the Uyghur), whose repertoire and styles are considered prototypical of other Uyghur traditions. The Ili valley in the northwest and its Uyghur residents, known as Taranchi, are identified with the rich singing and instrumental repertoire of Ili and its bordering Yettisu (lit., “seven rivers”) region in southeastern Kazakhstan. Part of this northern repertoire is believed to be historically connected to the Kashgar tradition as a result of 6

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migration during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Its melodic and ornamentation styles, however, are largely distinct from those of the southern traditions. Finally, the eastern territory encompasses two rather distinct traditions: the genres found in the oasis towns of the Turpan Depression, such as Pichan and Toqsun, are generally believed to be close varieties of the southern tradition, where the music in Qumul, farther to the east, is unique in its own blending of folk and ancient elements. The coalescence of these regional varieties into a higher order of national collectivity of Uyghur music in the modern era corresponds to what Gladney (1991, 314–319) calls the “ethnogenesis” of Uyghur national identity.4 The traditional Uyghur soundscape outlined above contrasts considerably from how the Uyghur are heard in official and popular Chinese representations. This section offers a glimpse into how the Uyghur sounds are listened to (and shut off) in modern China, as a crucial context for our understanding of how Uyghur musicians engage their social world through music and sound. Among other non-Han peoples, the Uyghur are routinely cast in a representational frame that stereotypes and promotes them as carefree entertainers, singing and dancing to music that is predominantly festive and amusing. This is thoroughly realized in the state’s totalitarian control of “minority” performing arts, achieved through concerted efforts to recontextualize their rich traditions and redefine their sounds. The “minority” body is construed primarily as musical and artistically skilled, producing music that is primarily joyful, uplifting, and easy to listen to, invoking instant, corporeal pleasure. Such innate musicality is related to a similarly inherent affinity to nature: the Uyghur and their music are often portrayed as possessing certain primordial passions that have bestowed them with a sense of innocence and brought them closer to the natural world. Accounts that connect the aborigines and other ethnic/racial groups inhabiting China’s geographic peripheries to nature abound in China’s well-documented past, often relegating their cultures to a kind of simplicity and primeval status that awaits enlightenment (see, for example, Harrell 1995; Hostetler 2001; Gladney 2004). As many have noted, such construction has offered convenient resources to reinvent modern China as an untroubled multiracial/ethnic modern nation with displayable cultural diversity, supplied by musically gifted yet politically subservient “minority” citizens who are—and sometimes only are— in a clichéd Chinese expression, “good at singing and dancing” (nengge shanwu). The inborn musicality evoked by this “motif of music-making minority” (Rees 2000, 23–27) serves as a discursive trope that is frequently understood in racial terms as biological and genetic.5 It articulates a stark contrast with the senses of historicity and refinement often attributed to the music traditions of the Han, a dialectical construction that pervades “minority” representations in China. These stereotypes and imaginaries also prescribe a range of acoustic

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identifiers and aural perspectives, through which the Uyghur and other non-Han peoples have been heard in everyday life and staged performances. A realization of such exoticization can be heard in the repertoire of post-1950s Chinese instrumental and vocal works written primarily by Han/Chinese composers, in musical and textual devices that distort and exoticize Uyghur music. These have ranged from programmatic references to the allure of women and remote landscapes, to the use of ersatz-Uyghur/“minority” scales, ornaments, rhythms, and forms to invoke an Orientalist sensation (Wong 2020). In no small part, Uyghur music serves as an aural Other in modern China. Hearing the Uyghur sound—and noise—has been a fundamental way many Chinese come to know their fellow citizens and imagine their ways of life, and to assert cultural hegemony. It is also against these minoritized sound constructs that most Uyghur musicians and audiences have struggled to plot a course to envision their own musical nation. The boundary between the Uyghur musical world and the effeminate “minority” sounds desired by the Chinese listeners was often negotiated in a dazzling variety of sounds that delineated Uyghur public spaces. Among these were the Uyghur record stores in urban centers, where the latest albums, long-lasting bestsellers, and outdated residue from the previous seasons were displayed on the jam-packed CD racks. Others were street stalls in outdoor or semi-outdoor bazar (bazaars), selling mostly pirated and bootleg copies. Most of these stores or stalls were equipped with at least a pair of loudspeakers and a TV screen, touting the most current songs and videos to customers, who would also pick their favorite items and request that the staff run viewing or listening trials. Knowledgeable staff often readily shared their professional comments on the albums and sometimes also circulated the latest news about the musicians and celebrities. Yet when a Han-looking person, like myself, turned up and walked into the store, a storekeeper would switch the music to one of Wang Luobin’s songs, usually a cover version by contemporary Chinese musicians known for their Xinjiang-themed repertoires, such as the neo-Orientalist singer Dao Lang (b. 1971), or sometimes the dance songs of Shehrizade, a girl band from Uzbekistan, whose sweeping popularity among the Chinese audience since c. 2005 has made their albums bestsellers among the “Xinjiang folk songs” in the Chinese market.6 Taxis represented a similar public space where the ethnic line was made audible. Some Uyghur drivers would tune their car audio to a random Chinese radio station as Han-looking passengers waved down their taxis. Oftentimes, soon after I had gotten in a taxi and started chatting—in Uyghur—with the driver, the audio would quietly be switched back to the original Uyghur song, talk show, or, occasionally, Islamic sermon (tebligh) the driver had been listening to.7 Uyghur-Han encounters sometimes sounded rather different under Xinjiang’s settler colonialism. One night a few years ago I hopped in a taxi after a 8

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gathering at a Uyghur friend’s home in Ürümchi’s southern downtown near Döng Köwrük (Ch. Erdaoqiao), a Uyghur neighborhood considered unsafe by many of the city’s Han settlers, who account for over 80 percent of the population in the provincial capital of the largely titular Uyghur “autonomous” region. After discovering that I was not a native, the taxi driver, whom I later learned was an Ürümchi-born Han whose parents had settled in Xinjiang in the midtwentieth century from the inner Chinese province of Gansu, began the conversation by warning me against hanging out there so late at night (it was about midnight on most Uyghur watches and clocks, which were set two hours behind China’s single official Beijing time). “You know,” he explained, somewhat hesitant at first, “we the Han people mostly live in separate areas in the north of the city, not as dirty and chaotic as here.” As we came to a red light and stopped, we heard loud Uyghur rock music pounding from the stereo of an approaching sedan in the adjacent lane. The taxi driver, apparently bothered by the perceived “noise,” glared at the four or five Uyghur young men jampacked in the rundown sedan, chatting and laughing, and said to me, “Look at them! These Uyghur ethnic people [weizu ren], see? You know, they’re basically Arab, like those in Afghanistan and Iraq. Their ethnicity has no hope [meiyou xiwang]— poor, chaotic, disorganized, like these two poor countries.” The traffic light then turned green, and we heard a piercing squeal from the sedan, which might have accelerated and braked abruptly, almost hitting the preceding car. Further agitated, the Han driver continued, “You know, these people hang out in the streets every night and day and can’t stay long for work. They got a problem sitting down and concentrating—they just aren’t like human beings. They only like to chat, play, and cut lamb meat.” The Uyghur sedan was then out of sight. “You know, they stink,” he resumed. Once I had two Han passengers who’d just jumped out of a Uyghur taxi right in front of mine. They complained that the Uyghur taxi was dirty, musty, and smelled like lamb meat. They couldn’t tolerate it and instead paid the fare and got off to catch my taxi. . . . Many Han passengers today would first glance at the driver before catching a taxi. . . . Even I, a local of Xinjiang, can’t tolerate the smell of lamb on their bodies. Before I got out, he concluded, “I really think that we should just draw an area on the map of Ürümchi and let the Uyghur run it themselves.”8 Sound (and noise) is a primary method of racial/ethnic recognition. Sounds bleeding from record and other stores are identifiers of ethnic boundaries. Language accents, vocal timbres, and even street sounds/noises may be heard through racial-ethnic categories to “make truth claims” (Eidshime 2019, 5) about the voice and the people who produce it—acousmatic assumptions that

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implicate the ways in which the Uyghur listen and are listened to in their homeland. A Uyghur mother from Kashgar once explained to me how parents would scare their naughty kids by saying, “Listen, the Han are coming” (on hearing approaching footsteps in the building or neighborhood).9 Most Uyghur learn, at a young age, to measure their comfort levels by, among other things, the music, language, and other sounds they hear in a shop, neighborhood, or other public spaces. The “color line” as embodied in sound, smell, and other experiences affects and defines the deepest layers of the “minority” social world in modern China. Meanwhile, the acoustic territories and their boundaries, both private and public, are also realized through everyday perceptions of noise and acoustic disorder—a “discursive borderline” that separates one kind of person, sound, or place from another and “ultimately reduces all of the ‘noncultural’ elements that cannot be folded into normative systems of meaning” (Novak 2015, 133). To the Han settlers and other Chinese individuals, Uyghur sounds are as much abject as they are desired. As Chávez (2017, 10) writes, noise “operates as an evaluative category for sounds that are, at best, considered culturally incomprehensible or, at worst, deemed to possess unassimilable and alien meanings thought to be of no social value.”10 The otherness inscribed on the “minority” bodies—as China’s raced subjects—and the sounds they produce have rendered a liminal space, a racialized social field (in the Bourdieusian sense) that is shaped by tactics of rejection and assimilation. The Uyghur are both interior and exterior to the Chinese national self, at once included and excluded, made audible and switched off. The loud Uyghur rock song played on the car stereo was not heard too differently from the squealing sound of the brakes, both of which, along with the unintelligible language they spoke and the unfamiliar styles of their music—as noise, disturbance, and nuisance—were unsuited to the effeminate soundscape concocted in “minority” stereotypes. It is in this space between the desired and the abject, between self and other, that many Uyghur find themselves in modern China. The Chinese northwest has been an exile destination for prisoners, demoted officials, and unwanted peoples throughout history. Today, the Uyghur territory continues to be the disposal site for China’s abandoned population, most of them impoverished peasants and low-skill laborers displaced from inland provinces, such as Sichuan and He’nan, as results of resettlement and forced migration. Lop Nur, a Uyghur town in the southeast, was made China’s nuclear weapon test base in the late 1950s, and radioactive wastes from the nuclear site have reportedly created severe ecological and physiological consequences (Schichor 2004, 145–149).11 On the ground, male Uyghur teenagers and children in inland Chinese cities have regularly been portrayed as despicable pickpockets and sources of crimes. Soon after the September 11 attacks in the 10

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United States in 2001, China declared its own “war on terror” to arrest, imprison, and execute Uyghur individuals labeled by the state as “terrorists”; acts of resistance, even symbolic, nonviolent ones, were rebranded as terrorism (Clarke 2018). Uyghur residents all over the country were subjected to harassment and unwarranted scrutiny, routinely denied access to hotels, passports, restaurants, and other basic needs and services (see Byler 2022). More recently, scores of Uyghur intellectuals, artists, and individuals from all walks of life were rounded up and held in mass detention camps established all across Xinjiang as China redoubled its effort to silence any dissent and exercise totalizing control of Uyghur social life (see Raza 2019). Innumerable families were destroyed as parents disappeared into the so-called reeducation camps and had their children taken away and put in boarding schools or orphanages. In one village in rural Yéngisar, a little over an hour south of Kashgar, as told to me by an overseas Uyghur who had recently returned from visiting her family in late 2018, every single adult in all but one household had been put in detention camps. She recalled the horror of being woken up in the middle of the night by the sound of heavily armed military police banging on the door and forcibly entering their house, with semiautomatic rifles pointing at her and her family.12 Many Uyghur were aware of being not only watched but also listened to in their everyday lives. Audiovisual recording cameras were installed in public transportation (including taxis) and even private vehicles and family houses. In late 2016 and early 2017, a number of Uyghur acquaintances of mine in Ili were ordered to report to their neighborhood police stations to have their voices recorded reading at various speeds and levels—besides scanning irises, taking headshots from multiple angles, and collecting their hair and blood samples. All these demands resulted in the gathering of biometric data to develop artificial intelligence capabilities through facial recognition, voice print, DNA sampling, and 3D identification imagery (see Leibold 2019; Chin and Bürge 2017) as China honed its techno-authoritarian tools. The ongoing mass incarceration, as well as its forced labor and family separation, also represents the latest episode in modern Chinese colonial management of the desired and the abject in its “minority” territories. In a study on the musical change during the “reeducation” campaign since around 2017, Anderson and Byler (2019) observe that the space for Uyghur traditional performance has been greatly diminished, replaced by the enforced learning of Chinese opera and patriotic “red” songs. Alongside the continued consumption of “minority” exoticism, the campaign marks a noticeable shift away from the exclusive multiculturalist paradigm. It replaces “even the state-curated ‘difference’ of happy, exoticized Uyghurs on stage”—the “permitted difference” since the 1950s—by a “Han nationalist vision” of culture, a symbolic violence that, the authors argue, seeks to erase the Uyghur national self. All these changes

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reflect a broader shift to what some have called China’s “second-generation” ethnic policies (Roche and Leibold 2020), which seeks to implement a “‘deep fusion’ of Turkic minorities into Chinese culture” (Byler 2019b) and make “cultural assimilation the central tenet,” in order to homogenize the Uyghur by forging “a collective consciousness of the Chinese nation” (Zhai 2021).13 This is realized also by the elimination of the Uyghur language in schools and other public spaces; the erasure of Islam and other sacred and secular aspects of Uyghur culture; as well as the hollowing out and uprooting of Uyghur identity (Grose 2021)—amounting to what many have called a cultural genocide.14 Meanwhile, the abject space is also readily a sexualized and much fetishized one. Contrary to the enticing “minority” female figure idealized in Chinese media and official representations, the Uyghur male body is demonized as violent, threatening, lazy, irascible, and terrorist-prone—traits that are synonymous with being premodern or non-modern, and that place them in the lower rung in the ethno-social hierarchy. Uyghur men are disdained as unkempt and stinky—as the Han taxi driver accused, “smell[ing] of lamb meat”—while Khoja Iparxan (1734–1788), the much-mythologized eighteenth-century Uyghur concubine of the Manchu emperor Qianlong (1711–1799), is widely romanticized as possessing natural scent on her body and is thus affectionately known in Chinese as Xiang Fei, the “fragrant concubine” (Millward 1994). The Uyghur manhood is visibly and aurally suppressed. “Good” Uyghur men appear cleanshaven, Chinese-speaking, relentlessly humorous and cheerful, servile, and, above all, possess good skills of “singing and dancing.” These are all well exemplified by the enormously famous Uyghur tenor Kérim (1940–2020) (respelled in Chinese as Kelimu), a veteran of the People’s Liberation Army’s Song and Dance Troupe (Zongzheng gewutuan) and known for his famous rendition of the aforementioned “Daban cheng de guniang.” In this much-circulated version, Kérim is heard singing in a comical voice with jaunty ornaments and large, somewhat jokey upward leaps improvised into the vocal line—features not heard in any version by Chinese singers I have come across.15 Kérim’s interpretation of these appropriated “Xinjiang folk songs” epitomizes the desired Uyghur masculinity in sound. In contrast, the Han taxi driver described above was menaced physically by the heedless male Uyghur driver and aurally by the blasting of Uyghur rock enjoyed by the male passengers, both destabilizing and hostile, and thus should be dealt with.16 Violence and repression also transpired in sound—and its absence. I arrived in Kashgar in early July 2009, around the time the violence in Ürümchi broke out,17 on a trip to study the local music traditions in Merkit, Yarkand, and a few other oasis towns in the south, and to see Kashgar one last time before the demolition of this centuries-old Central Asian town in an urban development project to rebuild Kashgar in order to, so the government said, “prevent the 12

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danger in the event of an earthquake.” A vast majority of the old town would be razed and rebuilt in the subsequent months, and most of its Uyghur residents would be displaced to “earthquake-resistant” apartment units built on the outskirts of the city. A small part of it, located on a small hill near the Ferris wheel, would be retained as a ticketed tourist site. Similar to other Uyghur old cities (kona sheher) in the neighboring oasis towns, Kashgar’s ancient old town had already been swamped by the ever-expanding Han districts in the south and southeast; Uyghur businesses, buildings, and neighborhoods were largely invisible on the latest city maps sold at bookstores, all of which were printed in Chinese. Almost immediately after the Ürümchi violence began on July 5, Kashgar was effectively locked down. Transportation halted, and the very few long-distance buses that had still been running were not permitted to disembark at downtown stations. Dozens of military trucks were deployed to the heart of the city and stationed in front of the ancient Héytgah (Id Kah) mosque. All major roads leading to Héytgah were closed with paramilitary police armed with machine guns stationed at every major intersection. Internet access was cut off and would not resume until after almost a year. The medieval Central Asian town was brimming with tension. To Kashgar’s Uyghur residents, the lockdown was experienced also as an aural event. Most of the Han businesses and restaurants were shuttered; the terrified Han settlers and visitors, worrying that they would be attacked by their imagined Uyghur “rioters,” were then nowhere to be seen—or heard—in the streets. The sounds of the zurnay double-reed pipe and the naghra paired iron drums, formerly a major part of Kashgar’s street soundscape, all disappeared. Mosques were all ordered to close, and calls to prayer, which had still been broadcast from the loudspeakers at Héytgah’s minarets to the enveloped neighborhoods on the previous Friday, were then completely silenced. Wedding, birthday, and circumcision ceremonies were all suspended, as were their music and other sounds. Tourist shows at the pricey, neo-traditional Uyghur restaurants and hotels were forced to stop, because there was no audience—the rich Han tourists from inland provinces had canceled their trips, and many of the Han settlers had joined the call to boycott Uyghur restaurants and businesses. Meanwhile, perhaps because the Han were almost completely out of sight—and sound—there seemed to be more Uyghur kids playing in the old town’s labyrinth of small alleys, delightfully chasing a half-inflated football near a small plaza full of mudbrick debris and dirt mounds from a row of recently bulldozed houses. At an interval of about fifteen to twenty minutes, from early in the morning until late at night, this rare tranquility was disrupted by the deafening sirens of the patrolling armored vehicles and the blaring loudspeakers mounted on “propaganda” vans and trucks that had been driving around every major road in the city. The broadcast—mostly in Uyghur but occasionally also in Chinese—condemned

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the “three evil forces” (üch xil küch) of “terrorism” (térrorluq), “religious extremism” (diniy radikalliq), and “separatism” (bölgünchilik), and repeated the doctrines of ethnic solidarity and the absolute leadership of the Communist Party. The sound was mind-numbing and inescapable, even if one chose to stay home. Regular programs on almost all television and radio channels were replaced with uninterrupted airing of “important speeches” by the “leaders.” Rehearsals of Kashgar’s “song and dance” troupe were all called off, and musicians, dancers, and other members were mandated to attend political lessons and meetings instead to ensure that they “think correctly.” One day I had lunch with a professional musician from the troupe who had been giving me singing and instrument lessons a little before the onset of the lockdown. Looking a little tired, he grumbled that he had just finished three enervating hours of political lessons that morning. Luckily, he said, their shuji (party secretary) decided to give them a break in the afternoon and asked them to just “go home and watch TV” for three more hours (all channels had been broadcasting propaganda programs and films). The abuse of music and sound intensified during the “reeducation” campaign in recent years as China tightened its grip on the Uyghur. Former inmates and staff members of the mass internment camps recounted strategies of brainwashing, humiliation, and torture through the enforced singing and memorization of propaganda “red” songs and the (Chinese) national anthem, as well as the chanting of slogans that “give thanks to the Communist Party,” “condemning the ‘three evil forces’ of separatism, extremism and terrorism,” and “wishing long life to President Xi Jinping.” Those who failed to comply or fulfill the expectations were reportedly denied food, put through waterboarding and other more serious means of torture.18 Meanwhile, as testimonies of abuse and persecution began to surface, the state produced a number of music-themed “minority” propaganda films, such as Taklimakan’s Drumbeat (Uy. Teklimakandiki naghra sadasi; Ch. Takelamagan de gusheng; 2017) and, particularly, the musical film The Wings of Songs (Uy. Qanatlanghan naxsha sadasi; Ch. Gesheng de chibang; 2019) in an attempt to counter the allegations of ethno-cultural cleansing.19 Key Uyghur musical scenes in the latter, in particular, are choreographed in a kind of faux-Bollywood song and dance fantasy, spotlighting clean-shaven male and alluring female artists. Similar audiovisual tactics are used throughout both films in their plots and narrative frames, speaking to the perpetuation of post-1950s “minority” imaginaries in the propaganda films today.

“Minority” Music Scholarship The field of “minority” studies has been built to serve strategic political goals after 1949, deeply intertwined with ethnic politics and the Communist Party’s 14

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governing needs. The state has invested immensely in the research and documentation of Uyghur performing arts since the early 1950s. The highest-profile, systematic ethnographic project to collect and study Uyghur music took place soon after the Communist takeover. Conceptualized and masterminded by the eminent Uyghur Communist cadre Seypidin Ezizi (1915–2003), a former top official of the East Turkestan Republic (1944–1949) then co-opted to become Xinjiang’s first vice president after 1949, the project set out to “collect and rescue” the allegedly endangered music of muqam, the Kashgar-based southern tradition commonly believed to be the most elaborate and extensive among the several regional muqam varieties. Led primarily by Han musicologists dispatched from music conservatories and research institutes in Beijing, the decade-long research program began in the early 1950s to make audio recordings, initially on magnetic wire and later on tapes, of local musicians. The most notable of these musicians was a seventy-year-old guru named Turdi Axun (sometimes spelled Turdaxun) (1881–1956), a seventh-generation master musician of muqam. Turdi Axun was said to be among the very few surviving muqamshunas (or muqamchi, master musicians) who could perform the presumably “complete” set of twelve muqam suites from memory. The project was reconstructive in nature, engaging itself in a search for the idealized, prototypical tradition of muqam that had presumably been lost yet scattered in a variety of folk contexts—a hypothesis still enthusiastically embraced by many musicologists today.20 Among the earliest Han musicologists to conduct extensive research on Uyghur music was Wan Tongshu (b. 1923), who had studied with the distinguished music historian Yang Yinliu (1899–1984) at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. Wan was recruited, in the early 1950s, to lead a team of fieldworkers to survey Uyghur music and create extensive recordings and transcriptions from master musicians, including Turdi Axun and his son Hoshur Axun from the south, as well as Rozi Tembur (1892–1957) and Abduweli Jarullayof (1910–1998) from the Ili valley, among a few others. Despite their musicological training, these visiting Han “specialists” were near complete outsiders of traditional Uyghur music. Their work was conceived primarily along the line of salvage ethnography, to “rescue” an allegedly dying tradition. Its outcome— textual records, transcriptions, and audio recordings—was, at least initially, envisioned to be anthological in nature, to fill a major gap in mid-century music scholarship, that of the music of the “minority” nationalities. Wan Tongshu remembered Turdi Axun as a “medium-sized elderly man, wearing a doppa skull cap, with long beard, bushy eyebrows, and a pair of small yet deep and shining eyes,” arriving, with his satar, in mid-July 1951 for the first time to Dihwa (or Dihua, lit., “to civilize,” the former name of Ürümchi) from his hometown of Yéngisa (Wan Tongshu 1997, 38). The decision to invite these

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musicians to Dihwa was Seypidin’s; he had met Turdi Axun and watched him play in Kashgar in 1946 (Seypidin Ezizi 2001, 19–20).21 Wan recalled that Turdi Axun and his son stayed in an apartment unit near the Third Hospital (presently Dostluq doxturxanisi, the “Friendship Hospital”), not far from Seypidin’s residence at Shinjang uniwérsitéti (Xinjiang University), near which Wan stayed. The recording sessions started in mid-August and lasted until early September, in a recording studio at the city’s broadcasting station. A widely reprinted photo shows that Turdi Axun and Hoshur Axun kneeled on a carpeted floor, performing in front of a standing microphone.22 Wan noted that he relied heavily on translators and other assistants on the ground throughout the project, and his main role included operating the machines and transcription. The research team, he said, worked around Turdi Axun’s rest and praying schedules, and they hired a Uyghur domestic helper to prepare food for them (the master reportedly enjoyed her cooking and was not pleased after the domestic helper departed).23 After this initial recording (known among the insiders today as the “number one recording”), the working group invited Turdi Axun on a second trip to Dihwa, then renamed Ürümchi, over the years 1954 and 1955 for more recording and interview sessions to supplement the “missing tunes and uncertain parts” and to transcribe the lyrics. Wan remembered that Turdi Axun had already not been in good health in 1954; his memory of the muqam songs was also significantly compromised. The master passed away in the summer of 1956. Soon afterward, in 1957, the musicologists of the research team went on an unprecedented three-month field trip to remote towns and villages in the south, where, they believed, the most elaborate and authentic forms of muqam had been preserved. The much-respected poet Nim Shéhit (1906–1971), who would later be tortured to death during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), was recruited to join the team to help translate the Chaghatay text into Uyghur.24 The project concluded with the completion of approximately nineteen hours of audio recordings of muqam songs and instrumental music in 1958. The recordings, which until recently had been “closely guarded by the Urumqi Bureau of Culture” (Trebinjac 2001) and cautiously kept away from public access, reveal a premodern soundscape that contrasts sharply with today’s orchestrated and theatricalized muqam performances.25 A monumental twovolume transcription of the vocal melodies was published in 1960. The singleline melodies were notated in staff notation without lyrics (Uyghur xeliq klassik muzikisi: On ikki muqam).26 An initial draft of the lyrics was released and circulated internally in 1964. The lyrics would not be published until after more than two decades later, when they appeared separately as a poetic work (Qurban Barat 1986).27 Turdi Axun’s substantial involvement in the project and his compliance with Communist cadres earned him a brief political career: he had been 16

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“elected,” in 1954, a delegate of the People’s Political Consultative Conference, two years before he passed away in 1956.28 The research project is reminiscent of early European models of comparative musicology and the Soviet folklore paradigm in two major ways. First, it embraces a scientism that considers musical sound as collectable objects, to be discovered and gathered in the field and brought back home—often to colonial centers—for laboratory analyses. Indeed, one of the most common types of research produced out of recordings of Turdi Axun and other master musicians is machine-generated tone measurements conducted by Beijing- and Ürümchibased Han musicologists to find out about the temperament and modal theories of Uyghur music (see, for example, Han Baoqiang 2004; Wang Wenjing and Zhou Ji 2009). Second, rarely has research been conceived as an end in itself. Musical elements identified in early ethnographic research were explicitly utilized in new compositions that served a variety of political purposes. Among the earliest of these was the production of Xelq kommunisi yaxshi (The people’s commune is good) in 1965 to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the founding of the Autonomous Region. Described as a “new large-scale song-and-dance muqam” (Ch. xin mukamu da gewu), this work made extensive use of musical elements from Oshshaq, one of the twelve muqam, recast with political themes. Another major production was the Uyghur adaptation of the Chinese “revolutionary model opera” Qizil chiragh (Ch. Hongdeng ji; The Red Lantern) in the early 1970s, where melodic materials from several muqam suites were employed (Wong 2015). Musical elements identified in research were also explicitly employed in modern Chinese compositions. Musicologist Zhou Ji (1943–2008), for example, composed a multi-movement symphonic work titled Qiuci guyün (Ancient tunes of Qiuci) (1987). It incorporates styles of Uyghur music he studied in Kucha, which purportedly comprises remnants of the music of the ancient Qiuci state (c. 111–648 CE) as documented in the repertoire of banquet music (Ch. yanyüe) at imperial courts (see Zhou Ji 2008a). Its political agenda notwithstanding, the muqam project has played no small role in creating Uyghur music as a topic of serious academic study—to be listened to, analyzed, and studied as music with internal logics rather than heard incidentally as barbaric noise. It is true that, in the broadest sense, the project is not bereft of a broader colonial intent to identify and name the newfound objects of the alien land. The music of the Uyghur and other non-Han peoples also continues to be heard as a mixture of noise and half-intelligible music against the changing aural preferences in modern China over the subsequent decades of musical encounters. Yet what the project inaugurated is a new investigative lens, one that would allow compassionate listeners to approach Uyghur musical expressivity with what Cruz (1999, 3) calls “ethnosympathy,” a “humanitarian pursuit of the inner world of distinctive and collectively

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classifiable subjects.” To be clear, this newly acquired adventurous or intellectual passion for “minority” music would not put Uyghur music on par with its Chinese or Western counterparts under the social Darwinist framework and its colonial application in modern China; nor would it diminish the aggressive assimilation of the “minorities” into the modern Chinese nation as subaltern citizens. What it has brought about, instead, is a wealth of vocabularies, interpretive structures, and connecting threads that have laid important ground for Uyghur identity construction and nationalist pursuits in the subsequent decades. An example to be explored in chapter 3 is what has been called the canonization of On ikki muqam, which presents itself as a direct outcome of the project and simultaneously a musical icon of the Uyghur nation. It is therefore of little surprise to learn that the project was masterminded and engineered by a top Uyghur official who had, only a few years back, been fighting the Chinese (of the Kuomintang) for his Turkic country and peoples. Meanwhile, to a nontrivial number of Han musicologists, research on “minority” music continues to serve a larger purpose. The integration of Uyghur music into the modern writing of Chinese music history, for example, has served a political mission to substantiate the assumed connection between Uyghur music and the music of ancient China. For example, compare the two music histories by the music historian Yang Yinliu, written respectively before and after 1949. In the first one, Zhongguo yinyue shigang (An outline of Chinese music history), completed in 1944 and published in 1953, Uyghur music is almost absent, except for the brief mention of the musicians and instruments of hui bu (Muslim regions/tribes) at the eighteenth-century Manchu court. In contrast, in the second, Zhongguo gudai yinyue shigao (A draft history of ancient Chinese music), completed from 1959 to 1977 and published in 1981, a significant number of contemporary Uyghur musical genres, examples, and instruments are included. Muqam, for example, is categorized and discussed as a genre of gewu yinyue (singing-and-dancing music) under the Ming era (1368– 1644), based on the assumption that muqam had been collected, compiled, and composed by Princess Amanisaxan (1534–1567) and Yüsüp Qadirxan (1572–?) of the Yarkand khanate, which, despite being geographically disconnected and historically irrelevant, happened to be contemporaneous with China’s Ming era. By the same token, in a much-circulated audio anthology Zhongguo gudian yinyue xinshang (An appreciation of Chinese classical music) (2007), an excerpt from Oshshaq (listed as “Wuxiake muqam: The first dastan interlude”) is included as one of the thirteen “set pieces” in the Ming volume. Along this line, Chinese-language research on Uyghur music since the 1950s has sought to locate similarities between Uyghur muqam and the millenniumold banquet music of the ancient Tang courts as documented in historical writings, mural paintings, and archaeological findings. In specific terms, these include 18

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(1) the metrically defined tripartite structure of the muqam suite as connected to that of the ancient daqu (lit., “large pieces”); (2) the instrumental piece merghul (an instrumental postlude that expands on the thematic materials of its preceding muqam song) as equivalent to the jiequ section of the daqu suites; (3) Uyghur modal theories as related to various ancient Chinese music theories, notably the concept of wudan qisheng (five modes and seven pitches); (4) Uyghur plucked lutes, such as the rawap, as pertaining to the various types of ancient pipa seen in mural paintings; (5) Uyghur bowed strings ghéjek and satar as influenced by or connected to various Chinese hu bowed fiddles; (6) Uyghur folk songs as genealogically linked to ancient Chinese melodies; and the list goes on.29 Others have also worked to reconstruct ancient (Chinese) compositions that are believed to have existed in history using elements of Uyghur music collected through fieldwork.30 Muqam also joined other Han and non-Han musical genres that are considered by musicologists as “living fossils” (huo huashi) to be listened to as echoes of the ancient past. Envisioned as a schematic that validates Chinese music as having a long, unbroken history, the scholarly discourse of “living fossils” invites a largely pseudo-archaeological approach to uncover the correspondences between the musical details of living traditions and the written or visual records of ancient music (notations, mural paintings, etc.). Living traditions that are recognized as “living fossils”—notably the “ancient music” of the Naxi; nanyin “southern sound” of southeastern Fujian; and Uyghur muqam, among others—appeared as “modern savages” or “contemporary predecessors” (Ó Briain 2018, 40, quoting Salemink 2008, 175) and are used to construct a linear music history with illustratable music examples. In the case of muqam, this is often achieved also by downplaying the less ancient Islamic and Turkic/Persian influences on Uyghur music: champions of this discourse work to historicize Uyghur music through a multiculturalist framework that highlights hybridity and impurity, one that contrasts starkly with the monolithic construction of Chinese civilization. One recent ethnography on the local muqam genre in Khotan goes as far as suggesting that the musical instruments of the ancient Buddhist Khotan (Ch. Yutian) Kingdom have undergone “no essential change” despite centuries of Islamic influences (Batur Barat 2014, 35–44). In research fostered primarily by Chinese-language sources, Uyghur music often appears as subsidiary and is often studied only through and in its Chinese connection—to substantiate claims, for example, about the evolution of Chinese instruments and genres. All these speak to how the writing of Chinese music history has emerged through encountering and maneuvering the music of the non-Han peoples in the modern time. Meanwhile, the frame of cultural enlightenment and Han paternalism persists. Han researchers who study Uyghur music are often portrayed as expert

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helpers whose research and long-term residence in Xinjiang—often framed as sacrifices that are praiseworthy—have played vital roles in rescuing Uyghur music from extinction and promoting Uyghur music to the outside world. The story of musicologist Wan Tongshu, for example, is featured in numerous publications and serves as the central theme in the state-produced twenty-twoepisode TV drama Muqam bilen ötken künler (or Mukamu wangshi; Past events of mukam) (2009). Included on the list of productions to celebrate the People’s Republic’s sixtieth anniversary, the drama portrays Wan as a passionate lover of muqam who sacrificed his health, career, and a son in order to rescue the Uyghur tradition from disappearing.31 In other publications, Turdi Axun was quoted as saying, at a meeting in Ürümchi in 1951 after being presented a “Chairman Mao badge,” that “now Chairman Mao sent people here to learn muqam from me; I’ll gladly teach you.” “This is the fortune of the entire country,” his son Hoshur Axun continued. “This is also my fortune. I’m very thankful” (Liu Feng 1987 [1951]). The same is true of the respected Han composermusicologist Zhou Ji, whose lifelong devotion to the research on Uyghur music history and theory not only produced some of the most enduring influences in the field but also earned him high-level official approbation for his efforts leading to the UNESCO proclamation of muqam as one of the Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity in 2005. The acclaim enjoyed by these Han scholars has no parallel among Uyghur musicologists, as their research is portrayed as altruistic devotion to the advancement of Uyghur music and culture.32 Uyghur musicians and scholars have less untroubled views about Chinese scholarship of Uyghur music. A musicologist at a university in Ürümchi once grumbled that many Han scholars who study Uyghur music, including those who were born in Xinjiang, could not even speak one full sentence in Uyghur but were nevertheless permitted to complete their theses and publish on Uyghur music. “Isn’t it a joke?” he asked, with a despising smile. “They like to brag about what they did in the field and came back showing the photos they took with so-and-so,” he proceeded, referring to his Han graduate students and colleagues, “but indeed they know nothing about what they talk about.” I asked if there is any Uyghur graduate student studying Uyghur music. “Very few; there’s currently none,” he replied, “because most Uyghur students were not able to even pass the entrance test on the English language.”33 Most high-profile publications on Uyghur music appear in Chinese-language journals and are authored by Han scholars, many of whom consider themselves—and are sometimes also considered in the Euro-American academia—as native scholars studying yet another local “Chinese” musical tradition. Han scholars with a lifelong commitment to studying Uyghur music with near-native linguistic competency and cultural awareness, such as Zhou Ji, among a handful of others, are 20

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anomalies rather than norms. A good amount of this research, in contrast, was conducted through short- or medium-term data-collecting excursions rather than lengthy field immersion, by Han scholars affiliated with official research units and academic institutions in Ürümchi, Beijing, Shanghai, or other major Chinese cities. Most of these scholars came in small groups and traveled across towns in a rental Jeep or off-road vehicle. Often speaking no Uyghur (or any local language), they relied heavily on local non-Han officials of the Cultural Bureaus as informants for contact and translation, and to arrange for musicians in town to perform music at organized sessions specially tailored for them to make audiovisual recordings and “collect” other details of interest. More generously funded state projects, which involved slightly longer stays in the field, would also recruit local Uyghur scholars or advanced graduate students as assistant-informants and translators to accompany the Han researchers over lengthier, multisited trips. Monetary reimbursement was often involved in these officially organized research trips, in order for local musicians to be compensated for their time and effort. This was sometimes problematic. In mid-2005, on a trip to study local muqam traditions in Turpan, I visited a senior musician, whom I will call Turmemet, in a village on the outskirts of Pichan, an oasis town in the vicinity of Turpan, a little over 250 miles east of Ürümchi. Turmemet had just turned seventy but certainly looked young for his age. He recounted that a group of Han musicologists, probably from Beijing or Shanghai, had recently visited the village. The local Cultural Bureau organized a meshrep, a traditional musical and social gathering that had lately been appropriated as a tourist attraction, for the visitors.34 He was among a small group of musicians who had been invited to perform for the visiting Han scholars, for which they were given a modest reimbursement. For the past few years, Turmemet had served as a local organizer for these “samplers” performing sessions specially tailored for Han musicians, composers, and scholars to “collect,” be exposed to, and inspired by “authentic” Uyghur music—a kind of scholarly tourism that had been popular in “minority” territories across China. Turmemet would bring together musicians from nearby villages upon receiving notice from the local government about upcoming visits. A few years earlier, Turmemet recalled, one of the elderly musicians in his group had been diagnosed with a critical eye disease that required immediate surgery. The musician could not afford the costly surgery and demanded 1,000 yuan (about $120 at that time) from a Han scholar—a high-ranking provincial-level government official who had previously made numerous recordings of them— to help pay the medical bill. The scholar refused and was reportedly displeased with the request. In retribution, Turmemet said, his group was dropped from the list of musicians selected by the Cultural Bureau for an overseas performance

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tour in 2000.35 Anecdotes like these are not rare; they speak to the deeply entrenched issues of ethnographic authority and power imbalance in China’s “minority” music scholarship.

Of Spies and Thieves The research for this book began around the turn of the new century, since which time I have made many trips to various locations in the Uyghur territory, as well as a number of specific visits to Uyghur musicians and other informants in Kazakhstan, the United States, Hong Kong, Germany, Turkey, and China. The analyses and findings presented in this book reflect my musical and intellectual encounters with Uyghur music during the first two decades of the twenty-first century, a period in which ethnic conflicts, state violence, and institutional racism have escalated, resulting in brutal suppression and unprecedented control of social life in the Uyghur homeland. My informants, teachers, and other acquaintances were predominantly Uyghur males; admittedly, my findings here reflect a primarily masculine musical world that has been accessible to me, a male ethnographer, during fieldwork. It did not take long for me to realize the extent to which my research was implicated also in the colonial legacy of Chinese scholarship on Uyghur music and its trajectory of power. I also came to have a better understanding of the extent to which aspects of my identity and dispositions had been shaped by the prejudices and biases cultivated in the Chinese and Sinophone worlds. The ethno-racial relations so often evoked during my fieldwork have prompted me to address my own subject positions, real or perceived, and to bring the “new roles of fieldworkers in the lingering shadows of colonialism” (Cooley 1997, 9) under critical evaluation. I was fully aware of the fact that my race/ethnicity and perceived identity might have prompted my informants to interact with me or respond to my inquiries in one way over another. Despite not being a Chinese citizen nor having been born in China, my East Asian appearance (which does not pass as Uyghur) might have afforded me some level of security clearance not normally enjoyed by my Uyghur friends. At the ubiquitous security checkpoints set up since the Ürümchi violence in 2009, for example, where all Uyghur and most other non-Han were singled out to surrender their mobile phones for their contents to be checked and scanned, Han-looking individuals like myself were often asked to simply show or scan their IDs or passports, sometimes not at all, a privilege that contrasted starkly with the humiliation suffered by the Uyghur. Meanwhile, my research in the Xinjiang also attracted some level of attention from local governments, most of which saw it as an opportunity to frame 22

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my learning of Uyghur music along the propaganda line as exemplary of the “harmonious ethnic relationship” between Han and Uyghur. Local newspapers and magazines, for example, featured me in news reports, in which my acquaintance with a master musician was described by a journalist as “composing a song of (ethnic) solidarity in the new era.”36 On the other hand, I also grew used to requests from my Uyghur music or language teachers to play music and sometimes also to speak Uyghur publicly to a mass audience at banquets and gatherings and for media and local cadres. These occasions were often a source of pride for my Uyghur teachers and perhaps also served as protection against official scrutiny. Meanwhile, I experienced the state’s pervasive surveillance across all spectrums of my life in the field, most evidently in the form of interrogation at hotels, field sites, and sometimes also checkpoints and police stations— relatively mild tactics of harassment of foreigners that have become increasingly routine in recent years. A few years ago, I was invited to join a Noruz (Nowruz) new year celebration in a village about thirty miles southeast of Ghulja. My presence in the otherwise all-Uyghur event momentarily caught the attention of the paramilitary police, which had apparently been heavily present in all major public Uyghur events since the Ürümchi violence in 2009. Upon my arrival, two young uniformed officers were dispatched to check my ID and the photos and videos on my camera. They alerted their supervisors, who further questioned me about my presence and took pictures of me and my ID and passport. I was let go after about fifteen minutes. Over the next hour or so, three other pairs of officers, both uniformed and in plain clothes, came to me to repeat the exact same procedure. As a Uyghur acquaintance who had been with me on the trip said on our way back to the city, the police tried to bother me as much as they could so that I would stay away and leave by myself.37 To be clear, disturbances and interrogations like this, despite being routine during my fieldwork, were trivial and had been relatively inconsequential compared to the Uyghur experience of living under totalizing surveillance and control. Even before the age of today’s omnipresent facial recognition cameras, tracking software, and other high-tech monitoring systems, the on- and offline activities of most Uyghur at the beginning of the 2000s had already been under close monitoring. An acquaintance of mine was taken into police custody to discover that all his email correspondence had been printed out and dumped in front of him as evidence of his “crimes.”38 Musicians were constantly on high alert: a single borderline sensitive word in a performance or song, when perceived as politically subversive, could land the musicians and the people around them in jail. Even the most revered and respected artists were not exempt from such terror; no one was untouchable. Open expression of discontent or even

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grievance was rarely an option even before the mass internment camps and “reeducation” campaign of recent years. I visited a musician again more than a year after I had made audiovisual recordings of his performance at a private gathering, partly to give him a copy of the recording—an ethnographic habit I maintained wherever possible. After listening to the recording seriously for a few minutes, he bent over and, in a lowered voice, asked me not to give or send him the recording. I asked why. “The lyrics in one of the songs we sang could be a little problematic,” he almost whispered, referring to a couple of sacred references in the lyrics. “Let’s wait a bit to see how things look. You know what it means.”39 The most unnerving is the constant fear of being watched by people you might or might not know who are working as state agents, and the persistent need to proactively prove yourself innocent and practice self-control in the face of humiliation and injustice. I witnessed or was told numerous times about my interviewees, out of fear or obligation, or both, reporting to their bashliq (superior), police stations, and/or neighborhood security chief before or after giving me an interview, or being visited or interrogated by security officers if they did not do so. This was particularly the case soon after the intensified surveillance following the Ürümchi violence in 2009, and certainly in recent years. Some refused to give further interviews or simply to meet again; others were silent in our interviews or became extremely cautious of including outsiders in their private lives. Since 2017, many Uyghur have eliminated their social media accounts or deleted foreign contacts (including me). The threat of reprisal was also felt outside China by overseas Uyghur who feared for the safety of their families and friends at home, particularly those who courageously spoke out and testified against the mass incarceration; some Uyghur scholars also chose to publish anonymously (see, for example, Anonymous 2021; Anderson and Byler 2019). In late 2009 I interviewed a renowned vocalist whom I had already known for a few years in her apartment in a Uyghur neighborhood in southern Ürümchi. I generally avoided recording interviews, which had clearly been intimidating to most Uyghur interviewees. Instead, I mostly limited myself to using a notepad, reserving audiovisual recordings for music performances after obtaining explicit permission to do so. After being served tea and dried fruits, as I was getting ready to start my first question I noticed a small MP3 audio recorder on the side table. “May I record our conversation?” the singer asked, retrieving the recorder and trying to turn it on. I was taken a little aback and asked her why it was necessary. “I’d like to listen to our conversation again later to improve my Chinese,” she replied. It was quite evident to me (and perhaps to her too) that what she said could not be true, because our conversation was primarily in Uyghur (unless at times I was unable to find the right expressions), and indeed 24

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she sometimes spoke more authentically accented Mandarin than I did. In the next hour or so—the MP3 recorder was on the whole time—she remained in absolute silence whenever topics that were remotely sensitive were brought up, pretending she did not understand my questions. I later recounted this incident to a Uyghur academic (who was also a friend of the singer). He postulated that the recording was likely a way to protect herself against potential troubles and to prove her innocence should she be questioned about her meeting with a foreigner. The ubiquitous surveillance also brought about a deep sense of distrust for ethnography. My Uyghur language proficiency and invested interest in Uyghur music and culture—both rare among the Han, especially those of my age— have at times invited mixed receptions. Most of my new acquaintances were curious and confused about my millet (ethnicity or nationality), a primary identification in Uyghur societies. My non-native Uyghur accent frequently led some to speculate if I was a Kazakh or Uzbek, or, in more than a few cases, a min kao han (lit., “minorities” educated in the Han language), referring to Uyghur who attended Chinese-language schools and thus were not fluent in their mother tongue, as differentiated from Uyghur who attended Uyghurlanguage schools, who were known as min kao min (see Grose 2014).40 I sometimes responded, jokingly, that I might as well be a han kao min (a Han educated in a “minority” language)—which was a nonentity, as no Han children would attend Uyghur-language schools. That there was no such thing as han kao min speaks further to the power imbalance. Meanwhile, the imprint of Han songwriter-folklorists as song thieves benefiting from the music they collected—and as spies seeking to collect intelligence—was deeply felt in the field. In late 2010, the discussion forum on the webpage of the Uyghur American Association, a Washington, D.C.–based Uyghur rights advocacy organization, publicized a talk I was about to give at the University of Michigan’s Center for Chinese Studies on the topic of “minority” representation in Chinese music. My critique of musical exoticism and cultural exploitation was unambiguous in the abstract that had been reposted on the webpage. An anonymous commenter on the forum nonetheless described me as “maybe No2 wangnobin” (which I believe meant “perhaps another Wang Luobin”).41 Not only did this comment invoke issues of ethnographic authority and cultural ownership as described earlier; it also hinted at how scholarly practices in the field are perceived to be akin to the state’s employment of pseudo-ethnographic approaches and techniques to spy on the Uyghur and other peoples. More recently, since around 2016, in the so-called Pairing Up and Becoming Family campaign, the government assigned Han individuals to live in Uyghur homes and pose as their “paired relatives,” with the unspoken intention that they would spy on the Uyghur and report any “illegal behaviors”

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back to the government. Han men were reportedly assigned to stay with and sleep in the same beds as Uyghur women (Fernando 2019). Meanwhile, many Uyghur were skeptical of any Han or non-Uyghur who appeared to be overly sympathetic to the Uyghur cause.42 Once at a dinner with one of my Uyghur instrument teachers and his wife near their home in southern Ürümchi, I pressed them to tell me about a Uyghur musician who had been persecuted for his alleged involvement in so-called separatism. My teacher, already half drunk, suddenly paused and looked into my eyes: “How do I know you don’t have a tape recorder in your backpack?”43 On another occasion, a Uyghur journalist from the Ili valley whom I had recently met was similarly explicit when our conversation turned to an issue about political expression in Uyghur songs. “I won’t tell you this,” she said, in a rather unfriendly tone. “You aren’t reliable even if you’re a Hong Konger.”44 Another Uyghur friend was even more upfront and asked if I was a U.S. agent after I had pressed him to tell me more stories about a politically controversial musician.45 Meanwhile, many of my informants were at least anxious about our contact bringing them potential troubles, and they were either silent or equivocal in their responses, or sometimes they simply avoided me. On one occasion, I intended to interview a musician about the music and drama of the 1960s and 1970s. He declined my initial request for an interview and explained to a common acquaintance who had introduced me to him—and who later recounted this to me—that “you know, this guy came from America and he’s a Hong Konger, and he wanted to know about the Cultural Revolution . . . I really wouldn’t want to have people from the police department come to me afterwards.”46 To many whose risk of persecution was real and imminent, the line between ethnography and surveillance was precariously thin. The deep senses of paranoia and vulnerability implicated in their reactions raised my consciousness about colonial ethnography and prompted me to question the power relations between the researcher and the researched in the modern Chinese scholarship on non-Han music. Not only that, as a cultural outsider, I might lack the authentic experience to be fully sympathetic with the Uyghur plight. It was also abundantly clear that there was scarcely room for me to be received in the field as yet another curious, innocent foreigner, or a dispassionate analytical observer who was not in the least identified with the oppressor. I ask how ethnographers like myself, against decades of Chinese colonial scholarship on the non-Han peoples—as reflected in publications still widely cited or quoted, or otherwise implicated in field encounters and practices—might conduct ethnography in ways that would at least address the power relations or explore decolonizing strategies. I found myself increasingly being pursued by what Hagedorn (2001, 38) calls a “dual sense of responsibility and guilt,” and developing “anticolonial 26

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friendship” (Byler 2022) with some of my Uyghur acquaintances. Dismayed by the worsening crisis and my inability to offer any relief, I began to explore ways to address my own subject position in the field and the feeling of guilt developed every time I heard about the grief and anguish of my Uyghur acquaintances. Some questioned how human beings could treat fellow human beings like that; others asked why the Uyghur case had not been taken seriously by the Americans and the West, who, many Uyghur believed, could but were reluctant to make a difference. I did not know the answer to these questions and was often left wordless. It was less about the gifts that I brought on every trip, which had ranged from small electronics to medicines and supplements, or about offering to pay restaurant bills, tickets, and reimbursements whenever appropriate. It was also not exactly about committing to serve as an advocate for the Uyghur cause or confronting anti-Uyghur racism and prejudice in my own communities. Rather, it was the practicing of a kind of vulnerability that I hoped would, idealistically, redress the colonial relationship inherited and implied in my ethnography. It was, among other things, about being exposed to a range of misplacements in the field: being mocked for my weird Uyghur accent and all the nonsensical or wrong expressions I used; being confounded and getting lost in the Uyghur symbolic worlds, always learning and lagging behind; being judged based on my race/ethnicity and nationality; being suspected of working as a spy or a “song thief,” or both; being rejected and excluded; being, just like many Uyghur, always alert to the ubiquitous surveillance and the risk of being detained or arrested while learning to lead a normal life in the field—all the feelings of being out of place much more amply experienced by my Uyghur friends on a daily basis in their homeland. At the same time, the trust I fostered over such ethnographic vulnerability and political alliance—which many Uyghur had rarely seen from Han scholars, let alone spying agents—afforded me access to a range of insider-outsider positions in the field and earned me some level of integrity and reliability. One evening in early summer I joined an olturash (lit., “sitting”), an informal gathering of primarily men over food, music, and jokes among friends, with two local musicians I had known for years, at a suburban farmhouse in Ghulja Nahiye (county) of the Ili valley. The security had been noticeably tightened in recent weeks, I was told, even in this remote region. Shortly after we had arrived, as we shook hands and greeted one another, two local security officers showed up and requested to register the ID of every single person in the party. By the time this was done, after almost half an hour, everyone was sufficiently annoyed. One of the musicians, the elder of them, whom I will call Ibrahim, broke the silence by introducing me to the other guests as his shagirt (disciple, apprentice) from Hong Kong, who had come all the way to Ili to learn

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music from him. He had enjoyed telling his community friends about having me, a non-Uyghur, as his shagirt, and, on several occasions, he had asked me to tell reporters (who had come to interview him), government officials, and other musicians that he was my ustaz (master). “He’s a good bala (guy, young man),” Ibrahim said to the group, “and always greets me by saying essalamu eleykum [an Islamic greeting that was mostly avoided when a Uyghur interacted with a Han]. . . . Last time he sent me some very good arthritis medicine from Hong Kong, and every time before he came he would call to see if I had other needs.” The other musician, whom I will call Barat, an actual shagirt of Ibrahim and himself a highly accomplished soloist, grumbled about the long political lessons he and his colleagues at work had been made to sit through the entire day, to learn the latest political slogan Üch minnetdarliq (Three gratefulnesses). He then recited it aloud, with a wry face, to the entire group: Kompartiyedin minnetdar bolayli (Be grateful to the Communist Party); Ulugh wetinimizdin minnetdar bolayli (Be grateful to our great country); Re’is Shi Jinpingdin minnetdar bolayli (Be grateful to Chairman Xi Jinping). A few hours earlier he had posted, on his WeChat page, a meme titled “three gratefulnesses,” half of which showed a portrait of Xi Jinping against a red background of Tian’anmen Square, the other half a heart-shaped icon with the head of Mao Tse-tung and China’s national seal. All these, I later learned, were part of what they had been obligated to do as “homework” from the daily political lessons conducted in schools and workplaces. Olturash participants took turns drinking haraq, a very strong distilled spirit. The host would pour the haraq into a pair of shot glasses for two men (not necessarily sitting next to each other) to be downed simultaneously, and the same glasses would then be filled again for the next pair of participants. Barat and I were a pair for the first round of drinking. He raised his glass and gave a toast: “This adash (friend) of mine has a very good heart. He can speak Uyghur, and knows a lot about muqam and our music, things even our own people don’t know.” He then went on to recount what he saw on a performance trip to Hong Kong a few months earlier—which I had organized—and the humiliation they had suffered in the bordering Chinese city of Shenzhen, where they stopped overnight before crossing the border to Hong Kong. “We were taken to the police station; there they drew our blood and took many photos of our faces—we’re treated like criminals, detained at the police station for almost four hours. It’s really hard,” he said as he sighed and shook his head. “But once we crossed the border to Hong Kong, this adash of mine took great care of us. . . . He made sure that every meal we had was halal.”47 He signaled a toast and downed his glass of haraq in one gulp, and I followed suit. We both put down the shot glasses on the table, after which I handed him a piece of qoghun (melon) and got one for myself. He looked at the melon and gave me a teasing smile. 28

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“Are you sure this qoghun is halal?” The room dissolved into convivial laughter as I blushed and returned an embarrassed smile. Amid all the humiliation and agony, it is perhaps this unique sense of wit—from a people who profess mockery and satire—that has kept many Uyghur sane, resilient, and courageous to carry on with life. In it I found a consoling assurance that bound me to learn and write about the people and their music.



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CHAPTER 2

The Modern Sound of “Minority” Music

Dostumgha

To My Friend

Rawabingni küresh muqamigha sazlimisang, Kona muqaming, dostum, qulaqqa xush yaqmas. Bagh yasap, güller térip, yashnatmisang,

If you don’t tune your rawap to the music of struggle, My friend, your old tunes wouldn’t sound pleasing. If you build gardens and plant flowers but don’t let them grow, The bulbuls wouldn’t flap their wings in the withered (garden). Moaning and groaning belong to the heritage of the past. No one has taken a share from that heritage. It’s time to stride ahead with struggle. Don’t stay behind the frontline of the struggle. […] The tunes (frets) of old music are useless, Tune your rawap to new tunes (frets).

Ghazangliqta bulbullar qanat qaqmas. Ah-dad éytish: Ötmüshning mirasi u, U mirastin kishi hichbir ülüsh almas. Küresh bilen algha chamdash chéghi bu, Küreshchanlar frontning keynide qalmas. […] Büweklik muqam pediliri paydisiz emdi, Rawabingni yéngi muqam-pedilerge sazlatqin.

Lutpulla Mutellip (1922–1945), October 16, 1941, Kashgar

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his chapter offers a context in which to listen to Uyghur music in the trajectory of modernity as it has been embraced, by and large, across political and ethnic lines since around the mid-twentieth century. It comprises three interconnected parts, the first two of which are somewhat chronological. Part one sketches modern Uyghur musical life in the early twentieth century as a background for the post-1949 changes. Here I focus on ideas that implicated and set in motion the nascent Uyghur nationalist modernism in music, as well as practices and narratives that responded to it. In doing so, I avoid the teleological 30

approach that looks at music making in this period as a lesser, immature version of later developments—a common strategy in research published after the 1950s. The second part examines how Uyghur music has been minoritized during the second half of the twentieth century under a dual discursive frame: first, a multiculturalist celebration of ethnic diversity, and second, a Han-steered enlightenment project to “civilize” and incorporate the “minorities” into the modern Chinese nation. I suggest that modernity has served as a stasis, a kind of foundational thread between the seemingly opposing policies of heteronomy and assimilation, in that both approaches have relied on preaching an awareness of the nation in time, situating the Uyghur nation(ality) in the linear progressivity of history. My fundamental assumption is that music has been a preferred medium for such modernist consciousness, which has appealed simultaneously to the Chinese state and Uyghur nationalist-elites. The final part engages the literature of “minority” subjectivities in modern China. I outline some of the theoretical threads that have guided my research on Uyghur subjectivities and social lives as experienced through music and the performing arts. To approach the ethnic selves of the non-Han peoples as musically constituted—what Ó Briain (2018) calls “musical minorities”—is neither to evoke the “singing-and-dancing” stereotype in Chinese exoticism nor to minoritize non-Han identities. Rather, it is to acknowledge the primacy of music and other aural experiences in mediating senses of being exterior and marginalized.

The Early Modern Musical World The general absence of Uyghur music notation and sound recordings before the 1950s presents a musicological challenge to understanding early modern styles and influences.1 Yet it also invites a broader approach with which to look beyond musical text as the primary source of meaning and focus of analysis. The Uyghur life as recorded in memoirs, travelogues, images, and oral sources from the first half of the twentieth century was alive with sound and music, offering a glimpse into the early modern Uyghur musical world. My sketch here is neither chronological nor comprehensive. These first- and secondhand accounts are necessarily partial, situated, and at times conflicting. They tell us as much about the political context and the authors’ subject positions as the music and musicians being portrayed. Materials about this period published, edited, or recounted after 1949 are also constrained by the Communist characterization of early Uyghur nationalist modernism as struggles against the Kuomintang government, foreign invaders (most commonly the Japanese and the Soviets), and the warlords who ruled northwestern China during much of

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the first half of the twentieth century—and thus are components of a broader pre-1949 Communist-supported revolution, rather than elements of national awareness or independence movements. In post-1949 nomenclature, for example, the Ili Rebellion in late 1944 and the ensuing “Second” East Turkestan Republic (Sheqiy Türkistan jumhuriyiti), an independent state that governed Ili, Altai, and Tarbaghatai from 1944 to 1949, are known indiscriminately as Üch wilayet inqilabi (lit., “three-district revolution”; Ch. Sanqü geming). In these sources, the Communist Chinese impact on modern Uyghur performing arts in the 1930s and 1940s is also unduly played up (such as the role of the Chinese playwright Mao Dun on the development of Uyghur musical drama). These fallacies and distortions are ubiquitous in Chinese-language publications on the modern history of Uyghur art and culture. Some of the earliest textual records of Uyghur (or “East Turki”) musical life can be found in the travelogues of European diplomats during the early decades of the century. One of these is An English Lady in Chinese Turkestan (1931) by Catherine Borland Macartney (1877–1949), wife of the British consul in Kashgar, George Macartney (1867–1945, in Kashgar 1890–1918). Macartney wrote about the “musical voices intoning” calls to prayer (65). She also described Kashgar’s teahouses, “Chai-Khana” (chayxana), which were “everywhere, where people sat and drank tea while they listened to dreamy native music played by a band consisting of perhaps one or two long-necked mandolinshaped instruments that produced very soft fairy-like music, accompanied by a small drum” (66–67). Macartney took particular notice of the performance of professional female musicians: The orchestra was made up of one or two long-necked instruments, with backs rounded like mandolines, played with hair bows and held like cellos; other very similar instruments played like mandolines; a zither and a small drum or tambourine. Sometimes for a change the musicians sang. Each spring someone, I never found out exactly who, composed the new songs that would be fashionable for the year; and one heard them sung everywhere. The best singers were the small boys and girls cantering alone on donkey back, singing at the top of their voices to the rhythm of the donkey’s movements. When the music struck up, one of the professionals started the dancing. . . . With these people, their instruments are merely sound sources through which they express their thoughts and feelings. (122) Another well-known account of Kashgar’s music scene is Sykes’s Through Deserts and Oases of Central Asia (1920). Percy Sykes (1867–1945) was the acting British consul-general in Kashgar for a nine-month term in 1915. He was 32

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accompanied on the trip by his sister Ella Constance Sykes (1863–1939), an acclaimed traveler and author who had earlier published a travelogue on Persia (Through Persia on a Side-Saddle, 1901). Here is the musical Kashgar they vividly captured (63–64): The leader in turban and silk attire, with a huge silver buckle on his belt, sang, or rather shouted, a solo with many a trill and tremulo, making excruciating facial contortions, the monotonous chorus being taken up by the rest of the troupe. Some of these were greybeards, others mere boys, but all had the appearance of undergoing acute torture as they yelled at the top of their voices, and brought to mind my old maestro who was in the habit of suddenly holding a mirror in front of me if I wore a pained expression as I sang. Yet the Kashgaris have the reputation of being very musical, and even to my western ears there was considerable charm in many of their songs; but try as I might, I could never pick up any of their airs, probably owing to the fact that their notation is quite different from ours. They do not understand part-singing, but play several instruments, such as sitars, drums, pipes and tambourines. In the spring and summer men and boys would sing up to a late hour at night, and with the first glint of dawn I was often roused by cheerful peasants chanting on their way to work in the fields. The people say that travelling dervishes bring fresh tunes to the towns, and that when the spring repertoire, for example, has been learnt by the inhabitants it will be succeeded by new tunes for the autumn and winter. There are sometimes no words to these refrains, each singer supplying their own, in the fashion of the Italian improvisatori. No woman of good repute may sing in public, and only once did I hear a little girl of some eight or nine years old singing away to herself and evidently much enjoying the exercise. Not much is known about what the music they portrayed actually sounded like. The earliest commercially available 78 rpm and LP vinyl records of Uyghur music did not appear until the 1950s; most of these were political songs and progressive styled instrumental pieces, alongside short excerpts of muqam and folk songs.2 Scattered sound recordings of Uyghur music had been made in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Historian and novelist Memtimin Hoshur (2014, 31) notes that Uyghur songs and instrumental music were first recorded in the 1910s, in a recording that featured musicians Rushidin Aka, Ömer Chögün, and others who had moved from Ili to Yarkent (Jarkent) in Kazakhstan.3 A little before that, at least one

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Uyghur song was recorded, on a flat disc, in Margilan (in eastern Uzbekistan) by German recording engineer Franz Hampe during the Gramophone Company’s recording expedition in Central Asia from April to October 1909. Titled “Mushagaran Kashkarcha,” the Uyghur song was played by a trio of Kashgar musicians named Sadyk Mullo, Turdi Muazin, and Tokhta Akhun.4 It features a limping rhythm and a range of about an octave, sung by a group of male vocalists accompanied by, as noted, a bowed tanbur, a doira (the framed drum dap), and a Kashgar sapoi (sapayi, a ringed idiophone of Sufi mendicants). Writing about the music history of the Ili valley, Memtimin argues that, as the influence of Hakim beg, Ili’s local Muslim ruler, declined at the turn of the century, musicians at the beg’s court organized among themselves to perform music and sustain the tradition. A partial photo from 1916 shows the second son of Hakim beg Xoja (Khoja) (1871–1957) with a group of well-known singers and instrumentalists, including such names as Abdul Chükchük, Sawutkam Bédik, and Mesum Toqum, among others, revealing an organization of the folk artists from Hakim beg’s court.5 The first two decades of the century also witnessed the birth of some early ideas of music as a tradition. Around the same period of time, a Uyghur performing troupe called Kök könglekler (lit., “blue shirts,” so named because all members of the troupe were dressed in blue on stage) was formed by the famous singer Jalam Baywechche in Yettisu (Zhetysu), right across the Khorgas Pass on the Sino-Kazakh border in Almaty Province of Kazakhstan today. The troupe, for the first time, arranged Ili folk songs into yürüsh (medley), an early modern creation that remains popular today among musicians in Ili (see chapter 6). Quoting Yüsüpjan Ghapparuf (1876–1938), a reform-minded poet and musician of the group Yarkent Kalte Chapanliri (lit., “short coats”) and a major figure in developing Uyghur theater in the 1920s and 1930s, Memtimin contends that the idea of ordering and sequencing folk songs started among a group of music enthusiasts who attempted to put together programs for evening events they had organized in Yettisu around 1913 or 1914. Fortunately, a photo of one of these groups, taken in 1912 in Yarkent, Kazakhstan, survived, giving us a peek into what the musicians and their instruments looked like (figure 2.1).6 Seventeen individuals, all men, posed for the photo; at least fourteen of them were holding instruments, including a satar (with sympathetic strings) as well as a few dutar and tembur. One of the musicians, sitting at the center and holding a dutar, was Jami Aka (1876–1959), father of the tembur master Hüsenjan Jami (1930–2011). There were, additionally, a chang hammered dulcimer (with two bridges), a ghéjek (with sympathetic strings), and what appeared to be a bass dutar (possibly a new creation). A pair of framed drums were also seen, one of which was shown with a mallet (rarely seen today). Two violinists, both dressed in Western-style suits and ties, were standing in the back; the one on the left, wearing a mandarin-collared shirt and a tie, 34

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Figure 2.1  Uyghur musicians in Zharkent (Yarkent), Kazakhstan, 1912. Image reproduced from Memtimin Hoshur (2006, 2-süret.)

was Yüsüpjan Ghapparuf. Known locally as iskripka, the violin was introduced to the region at the turn of the twentieth century and subsequently localized as an idiomatic instrument in Ili. Similar instruments are seen in a few other photos of Ili music groups in this period, suggesting what appeared to be a synthesis of local traditions in these early modern troupes. It would be a stretch, however, to conclude that they represented an integral and coherent instrumentation during the 1910s. There is also no evidence that such instrumentation existed.7 Part of what we know about musical life during the early modern period comes from sources that reference the well-known Uyghur Cultural Enlightenment Association (Uyghur Medeniy aqartish uyushmisi, hereafter UMAU), a multilevel organization established across the Uyghur territory in the mid-1930s. These associations were formed under an initiative by Governor Sheng Shicai (1895–1970; reigned 1933–1944), the last of the three Chinese warlords in Xinjiang, to experiment with a Soviet-style heteronomy that would allow some degree of cultural autonomy for the non-Han peoples in order to accommodate their interests “in places other than the political sphere” (Klimeš 2015, 169). A flagship UMAU was first created in August 1934 in Dihwa (present-day Ürümchi),8 followed by the setting up of local branches across Xinjiang. These organizations were a major avenue for advocating and implementing the novel idea of “equality among the nationalities” (milliy barawerlik), one of the “six great policies” Sheng

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Shicai implemented shortly after taking power. Prompted by the Soviet tactic to fragment the emerging pan-Turkic nationalism—the so-called divide-and-rule approach—fourteen nationalities were identified by the Sheng government, nine of which were given their own cultural associations.9 The close connection established between performing arts and ethnic politics, particularly the propaganda uses of pluralism, became the basis of CCP’s “minority” policy after 1949. It also represented the “first time ‘Uyghur’ entered official and common use to apply to the Turki-speaking, non-nomad population of southern Xinjiang” (Millward 2007, 208) and the official (Chinese) recognition of the Uyghur as a culturally distinct nationality. By the end of 1934, well over two hundred branches of UMAU had already been set up across more than fifty counties in the region. This extensive network of UMAU assumed modernist roles in education, publication, performing arts, welfare, and other cultural and social activities until around the Communist takeover. Some of its national and regional units continued to serve, under altered names, as the basis of schools and art troupes after 1949. One of the major contributions of these UMAUs was to sustain the Jadidist education movement, which arose in the late nineteenth century, and the new system of public schools it had pioneered. Brought about by modernist educators and other “enlightened” individuals who had been well connected to Central Asia, Russia, and the broader Middle East, these public schools had launched secular curricula that were modeled after modern Tatar and Ottoman paradigms, introducing secular subjects alongside Qur’anic classes (Klimeš 2015, 77–79). Historians credit the earliest of these to the influential Hüseyniye Mektipi (school), which was founded in 1883 by the Uyghur merchant Bawudun Musabayev (1855–1928) and his brother Hüseyn Musabayev (1844–1926) in Atush, near Kashgar, to replace the traditional axun-led education with a new school system (Nabijan Tursun 2017). Little is known today about the music curriculum at Hüseyniye and other forerunners of modern education. These schools further flourished in the 1930s in connection with UMAU as supported by both Sheng Shicai’s regime and the East Turkestan Islamic Republic (1933–1934), which shared a vested interest in the new education movement and other cultural initiatives (such as publication) as a means of strengthening “the people’s sense of national identity and popular support for state administration” (Klimeš 2015, 184). Ideas about homeland, nationality, and common cultural origin were a major part of the new education initiatives, integrating modernist discourses into an emergent sense of national belonging. The progress of these modern schools “could be seen as an indicator of the degree of national progress and nationalist movement, as well as an avenue to national well-being” (183). Starting in the mid-1930s, a major part of the school system began to be brought under UMAU, which, by 1938, was already running over a thousand 36

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schools.10 In Ghulja and Ili wilayet (prefecture), many of the mehelle (neighborhood district) schools recruited notable musicians to teach their affiliated music groups and classes. Most of these musicians were associated with Ili’s local branch of UMAU and its affiliated sana’inepise, a performing and literary art group that involved itself in a variety of art activities, ranging from offering instrument lessons and training musicians to organizing staged performances of dramas and music concerts for a variety of occasions. The term sana’inepise likely came from san’ati nafisa, referring to the “professional union of art workers” in Soviet Uzbekistan from the 1920s (Djumaev 1993, 43). Memtimin Hoshur (1995, 56; 2014, 41–43, 50–51) considers it significant that, for the first time in history, master musicians played together as a group and learned their repertoires from each other at these sana’inepise. Formed in late 1934, Ili’s sana’inepise was among the largest, with eighty-seven artists, of which thirty-five were instrumentalists. A photo from 1936 shows forty-five members of Ili’s sana’inepise, including about ten instrumentalists playing the satar, dutar, iskripka, chang, tembur, and ghéjek (Memtimin Hoshur 2006, 4-süret). Among them, Rozi Tembur, seen playing the chang in the photograph, started a course teaching muqam, “fostering a generation of Uyghur musicians.” Other musicians offered music lessons and led performing groups at schools: Zikri Elpetta (1915–1986) taught at Sheher Ichi Mehellisi Ili Mektep (3-Bashlanghuch or No. 3 Primary School today); Rozi Tembur taught at Naghrichi Xaniqa Mektep (19-Bashlanghuch or No. 19 Primary School today); and violinist Seyydullam Rexmitulla taught at Sherq Mektep (11-Ottura or No. 11 Middle School today). The sana’inepise of Aqsu’s (Aksu’s) UMAU, also founded in 1934, had over a dozen artists and offered musical instrument classes. Outstanding graduates from these classes were recruited to become members of the performing troupes—a system that mimicked modern professional music training. Toxti Hashim (1999, 148), who worked at the association’s education department, remembers that the group’s performance reached a “very high level” in the early 1940s. Skilled musicians would also be recruited from outside when major dramas, such as Ghérip-Senem, Leyli-Mejnun, and Tehir-Zöhre, were produced. Toxti notes that at major festivals and special occasions, the group performed at a hall that held up to a thousand in the audience, while weekly performances took place at a smaller space adjacent to the association. Writing about the UMAU in Aqsu, Chimangül Semet (2012, 42) notes further that (1) a forty-fivemember performing troupe was established in Üchturpan Nahiyisi (county) in 1934, staging modern Uyghur dramas; (2) most of the props, costumes, and musical instruments were purchased from the Soviet Union; and (3) apart from traditional Uyghur instruments, the troupe also included mandolins, violins, guitars, bugles, accordions, and various drums.11

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Little is known about what these early staged dramas looked or sounded like. Diana Shipton, wife of the British consul in Kashgar, Eric Shipton (1907– 1977; in Kashgar 1940–1942), recalls being invited to some of these “professional Turkic entertainments by the Turkic Cultural Association.” The music, she writes, “was attractive, the costumes colourful and the whole production far more polished than I had expected to find. . . . These were dances with a strong Russian flavour, several definitely Cossack numbers and at each performance we saw, a girl sang a prayer-like chant to Stalin. The Russian ability to use traditional Turkic music and dances and to form them into attractive, well-balanced numbers, was undeniable.” Some of the songs frequently sung at staged performances indeed celebrated alliance with the Soviet Union, such as one titled “Dostluq naxshisi” (Song of friendship), which is said to have a lively melody (Éli Éziz 1988, 203–204). Sound amplification was absent in most of these early staged dramas. The famous vocalist Abduweli Jarullayof, who had played the role of Ghérip in the drama Ghérip-Senem for over two decades, was recognized for having a clear, resonant voice that was strong enough to reach the final rows of the audience in a hall. Yet his voice resembled nothing of modern vocal timbre and projection. To many in his generation, Abduweli’s singing “retained the puraq (flavor) of that of those peasants who drove wheeled carts in villages” and “preserved the ancestor’s manner” (Memtimin Hoshur 1988, quoting Hasan Tembur and Musajan Rozi). In all, traditional styles did not seem to be received as incompatible with modern aesthetics and the concert stage setting. We hear a somewhat different early modern soundscape in Yiraqtiki uchqunlar (Sparkles from afar; Ch. Yuanfang xing huo), a black-and-white Uyghur film produced in 1961 by the state-run Shinjang kino studiyesi (Xinjiang Film Studio; Ch. Xinjiang dianying zhipianchang),12 based on a 1959 play by Abdukérim Xoja (1928–1988). The biographical film features the progressive Uyghur poet and playwright Lutpulla Mutellip (1922–1945). “Minority”language films flourished in the 1950s and 1960s and are examples of what Slobin (2008) calls “subcultural cinema.” As I noted elsewhere (Wong 2012), music in these officially produced “minority films” is often featured as a central plot element, and musicians and even musical instruments are often cast as major characters—exemplifying what Tuohy (2008, 179) calls “reflexive cinema” in modern Chinese films. Yiraqtiki uchqunlar is set in the early 1940s in Dihwa and Aqsu during the last few years of Lutpulla’s short life. The film portrays Lutpulla as a young revolutionary who is committed to using poetry and drama to enlighten his people. A major part of the film portrays his work on creating Tahir-Zöhre, a Chaghatay romantic narrative epic (dastan), for a modern theatrical performance at Aqsu’s UMAU. A number of musical scenes in the film warrant particular note. In one scene at a barbershop,13 Lutpulla meets an elderly singing mendicant and is 38

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immediately mesmerized by his songs, so much so that he retrieves a notebook from his pocket to start transcribing his melody. Moved by Lutpulla’s enthusiasm, the mendicant then invites Lutpulla to his home and asks his daughter to sing more songs for him to transcribe. Lutpulla then reworks the songs he “collected” and incorporates them into the modern drama Tahir-Zöhre. In the film’s lengthy scene reconstructing the staged performance of the drama in Aqsu, the folk tunes, now barely recognizable, are heard as solos, duets, and choruses, fully orchestrated and sung in a bel canto–like style, with largely downbeat and balanced phrasing. This distinctly modern, Western soundscape contrasts with the music in a number of other scenes in the film, such as the barbershop singing and a scene where a wheeled cart driver sings about the hardship of his journey across the desert. It also contrasts, remarkably, with two other musical scenes casting the “enemies” in the film. The first of these shows a nightclub in Dihwa where participants, mostly Uyghur, are smoking, drinking, and dancing over gramophonerecorded background music of big band ballroom jazz—an unmistakable portrayal of the decadent life of local bourgeoisie under the leadership of the warlords. The second depicts a party at UMAU where participants dance to the uplifting music supplied by a small ensemble of traditional Uyghur instruments. The joyful music and dance come to a halt as a bearded local Uyghur landlord—the “bad guy”—joins the party, and the ensemble suddenly switches to playing music that is noticeably slower and gloomier and in a harmonic minor-like mode, apparently to please the landlord. A progressive-minded revolutionary, Lutpulla is manifestly annoyed by the landlord and the dispiriting music, both reflective of the “old society.” He then defies the landlord’s order that everyone should stay and walks out of the party. It is unclear the extent to which the soundtracks of Yiraqtiki uchqunlar are faithful reproductions of the Uyghur music as played and heard in the 1930s and 1940s. The breadth of styles and genres included in the film, however, is consistent with a number of oral and written sources I have come across. In his essay “Uyghur naxsha-usul, tiyatirchiliqi toghrisida eslime” (Memories of Uyghur singing, dancing, and theater), Éli Éziz (1988) portrays a vibrant scene of music and theater before 1949. The art troupe of the UMAU in Dihwa, he remembers, started recruiting skilled musicians and other artists from all around Xinjiang in 1936, notably from Chöchek, Ili, Turpan, Yarkand, Kucha, and Kashgar, to advance its performance level. These guest musicians also offered lessons, attracting nearly two hundred students. Apart from traditional Uyghur instruments, he notes, there were also violin, guitar, and mandolin. The music played included muqam, “ethnic ensemble,” and the music of “other nationalities and foreign countries.” Éli recalls that musicians did not use notation but rather memorized the music (198–201). There were new staged formats

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such as leper (a short performance that involves singing and dancing), group dances, and solos, while traditional pieces such as “Nim pede,” “Munajat,” “Dilxéraj,” and “Oshshaq merghul” were choreographed (209–210). By the early 1940s there were already over seventy performing troupes of the sana’inepise, involving around fifteen hundred artists performing at over sixty theaters all around the region. Competitions of drama, music, dance, choral singing, and other genres were also common, and the contestants included art groups of higher institutions, middle schools, and primary schools. Éli notes further that for the first time in history women were allowed to be onstage at these competitions (before that, female roles had been played by male artists). The choreographer Qemberxan Emet (1922–1994), who had already been well known in Central Asia and Moscow, reportedly entered a dance competition in Dihwa (that for Xinjiang’s “fourteen nationalities”) upon returning from Tashkent in 1942 and received the first prize. A song titled “Yéngi Shinjang qizliri” (New Xinjiang girls), marked as a leper, was included in Éli’s essay (209). The first line of its lyrics reads: “Yéngi Shinjang qizliri yey, mekteplerde oquydu yey” (New Xinjiang girls study at schools). Éli remembers that these performances were a major novelty for the “spiritual life” of the audience at that time. The image of new (Uyghur) women living in modern times as educated and progressive was also common in the 1940s. A black-and-white photo titled “Turkestan Qizliri” (Girls of Turkestan) shows a Uyghur girl (probably in Aqsu) wearing a modern dress and playing the Western violin.14 A few sources suggest that Xoja Niyaz (1889–1941), the only president of the short-lived Sherqiy Türkistan Islam Jumhuriyiti (East Turkestan Islamic Republic, or the “First” East Turkestan Republic, 1933–1934), later appointed by Sheng Shicai as vice chairman of Xinjiang (although effectively a Sovietsupervised puppet), was quite involved in these performances. Éli Éziz recalls the first show of Dihwa’s UMAU in the fall of 1934, where the troupe played Boz yigit (lit., “unmarried young man”), a drama that had already been staged at outdoor venues a number of times. He notes that when the curtain was raised, a banner with Lenin’s famous saying “Tiyatir xelq turmush eyniki” (Theater is originated in people’s life) was shown. Xoja Niyaz was in the audience. He reportedly met the artists after the show, praised their performance, and asked if they had any difficulties or needs. Two of the artists, Chong Axun and Abdikérim Razi, replied, “Haji aka, we hope to study in the Soviet Union but we didn’t manage to pass the exam.” Xoja Niyaz replied, “Today’s performance was already your exam,” meaning that he considered them passed. Some of the artists then went to study at universities in Soviet Central Asia, finished study in 1936, and “returned home to continue their work,” Éli Éziz wrote. The essay included a list of songs and their lyrics that Éli Éziz said were some of the most frequently performed in the 1930s and 1940s at these shows. 40

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Poems of the early modernist Abduxaliq Uyghur (1901–1933) were set to music, including “Achil” (Awakened) and “Sen kimning oghlisen?” (Whose son are you?) (201–202). The first was about the Qumul Rebellion in the early 1930s and remains a popular song today; the latter is marked as a “march” in the battlefield. Some of these military-style songs dealt with the theme of anti-Japanese war, including “Ölüm ya körüm” (Life or death) and “Aldinqi sepke barayli” (Let’s go to the front line). The first was written by Muhemmetjan Ismai’i in 1940 and was reportedly sung in every school in Xinjiang; the latter was for choirs and based on a folk melody (205–206). Other songs and spoken dramas encouraged people to stay away from drugs, alcohol, gambling, and other social ills (nachar illetler, lit., “bad habits”), explicitly relating good morality to nationhood (217–218). Some of the anti-Japanese songs seemed to have borrowed elements from muqam: Rozi Tembur, for example, set a poem by Lutpulla Mutellip titled “Borandin kéyinki aptap” (Sun after storm) to the music of Chebbiyat, and a poem by Merup Aka titled “Yapon basqunchilirini qoghlap, wetenni qutuldurush” (Drive out Japanese invasion; save our homeland) to the music of Nawa (Memetmin Hoshur 2014, 50). Education emerged as a major theme in the repertoire of modern Uyghur songs in the 1930s and 1940s as a means of national enlightenment, promoted as a way to reach an ideal future. In a widely staged kichik opéra (small opera) titled Istigim oqush (My wish is to study), which reportedly “had impact at girls’ schools and in remote villages,” there was a choral march named “Oqughuchilar marshi” (March of the students) (Éli Éziz 1998, 211–218). The song features a verse-chorus form with rhymed couplets.

Oqughuchilar marshi

March of the Students

Biz oqughuchi biz, put—qollirimiz, Köz, dimaghimiz her yérimiz saghlam. Xelq yolida algha basimiz,

We students, our feet and our hands, Our eyes and our nose are all healthy. We will advance on the path of the people, We will revenge against the enemies. (Chorus) Go, young students, let’s study. Our conscience will be on the path of the country and people. If we fail to study, Our country’s path will be in long years of darkness. With education we would stand up from the enslavement, And rise up together on the path.

Düshmenge qarshi saqlap intiqam. (Neqrat) Yürüng! Oquyli yash oqughuchilar, Weten, xelq yolida qaynar wijdanlar. Uzun yillar biz rulmet qoynida, Oquyalmiduq weten yolida. Qulluq ornidin emdi dest turduq, Algha örleymiz irpan yolida.

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The notation of some of these modern songs survived. One of these is called “Shanli Qur’an” (The glorious Qur’an), included in a featured story about the composer Muhemmetjan in the magazine Tianshan Pictorial (or Tianshan huabao) in 1948.15 The lyrics call on young people to acquire knowledge through studying, comparing it, notably, to the knowledge gained through reading and listening to the Qur’an—both are glorious, respectable acts. It preaches the idea that the acquisition of modern knowledge is compatible and not antithetical to Islamic teaching. Shanli Qur’an

The Glorious Qur’an

Shanli Qur’an, kani érpan.

The glorious Qur’an, the treasure of education. Read it, listen to it, and know it, courageous heroes. [ … ] We study the knowledge. We earn the honor. Young people, study is ­important. Each (kind of) honor has two worlds: both knowledge and practice. Ignorance is harmful to the soul. Negligence results in grief. [ … ]

Oqu-anglar bildeyur, gheretli(k)ler qehrimanlar. [ … ] Ilim oquymiz, shan alirmiz. Yashliq oqush zoridur. Izzet her ikki jahan: Ilmu emel bille bolur. Nadanliq jangha ziyandur. Xarliq zarliqlar keltürür. [ … ]

The magazine article includes a portrait of Muhemmetjan wearing a Western suit (with a tie) and a doppa square cap, clean-shaven, working at a desk, presumably composing music. The report states that he is a native of Yéngisar and developed an interest in music in childhood. He came to Dihwa in 1939 to study music after finishing primary and middle schools in Aqsu. Gifted at composition, Muhemmetjan was prompted to notate a number of well-known Uyghur songs. These songs were published in Lanzhou and became very popular. He continued to be involved in this “meaningful work,” the report wrote, “and with his talent and artistry, he would certainly make Uyghur music shine in the future.” A single-line staff notation of the song “Shanli Qur’an” is included. The Uyghur lyrics of the first verse are printed, in handwritten Latin alphabets, underneath the notated melody, while all three verses of lyrics were printed in Chaghatay script and put separately on the side, with a rather loose Chinese translation. Marked allegro and duple (2/2), the song has three verses and a chorus, structured in a strophic form with square four-bar phrases and rhymed lyrics. The C-major melody is uplifting and marchlike, alternating between forte and fortissimo. Some of these progressive Uyghur musicians were also mentioned by Chinese authors in their travelogues. Writing in 1939, the journalist and writer Chen ChiYing (Chen Jiying, 1908–1997),16 who was on multiple trips to Xinjiang from 42

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Figure 2.2  Notation of a modern Uyghur song “Shanli Qur’an” (The glorious Qur’an) by composer Muhemmetjan. Image reproduced from Tianshan huabao (Tianshan Pictorial), 1948, 9.

1938 to 1942, described a young and gifted Uyghur singer and dramatist named Abdukérim, whom Chen had encountered at a meeting of UMAU in Dihwa. Chen described Abdukérim’s voice as mellow, “desolate, like a tragic story.” Coming from an impoverished village family in Kashgar, Abdukérim, then thirty-one, finished his shifan (pedagogy) training in Dihwa, and went on to Tashkent to study political economy in 1934 while keeping a keen interest in music. Chen portrayed Abdukérim as an enlightened “minority youth” of “progressive thoughts” (sixiang jinbu) who had fostered “ethnic solidarity” and “brought the backward ethnic culture to the most advanced level.” He wrote that Abdukérim’s home in Dihwa, which he had visited, was clean and tidy and “didn’t have any Uyghur smell.” Abdukérim’s songs had been broadcast at Tashkent radio, he reported. While in Tashkent, Abdukérim entered a singing contest; two out of the seven songs he entered were selected to be made into a record, and the record was popular in the Soviet Union, Central Asia, and Turkey. Chen recalled that Abdukérim had turned on the gramophone, retrieved the record, and played the songs for him (the lyrics of these songs, in Chinese translation, were included in the travelogue). There was a third song, titled “The oppressed,” which Abdukérim said he had liked the most but had not been selected by the judges. The last couplet of the lyrics reads: “Let the weak nationalities be united; our enemies will definitely be under our feet” (Ruoxiao de minzu lianhe qilai ba! Diren yiding si zai women de jiaoxia!) Abdukérim was then quoted as saying, “In recent years there’s been a lot of progress in Xinjiang. Many Uyghur, particularly

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students, can now sing anti-war songs. There’re also Han people who can sing Uyghur songs. We’re now adapting a few Chinese dramas. . . . According to Uyghur customs, male and female may not perform together on the same stage. We can only bring our wives onto the stage. . . . We’ll work hard to abandon these old practices” (Chen Chi-Ying 1969 [1938], 221). Chen’s accounts epitomized the Chinese conception of “minority” modernity both before and after 1949. Ideal minorities are progressive and forward-looking, devoid of perceived primitivities (the “Uyghur smell”). They are also keen supporters of official notions of ethnic solidarity and Chinese nationalism, and they willingly play a model role to enlighten their fellow “minorities.” These discursive frames and the post-1949 aggressive monitoring of Uyghur life and expression beg to be understood in the broader historical context of modern China encountering the cultures of its internal Others. During the latter part of the 1940s, part of Xinjiang was run by a coalition formed between the Ghulja-based “Second” East Turkestan Republic (1946– 1949) and the Kuomintang government. Governor Zhang Zhizhong (1890– 1969), who ruled Xinjiang from mid-1946 to mid-1947), experimented with “Soviet concepts and technologies of minority representation” (Jacob 2008, 585). He adopted an ethno-cultural pluralist approach that utilized performing arts to promote official policies and to showcase tolerated diversity—a model earnestly sustained after 1949. An official performing troupe was initiated in 1947 by Isa Yusuf Alptekin (1901–1995) (a.k.a. Eyisa Beg), who served as the KMT representative in the coalition government. The troupe was initially called Senminjuyiliq yashlar sen’et ömiki (Youth Art Troupe of Sanmin Zhuyi, named after Sun Yat-sen’s doctrine “Three Principles of the People”), and was later referred to, in Chinese, as Xinjiang qingnian gewutuan (Youth Singingand-Dancing Troupe of Xinjiang). In late October 1947, with about sixty members, the troupe went on an unprecedented tour to Nanking (Nanjing), Shanghai, and Taiwan to showcase “minority” arts and cultures to the predominantly Chinese audience. Governor Zhang was quoted asking the artists to “present Uyghur culture and art to the inner provinces” and “be careful about things that may be said and things that may not be said” in order “not to leave a bad impression.” Peride Éliyowa, an artist in the troupe, remembers that in order to prepare for the trip, they bought “beautiful clothes” from Hong Kong and Shanghai to make uniforms for troupe members. She recounts that the Chinese audience often asked if they were foreigners, and they would reply that “we are Chinese Xinjianger” (Zhongguoluk, Xinjianglik). The troupe stayed for one month in Nanking and three months in Shanghai, with a brief trip to Hangzhou. Some of them were arranged to meet the renowned Chinese opera master Mei Lanfang (1891–1961) at his residence in Shanghai, and they were reportedly impressed by his cross-gender singing. 44

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About half of the members went on to Taiwan, which Peride describes as “a very beautiful place” with comfortable urban buildings. The Uyghur artists were reportedly impressed by Japanese influences in Taiwanese life, such as the low dining tables and the practice of taking shoes off upon entering houses, as well as the aroma of Taiwan’s black tea—all of which they seemed to feel connected to. The troupe made a trip to the Sun Moon Lake (in central Taiwan), whose “weather and scenery are so beautiful that they cannot be described by words,” Peride recalls. Troupe members also visited the aboriginal peoples residing by the lake—the “wild people” (yawayi ademler), as they were told. As if to correct such (Chinese) misperceptions about the Taiwanese indigenous peoples for her Uyghur readers, Peride points out that these people are indeed not “wild people” but “the same as us”; the women and men are “just like us.” These are indigenous people, Peride continues, who “wear their own costumes that are different from other peoples; only the people from the city call them ‘wild people.’ They also have their own language. When we communicated with them, their language had to be first translated to Taiwanese, then to Mandarin, and then Uyghur” (Peride Éliyowa 1988, 239). Both the indigenous Taiwanese and Uyghur artists then showcased their own performances at a gathering by the lake.

Becoming a Musical “Minority” The multiculturalist approach of Kuomintang’s ethnic policy during its final years in power (and later embraced by CCP) begs to be understood in a broader historical context of race and ethnicity in modern China. To start with, the Chinese legacy of racial stereotyping peoples on its peripheries has a welldocumented past that goes back before the Communist takeover in 1949. The fundamental thesis was a chauvinistic one: the “barbaric” peoples and tribes on the imperial periphery had never existed at a state of civilization comparable to the Chinese and the Sinicized non-Han in China proper (such as the Manchu of the Qing era/empire).17 The modern Chinese state—under both the Kuomintang and Communist regimes—inherited not only most of the late imperial territories but also an analogous set of prejudices against the various non-Han peoples within its boundaries. Many have noted that the Chinese pursuit of cultural modernity has been premised in part on the portrayal of its non-Han peoples as yet-to-be-enlightened primitives in its self-fashioning as advanced and progressive in the course of becoming modern (Gladney 2004, 60–64). Others also note that Confucian moralism and Lewis Henry Morgan’s work of social evolution—the latter had been the “cornerstone of Chinese ethnology” for much of the second half of the twentieth century—worked together to primitivize and exoticize peoples “who would be reckoned at the ‘backward’ end of the cultural

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evolutionary scale, and simultaneously [absolve their] proponents of moral culpability by proposing a natural order of culture” (McKhann 1994, 41–42). Such evolutionist discourse is often elaborated through an Orientalist frame, one that exhibits the primitivity of non-Han cultures through presumably timeless arts, conveying primordial passions for the exotically beautiful and sexually enticing, often feminized as objects of Chinese/Han heterosexual desire. The Han, whose homogeneity is itself a questionable construct (see Gladney 2004, 13–17), often emerge as the normative and enlightened, whose benevolent help has introduced modern social institutions and cultural devices to raise the “minorities” to a higher level of civilization—what Harrell (1995, 4) calls the minority “civilizing project” in modern China. Discourses of progressivity are thus connected to the formation of the modern Chinese self, which has relied on the manipulation of its internal otherness in its own making. Selfperceived as the enlightened, the Han then obliged themselves to introducing modernity to the “minorities,” a stated raison d’être for modern conquests and subjugation. In music, a meaningful question to ask is to what extent China’s own perception of its (Han) music traditions and modernist “development” has been shaped by the “minority” musical worlds it has encountered in the modern time. Put differently, to what extent has Chinese musical modernity been implicated and built on the active policing and maneuvering of “minority music” and sound, which, as Bovingdon (2010, 7–8) puts it, “are not mere misrepresentations” but the “very stuff of politics in Xinjiang.” A new structure of national collectivity emerged as China and its selfperceived majority Han fashioned itself as a frontrunner in the postcolonial league of modernizing nations and peoples struggling against Western imperialism. Notably, ideas of modernity came about at a time when Han intellectuals began to conceive of postcolonial alliances with their domestic racial and ethnic Others. The conceptual foundation is a self-identification known as Zhonghua minzu (Uy. Jungxua milliti), an ambiguous, fluid, and ill-defined entity of metanationality that, in its broadest application, comprises all the official nationalities or ethnic groups residing inside or outside China, of all and any citizenships regardless of their place of birth. Coined at the turn of the twentieth century by the reformist intellectual Liang Ch’i-Ch’ao (1873–1929) (1936 [1898]), the neologism was subsequently adapted by both KMT and CCP to propagate a unified Chinese nation across the ethnic and racial lines. It operates as a kind of racial nationalism that serves to monopolize the Chinese nation as the legitimate proxy in its effort to counter Western imperialism (see Liang 1896). Importantly, the notion of Zhonghua minzu straddles and conflates the contradicting discourses of racial homogeneity (that is, the Chinese nation and its imagined “yellow race”) and ethnic pluralism (that is, all the subnational groups bound under the notion of a Chinese nation) (Leibold 2007, 113–114; Bovingdon 2010, 46

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15–16). In one of the most absurd claims under the official interpretation of this term today, the Uyghur born and/or living in Kazakhstan and other parts of Central Asia are routinely referred to as Huaqiao, literally, “overseas Chinese,” or, precisely, overseas members of Zhonghua minzu (see Wang Qian and Liu Guofang 2005, 212–229). The term makes little sense to many Uyghur and nonHan peoples, to whom it is often no more than another rhetorical kitsch in propaganda and political lessons. As problematic as it is, this meta-ethnonym has supplied a discursive framework of an imagined racial-national unity for post-1949 “minority” governance, which, as Dwyer (2005, 29) puts it, has been “at once accommodationist and assimilative.”18 At the outset, CCP’s “minority” policy is premised on a totalizing claim of ahistorical national territorial integrity, aptly exemplified by the ubiquitous propaganda slogan “Xinjiang has been an inseparable part of China since the ancient time.” This sovereignty claim is served by a trio of anachronistic analytical logics often employed in official histories. The first is the extremely loose application of the term minzu—which first appeared in 1903 in a Chinese publication (Dikötter 2015 [1992], 61)—to refer to ethnic, national, racial, and tribal groups documented in history at times when the concept of ethnicity or nationality was largely absent. Uyghur as an ethnonym that refers to a single ethnic group (or nationality) is arguably also a fairly modern construct through processes of subsuming and transforming a number of previously scattered and local (yerlik) oasis identities into a higher order of national collectiveness (Gladney 1991, 314–319; Rudelson 1997, 39–96) and circuits of inter-oasis networks (Brophy 2016, 39–44).19 The second is the inclusion of all peoples and political powers in history that happened to fall inside the present-day PRC borders as integral parts of the Chinese nation. Among the most far-reaching of these is perhaps the claim that the khanates and dynasties ruled by descendants of the Chaghatayid during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Kashgaria, Turpan, and other areas in today’s Xinjiang—for instance, the Yarkand khanate (1514–1678) founded by Sa’id Khan (reigned 1514–1533)—were vassal states of China’s Ming dynasty (1368–1644) (Millward and Perdue 2004, 46–48, 400n28). Lastly, as this logic goes, the history of China may then be conceived as one that is uninterrupted, linear, and integral to Zhonghua minzu and its peoples, despite centuries of non-Han sovereignties— notably those of the Mongol of the Yuan (1279–1368) and the Manchu of the Qing (1644–1911) dynastic periods. In 1949, the PRC inherited—through conquest and acquisition, to be clear—much of the 1.66 million square kilometers of the land of the presentday Xinjiang from the Manchu/Qing empire (which had annexed Dzungaria in 1759) and later the Republican era (1912–1949), and made it a Uyghur “minority autonomous region” in October 1955. The concept of “minority autonomy”

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as it is practiced today has roots in the 1930s or earlier, when the Communists touted the idea of self-determination in order to ally with the non-Han peoples in their struggles against foreign invasions and the Republicans (Wang Ke 2017, 123–151). After the founding of the People’s Republic, China under Mao Tse-tung (Mao Zedong) experimented with a kind of ethnic pluralism that offered, albeit in a titular fashion, the non-Han peoples some extent of self-governance in various administrative territories while also implementing policies to preserve indigenous cultures, languages, and performing arts. Yet in reality the promise of autonomy was eclipsed by an overarching Han presence in all levels of governance, amounting to what some have called a system of heteronomy (Bovingdon 2010, 40–79). The accommodationist policies that constitute the titular system of “minority autonomy” are, as a matter of fact, embedded in a larger-framed assimilative scheme. One of the primary integrationist strategies is settler colonialism, put in place through the massive migration of Han into Uyghur and other non-Han territories since the early 1950s. According to the official census, over 42 percent of Xinjiang’s 25.85 million population was Han, which had increased from only 6.1 percent in 1953, effectively diluting the Uyghur population from 74.7 percent in 1953 to less than 45 percent or about 11.62 million today (2020 census).20 More recently, since around 2017, such large-scale colonial settlement has been accompanied by “a systematic campaign to suppress Uyghur births through forced abortion, sterilization, and birth control” (Grauer 2021). The paramilitary component of China’s settler colonialism in Xinjiang is the Production and Construction Corps (Ch. Shengcan jianshe bingtuan; Uy. Ishlepchiqirish-qorulush bingtueni). Founded in 1954, the corps may be understood as a perpetuation of the centuries-old Chinese practice of frontier management by sending military personnel to reclaim and farm new lands, carry out agricultural projects, and develop infrastructure (see Millward 2000, 126–127). In the meantime, the label “minority” operates in a dialectic space defined and operated by negation, deficiency, and absence, in order for the assimilation project to be implemented under the intertwined discourses of modernity and benevolence. Uyghur and other non-Han peoples find themselves routinely portrayed as deficient in a range of modern skills, technologies, and knowledge— and awaiting help. The Chinese state then sees itself as obliged to subjugate the primitivity of the non-Han peoples and bring to them ideas, practices, and technologies of the modern world. The enforced use of Chinese—or, precisely, Putonghua (Mandarin)—as the spoken language and simplified characters as the written language in education and official occasions has been preached as an indispensable means of facilitating Uyghur acquisition of advanced modern knowledge. Restrictions on Islamic practices—fasting during Ramadan; praying in public or even just at home; wearing hijab or even just a veil; reading or even 48

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just owning the Qur’an; listening to tebligh sermons, or simply being pious or even just religious—have been implemented in the name of eradicating “unhealthy” cultural practices and “ideological viruses” that are considered obstacles for the Uyghur to embracing civilization and modernity (Human Rights Watch 2018). Help Xinjiang (Yuan Jiang), an enormous nationwide campaign launched after the Ürümchi violence in 2009 to further Chinese investment and presence in Xinjiang, has been promoted as generous Han assistance to advance Xinjiang’s economy, culture, and social life. Demolitions of homes, businesses, and sacred sites in ancient Uyghur towns and neighborhoods—most notably the demolition of Kashgar’s old town c. 2009—and the ensuing relocation projects have been framed as a kindhearted official initiative to provide Uyghur residents with earthquake-resistant housing. As one slogan printed on the wall of a soon-to-be-bulldozed Uyghur home in suburban Kashgar propagates, “Living in earthquake-resistant houses, we won’t forget the Communist Party” (Yer tewreshke chidamliq öyde olturghanda kompartyeni unutmaymiz). Likewise, in the more recent Three News campaign, officials have sought to transform domestic living space from “backwardness” to “new lifestyle, atmosphere, and order” and have imposed “changes to Uyghur perceptions of order, domestic space, and modernity” (Grose 2021, 2968).21 Model “minorities” are not only jovial and servile but also grateful. This is epitomized by the legend of a Uyghur peasant named Qurban Tulum (1883– 1975), a.k.a. Uncle Qurban (Uy. Qurban tagha; Ch. Ku’erban dashu), who, in 1958, at age seventy-five, planned to travel on a donkey from his hometown Keriya (Ch. Yütian), in the deep south, all the way to Beijing—a total of over four thousand miles—in order to express his gratitude to Mao for “liberating him from the vile feudal landlord.” One version of the official story preaches that Qurban finished the first leg, which was over fifteen hundred miles across the Taklimakan Desert, to Ürümchi in a few months, but then he learned that Beijing was too far to reach by donkey. Said to be deeply moved, government officials then flew him from Ürümchi to Beijing to meet Mao (another version says that he traveled by road) as a member of a delegation from Khotan (Chen Yangbin 2016, 100–121). Qurban reportedly greeted Mao upon seeing him by saying “Salam Mao zhuxi” (Salaam Chairman Mao). This anecdote has been the theme of copious Chinese literary and artistic works, such as the song “Ku’erban dashu nin shang na” (“Uncle Qurban, where are you going?”), composed and sung by Kérim, and, the best known of all, the song “Salamu Mao zhuxi” (Salaam Chairman Mao), written by Wang Luobin in 1959. The first few lines of the lyrics read: Chairman Mao! Chairman Mao! I miss you every night and day. I must work hard and save my wages.



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One day, I’ll go to Beijing to meet you and sing “Chairman Mao! Lay! Lay! Lay!” People all around the world love you. Salaam! Chairman Mao!22

Qurban Tulum’s story is received by many Uyghur as largely fictitious. Uyghur musicians like to deride the song by secretly altering its title from “Salamu (Salaam) Mao zhuxi” to “Sarang Mao zhuxi”—with sarang used as an adjective here, meaning mad, nutty, or, as a Uyghur musician once explained to me, in Chinese, shenjing bing (lit., “mentally sick”). Ridicule and mockery like this, albeit largely symbolic and shared only among in-group members, remain some of the crucial ways of everyday resistance in Uyghur life. Music and performing arts have figured prominently in the maintenance of China’s “minority” cultural policies in ways that are, correspondingly, at once accommodationist and assimilative. The music of the non-Han peoples partakes in a dual minoritizing process, one that simultaneously celebrates its contribution to multiethnic diversity and also seeks to rectify its perceived primitivity as it is subsumed into the overarching frame of the Chinese nationality. China’s post-1949 “minority” cultural policy has been characterized by the coalescence of—and fluctuation between—two seemingly conflicting principles. The Soviet concept of “minority” autonomy, although largely titular in political realms and manifested mostly in top-down multiculturalist showcases, has been the official line and indoctrinated in various aspects of “minority” social life. In performing arts, this is evident in the substantial state sponsorship of music and dance, as implemented in a number of ways: folkloric singing-and-dancing troupes established in non-Han territories throughout the 1950s (Rees 2001, 442–443); large-scale ethnographic research projects to document and preserve “minority” music; and educational institutions established to impart traditional arts. All these infrastructures have, in effect, created room for a certain level of intercultural tolerance, which may appear to be at odds with attempts at aggressive assimilation during, for example, the 1960s and 1970s as well as the recent “reeducation” campaign. Under this multiculturalist principle, each non-Han people and their music often appears in official representations as ahistorical, unified, and stylistically homogenous. In China’s multinational musical showcase, each nationality finds itself routinely identified with a certain reified set of sonic and choreographic archetypes. Musical instruments are among the most visible of these: the Hmong (Ch. Miao) are often represented playing the mouth organ qeej (Ch. lusheng); the “horsehead” fiddle morin khuur (Ch. matou qin) for the Mongolian; the plucked lute dombra (Ch. dongbula) for the Kazakh (although often mistaken as a Uyghur instrument); and the plucked lute rawap (Ch. rewapu) for the Uyghur, to name a few. This fixing of otherwise complex music traditions 50

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into readily identifiable tropes plays a major role in the state’s cultural assimilation scheme. As Clark (2008, 256) points out, regarding the “minority” performing arts during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), the homogenization of local “minority” art into “easily recognized versions of their originals” has provided Chinese audiences in the 1950s and early 1960s with certain familiar “dance moves or musical sounds or tropes as signifying particular ethnic groups” and “standardized, easily recognized signs of ethnic diversity and assertion of multi-cultural tolerance.” These musical icons are “valued as providing a ready, even shorthand way to assert a Chinese version of modern culture.” The second principle—the assimilationist—operates through an evolutionist frame, which conceives the cultures of the non-Han people en masse as exterior. Until fairly recently, for example, Uyghur music had been characterized, to different extents, as possessing deficient qualities and aesthetics that await improvement: sympathetic timbre on the ghéjek and other instruments as noise; diatonic fretting and temperament as unscientific; oral transmission and the absence of notation as defective; heterophony and its chamber ensemble formats as simplistic (see Wan Tongshu 1986, 93–103). Although ideas of cultural reformism had been put into practice by Uyghur intelligentsia and expressly promoted in both Uyghur and Chinese publications in the 1930s and 1940s, the modernist music reform systematized after 1949 was unprecedented in its scale and impact. It has been enacted with clear enlightenment overtones, introducing such European art musical procedures as multipart writing, functional harmony, equal-tempered fretting, orchestral textures, solo virtuosity, clean timbres, standardized repertoires, synchronized dynamics and rhythm, notation, and professionalized training and performing troupes to traditional Uyghur performance. Conservatory-style music institutions were first established in Ürümchi in the late 1950s and later all across Xinjiang. The highest profile of these is what is known today as the Music Faculty (Muzika fakultéti) at Xinjiang Arts Institute (Shinjang sen’et inistituti), which maintains a rigorous curriculum for the training of professional musicians in a conservatory setting. A good number of graduates from these music institutions find employment in the various “song and dance troupes” (naxsha-ussul ömiki), which are professional performing ensembles sponsored by local governments of various administrative levels. Modeled after the performing ensembles of the musical theaters in Soviet Kazakhstan (see Muhambetova 1995), these troupes became so deeply entrenched in the state’s propaganda machine after 1949 that it would be a mistake not to examine their styles, practices, and aesthetics as integral and corresponding to China’s ethnic policies and their implementation. The most prestigious of these today is the flagship Xinjiang Song and Dance Troupe

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(Shinjang naxsha-ussul ömiki), which assumes a leading role recreating traditional music and performing new compositions in highly progressive styles for major ceremonial and showcasing events. The modernist reform program also creates the specialization of performing roles. Under the new system, the traditional guru, who used to be a versatile multi-instrumentalist and master vocalist, is reduced to often no more than an ordinary member of a troupe—their “work unit” (orun)—responsible for playing a designated instrumental part from notation. In most cases, the orun is also where musicians receive a modest salary, health and housing benefits, and, unwillingly, political teachings—a control system that remains effectively in place today. As chapter 5 will suggest, the reform decontextualizes traditional music by cultivating a new kind of technicality and listening approach. These involve the remolding of the “minority” musical bodies—the musicians and their instruments (Clark 2008, 253–254)—in order for them to serve as models that advance a distinctive sonic imaginary for musical modernity. This is the case with a number of aggressively reengineered instruments, such as the ghéjek and the rawap—both prominent icons in pop music, films, paintings, and dramas since the 1950s—and the reworked traditional pieces in the modern repertoire. The new expressivity works to reify traditional music by detaching it from its indigenous, folk, or religious contexts. It also replaces the older in-group professionalism with a new kind of amateurism, one that relies on notation and conservatory training to sustain.

Modernity and Its Traditions An underlying assumption of the subsequent chapters is that the coalescence of these two principles of post-1949 “minority” policies—namely, the multiculturalist celebration of ethnic diversity and the Han-led cultural enlightenment to “civilize” the “minorities”—has forged a creative space for Uyghur music over the past seven decades in China. I explore musical modernity not so much as confined to a particular social condition, an overwhelming historical context, or even a set of musical attributes that characterizes a particular historical period. Instead, it is approached here more as an aspiration to depart from prevailing practices and aesthetics, a self-awareness of being a part of a new epoch that is not only distinct from the earlier time (often imagined as an ahistorical past) but also superior to it. Its constituents are often relational; what makes a style or genre modern is by necessity subjected to continuous social and aesthetic repositioning by the musicians and their audiences. Conceived in a subaltern context, musical modernity begs to be understood also less as an emulation of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European art music, or that 52

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of the hegemonic culture, and more in terms of its interaction with the broader political discourse. As an ideological trope, modernity is “self-referential, if not performative,” and “itself a sign of modernity” (Jameson 2013, 34), one that informs and generates musical choices rather than merely being constrained and informed by them. Being modern musically is thus a consciousness that articulates a multiplicity of aural experiences, through which musicians and their audiences experiment and rehearse diverse modes of being. It transcends styles and genres, and it serves as a site for modern creativity while also formulating notions of tradition and heritage. At the same time, modernity also operates as a discourse about superiority and progress that is colonial in nature. The Chinese state has relied on the assumed “minority” pursuit of modernity as the raison d’être of its policies and governance. In the name of progress and development, the state has launched intrusive projects to reengineer “minority” cultures, arts, and lifestyles. The imposition of modernist techniques and aesthetics on non-Han music since the 1950s, while spurred on by a cultural modernization project that is de rigueur nationwide, has enabled a system of control over musicians. It has introduced and inscribed Han-mediated Western music practices and aesthetics onto Uyghur music making, especially in the realms of professional ensembles and solo virtuosity. The modern “minority” soundscape is derived yet unambiguously distinct from its premodern formations. A by-product of this modernist project is the creation of an enterprise of composing, performing, and teaching music that is under almost total state control in order to serve broader national and political ends. This is achieved while at the same time local aesthetics and older practices are cleansed of qualities that lie outside the sanctioned cultural differences. Practitioners and their patrons perceived to be antithetical to modernity are sidetracked and disempowered as their skill sets are disembodied and taken out of the original circuit. This may be compared to what Hagedorn (2001, 173– 202) calls the criminalization of Afro-Cuban religious practices in Cuba, in the sense that both have led to “a form of decontextualization that paved the way for the folkloric performances” (13). In the case of Uyghur music, Harris (2020, 23–55) notes a similar process of religious cleansing in the folkloric remaking of meshrep, a traditional communal gathering with music and dance, as an “intangible cultural heritage.” Such delegitimization of traditional performing art, sacred or otherwise, has been cast in the context of ethnic politics and the colonial pursuit of cultural modernity. However—and despite all the colonial implications—it would be unhelpful at best to reduce “minority” modernity as a component, branch, or constituent of the larger Chinese, Asian, or global system of modernity. In a study of the twentieth-century emergence of classical music in South India, Weidman

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cautions against the idea of a local, indigenous, or alternative modernity, which “dangerously ‘[implies] an underlying and fundamentally singular modernity, modified by local circumstances into a multiplicity of “cultural” forms. It is only in reference to this implied generic that such variations can be imagined and discussed’” (Weidman 2006, 288, quoting Mitchell 2000, xii). Karnatic music and Western classical music belong to the “same modernity,” Weidman argues, in the sense that both were products of the “new economies and patronage structures associated with imperial modernity.” Crucially, Western classical music “was not a fully formed entity that was merely exported to India beginning in the early twentieth century; rather, ideas about classical music, both Western and Indian, were being negotiated simultaneously in the colony and the metropole” (288). The same can be said of the case of “minority” musical modernity in China, which, I suggest, should be understood less as a top-down, externally imposed structure but more in terms of its colonial encounter with the hegemonic interlocutor. As a matter of fact, modern Chinese national music and its professional system of training as practiced today were still at a nascent stage in the midtwentieth century as CCP began to unroll its modernization plot for the nonHan peoples. The reformist alterations made to a number of high-profile Uyghur instruments, such as the rawap, ghéjek, and chang, took place at the same time—the 1950s and 1960s—when their counterparts in traditional Han music were undergoing a similar process of remodeling. The modernist pursuit in Uyghur music is thus unlikely to be a local realization of an already established system of Chinese musical modernity. Rather, it is mediated by a coterminous Chinese modernity project that has sought to domesticate and manipulate its internal Others on its own way to becoming modern as a consequence of its own encounters with the West. As I demonstrated elsewhere (Wong 2020), a nontrivial number of modern techniques and styles on Han Chinese instruments have indeed been developed as a creative outlet through the appropriation of a largely concocted “minority” soundscape. Musical exoticism thus participates in the making of modern Chinese music by expanding its repertoires, vocabularies, and range of expressivities in order to emerge as normative and progressive in its own remaking. In similar ways, it is also misleading to assume the Uyghur and other nonHan peoples are merely reluctant victims of an unwanted modernity project installed by the Chinese state. Modernist aspirations and experiments in Uyghur performing arts predated 1949 with influences from Soviet Central Asia that had made their way into the Uyghur territory via the Ili valley across the border. These early initiatives were also explicitly connected to ideas of (Uyghur or Turkic) national enlightenment that had mesmerized Uyghur intellectuals and merchants since at least the early 1930s. In the broader context, 54

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modern Uyghur or Turkic identity has been actively sought through an affinity network of mercantile and cultural connections with Uzbekistan, southeastern Kazakhstan, and Turkey, as well as broader Central Asia and the Middle East (see Adila Erkin 2009). It is not helpful, therefore, to hear Uyghur music in modern China exclusively as an outcome of coerced, involuntary musical changes. Local traditions and hegemonic influences sometimes appear to be more collaborating than conflicting, in that subaltern expressions actively opt to manifest in forms that are dominant and deemed universal. It is in the process of figuring out what their modern nation should sound like that Uyghur musicians and audiences negotiate their identities. Studies on the pursuit of musical modernity in subaltern contexts should therefore resist downplaying the mimetic reproductions in performing arts as co-opted, derivative, and void of artistic integrity. Importantly, the “minority” adaptation of global and Chinese-mediated Western musical forms should invite questions about empowerment rather than (in)authenticity. In a study on the millennial Christian movement among the Hmong (Miao) people in southwestern China, Cheung (1994) argues that the acceptance of Christianity brought about “a new set of values that would confer both power and prestige” in their “long history of fighting against Han encroachment.” In that sense, the movement arose out of a realization among the subjugated people of the “transcendent political power of Western missionaries over . . . the Chinese state” (217) as a means to “actualize their desired sociopolitical status” (245). The Uyghur case studied in this book may be further approached through Taussig’s well-known concept of “second contact” (1993)—the recognition of expressions and cultural forms of the colonized that strategically imitate those of the colonizers. It is worth our close attention to look at the extent to which such mimicry— the copying of the colonial forms, aesthetics, and even values—constitutes a disruptive resistance or redefinition of power (Bhabha 1994) in non-Han performing arts in modern China. Suffice it to say here that, for many Uyghur musicians, a concerto performed on an aggressively reengineered musical instrument accompanied by a reformist pan-ethnic orchestra is no less significant than a bold statement about equity and national pride. For a “minority” national art to be elevated to be on par with that of the Chinese (and the West) is no small feat against discourses of inferiority and primitivity that have loomed so large in how the Uyghur and other non-Han peoples have been listened to during much of the twentieth century. The progressivity embodied is thus a hopeful vehicle for modern “minority” art to sublimate its marginality. As Schein (2000, 233) writes about the Hmong (Miao) people in southwestern China, in performing modernity, minority actors “confounded their consignment to the role of the impoverished, rural, tradition bearers and strove to make membership in the prestigious category of

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modernity less exclusive, more negotiable.” The trope of modernity may thus be seen as a promising cultural resource that is appropriated by marginal groups as a means of empowerment. Western and/or modern elements have also been blended, often unabashedly, with traditional Uyghur music by some of the most locally celebrated musicians, who are often embraced as national heroes and icons of nationalism, and rarely discarded as adventurists or traitors. The best known of these is perhaps the “king of tembur” (tembür shahi) Nurmuhemmet (Nurmemet) Tursun (1957–2004), a multi-instrumentalist who had served for twenty-six years as a professional member of Shinjang naxsha-ussul ömiki while maintaining grassroots popularity among trans-regional Uyghur audiences. The same is also true for the rawap virtuoso Dawut Awut (1939–2007) as well as ghéjek masters Ekrem Ömer (1963–2012) and, a generation earlier, Abdulla Hamut (1940–1980)23—all protagonists of state-promoted reformist styles while at the same time enthusiastically celebrated as national heroes by their Uyghur audiences. Their legacies will be discussed more in detail in chapter 5. The display of superior mastery and progressive styles on modified instruments, while being an indoctrination of official modernist initiatives, speaks simultaneously to a subaltern mode of cultural modernity that requires convincing practices of creativity to authenticate. Non-Han elites often consider themselves keen participants and sometimes even leaders of a cultural renewal project that, at its core, is an integral part of their own national history. The progressivity embodied also represents a promising strategy for non-Han music, with all its perceived primitivity, to sublimate itself to a national collectivity that is at once advanced and modern. It is thus useful to consider “minority” modernity and subaltern empowerment in the same breath, and to look at cultural modernity not as a top-down, overwhelming condition but as a consciousness that is generative and adaptable. For non-Han elites and cosmopolitans, being modern—and convincingly and credibly so—remains an important strategy to engage ethno-racism and other forms of prejudices in modern China. All these developments should prompt us to conceptualize “minority” modernity as a contact zone of colonialism and to rethink its role in subaltern empowerment. “Conquered and colonized societies,” Camaroff and Camaroff (1993, xi–xii) write, “struggled, in diverse ways and with differing degrees of success, to deploy, deform, and defuse imperial institution.” In a study on the Kabre in northern Togo, Piot (1999, 174–176) describes the encountering of colonial modernity as a reciprocal process in which the colonizer attempts to “tap into, usurp, and steal the power of the Other” while “those same colonized others . . . discover and usurp the source of their power and make it their own.” It would be a mistake, Piot (250–259) writes, “to see such appropriations as 56

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disempowering—as a type of capitulation or surrender.” Similarly, in an ethnography on the practices and politics of national belonging among the Yao in southwestern China, Litzinger (2000) theorizes the margin as a practice of cultural struggle and a way to refocus the attention on minority elites as agents who work to craft their own versions of modernity. Minority elites, he notes, contest the dominant image that the Yao lived on the margins of socialist modernity and thus work against the Yao as a backward people. They try to “pry open a space for the Yao subject in the multiethnic imaginary of contemporary China” (256) and for the imagining of alternative futures, an emergent social practice and consciousness of what Litzinger calls “postsocialist belonging” in modern China. All in all, the “very code of the modern that had framed them as its others” (Schein 2000, 25) is an important tool for the “minorities” to assert an alternative being. This book deals with a similar dialectic process. It looks at how the abject space enabled simultaneously by “minority” exoticism and the imposition of reformist styles is reconstituted and “usurped” by Uyghur musicians and audiences as a site of gaining cultural ground and making space to live with subordination. I explore how modernist sound icons and music practices have been refigured in Uyghur music to cultivate senses of a national self that empowers in-group solidarity. The broader process that “minority” modernity in modern China illuminates is thus a chain of subordinate relations that have relied on the continual production of otherness in its operation. The set of modernist aesthetics and practices imposed on “minority” music after 1949 mirrors China’s own musical modernity, through which Chinese musicians have similarly found empowerment against Western colonial powers (see Jones 2001). To quote from Schein again (2000, 233), “subalternity, then, might be more fruitfully thought of in terms of the mobility of otherness in which sites of subordination are anxiously reconstituted by those seeking to evade them,” a kind of “relational degrees of subalternity.” To the modern Chinese nation, the West and the “minorities” became a dual otherness against which its boundary is defined and contested. The outcome of such colonial adventures is similarly generative. As Dirlik (1996, 166) writes, “Euro-American assault on imperial China both provoked the emergence of Chinese nationalism and, ironically, provided it with images of the Chinese past that could be incorporated in a new national identity.” In the same vein, the aggressive maneuvering of “minority” performing arts since 1949 has engendered a heightened sense of “minority” musical nationalism through the evocation of cultural symbols that have found their ways into modern Uyghur performance. Modernity is thus necessarily mobile and a collaborative project. Its reproductive power does not lie in the exterior but relies on a kind of “coalescent promotion” (Schein 2000, 288), in which “minority” collaborators are as frequently elites or professional musicians as they are

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ordinary listeners or amateur performers who aspire to put on an alternative subjectivity from the one prescribed for them by the hegemonic state. The outcome is rarely received as cultural infidelity or co-optation. Neither should it also be interpreted as a lagging behind that engages itself in an endless game to catch up with their Chinese and Western counterparts. Last but not least, modernity operates as a self-awareness of partaking in the linear progress of a history, bringing about an intensified awareness of the past. A chief assumption here is then that modernity is not contradictory to “tradition” but an inclusive process that has “bred a heightened concern with ‘tradition’” (Camaroff and Camaroff 1993, xiv). It has also conceived notions of indigeneity, heritage, and authenticity. This is not to say that cultural icons that are considered ethnic/national (milly) or traditional (en’eniwi) are irrelevant: these remain effective registers of national belonging in Uyghur music today. Without doubt, the discourse of “tradition” continues to be a “powerful ideological construct to anchor and stabilize” (Waxer 2002, 151) threatened identities. Yet the concept of “tradition” as a category of cultural formation that possesses a distinct temporality—that belongs to the distant past and requires active means of maintenance and revival in the present—is one that is decidedly modern. Tradition and modernity are thus better approached as mutual, collaborative processes. As Tucker (2011, 393–394) writes on Peruvian Indian music, “claims to indigeneity can operate not only through the maintenance of local traditions, but also by importing global idioms into local circumstances, where they help to voice new kinds of indigenous subject positions.” In comparable ways, Uyghur musicians have borrowed from a wide spectrum of local and intercultural styles to authenticate claims about traditions. Musical elements that are considered “traditional” thus play a unique performative role here. The reworking of traditional elements into modern idioms elaborates the notion of “tradition” and its constituents. The extent to which a certain set of musical icons is heard as traditional or national, or both, often depends less on its intrinsic qualities than on its modern profile and how it is framed in contemporary aural experience. Successful attempts at stylistic borrowing and modernist restyling are reiterative; they are replicated by other musicians and redefine the national soundscape. The concept of progress is thus not antithetical to nationalist pursuits. “The common ground for these cultural practitioners was a kneading and refashioning of tradition in order to engage it with a kind of nostalgic retrospective while they moved forward along the modernization trail,” Schein (2000, 25) writes. All in all, modernity may better be approached as a “structure of feeling” that is “repeatedly instantiated by myriad performative acts that are elaborated and codified in the course of various moments of sociality” (25). More often than not, the creative ground forged by

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these modernist ventures is claimed by “minority” social actors to actualize their individual and collective goals. Traditional music also acquires affective power through its capacity to hybridize across genres. Rearranged and newly composed Uyghur musical works are often celebrated alongside centuries-old muqam as Uyghur national canons. Few seem to be bothered, for example, by the coexistence of microtonality and triadic harmony, sympathetic-string sonority overlying synthesized accompaniment, and Sufi-inspired rhythmic modes merging into the drum machine–generated pounding rhythm, among other hybridizing strategies in the modern Uyghur soundscape. Quite the contrary, these seem to be moments where deeply felt sentiments are deposited and find the most nuanced expression. As Spinetti (2005, 190–191) argues in his study of Tajik popular music, “the interpenetration of traditional music, new technologies and musical idioms other than the traditional is having the effect of expanding, without fracturing, the very notion of ‘tradition,’” by broadening the definition of traditional music and refunctionalizing its elements. The persuasiveness of the idea of “tradition,” according to Spinetti, “does not adhere of necessity to one specific code instead of others” but is the ability to “migrate from one to another provided a number of elements are perceived to offer the link.” The stylistic successfulness of Uyghur music is often measured against how articulately such links are offered, and the fame of Uyghur musicians often hinges on how persuasively they have assembled sound icons across the local-global spectrum to fashion a credible modern voice—both physical and metaphorical—that is figured as authentic for the Uyghur nation.



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CHAPTER 3

Muqam: Between National Heritage and Local Practices

A

Major focus of scholarly and media attention in Uyghur performing arts today is the broad spectrum of styles, practices, and repertoires subsumed under muqam, a traditional art form espoused indiscriminately—often across ethnic and political lines—as ancient and authentic. In the broadest sense, muqam is a meta-genre that encompasses an array of local repertoires of poetic songs and instrumental pieces whose roots are believed to lie in ancient court music, Sufi poetic traditions, and sacred idioms. The refinement of some of these repertoires, such as the Kashgar-based On ikki muqam (lit., “twelve muqam”), is derived in part from its complex system of modal scales, metrical cycles, and poetic meters that comprise the basis of its encyclopedic suites and song sequences. Recent studies have looked at muqam comparatively as the Uyghur member of a broader Central Asian system of art music that can be traced back to its assumed heyday during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries under court patronage. In musical terms, muqam’s multisectional structure has been compared to that of the Uzbek-Tajik tradition of shashmaqām, as analogous “classical music” in its own context. The etymological proximity between the titles of muqam suites and the modal scales of Arab maqām, Turkish makam, Azeri mugham, and the Persian system of dastgāh has also invited similar comparisons.1 In local, premodern contexts, however, muqam is practiced more often as an orally transmitted repertoire distinguished categorically from folk and other non-muqam music, although the stylistic lines are rarely clear-cut. The purpose of this chapter is less to contribute to the literature of historico-analytical study of muqam, as is conventional in local scholarship. Rather, I aim to provide a context to listen to muqam as simultaneously a constructed heritage and a vibrant, living tradition—a “folk-classical” music (xelq kilassik muzikisi), as scholars of the older generation called it (Abdushükür Muhemmet Imin 1980). 60

I also discuss how musicians and their audiences continue to draw upon muqam as a source of authenticity and national pride. This chapter has two major parts, connected by a brief ethnographic venture into a local muqam performance in the Ili valley. The first part provides a context of the idealized framework of muqam as it has been reconstructed and canonized as art, “classical” music for and by the Uyghur, since the early 1950s. It builds on existing muqam scholarship (which has been presented in over a dozen monographs since the early 1990s)2 and casts doubt on some of the popular assumptions about its musical continuities and the concept of “cultural loss.” The second part takes a closer look at the musical, poetic, and performing details of Penjigah, one of the best-known muqam suites, as it is performed in the local Ili tradition. My purpose is to scrutinize some of the musical decisions and structural processes that mark local performance as distinct from the reconstructed modern tradition, and to reveal the fluidity of its practices. I contend that the modern muqam project has brought about a repertoire of timeless, transcendent masterpieces that may be compared to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European art music in its indoctrination of the notion of Werktreue—the centrality ascribed to “works” as a primary focus of musical meaning (Goehr 1992)—through the standardization of notation, formal structure, and other details. A musical synthesis of a number of local muqam traditions, the national repertoire in turn redefines how regional varieties and “folk” constituencies are conceived and performed.

A “Classical” Tradition The Uyghur tradition known across the board as On ikki muqam today refers to approximately a dozen extended suites of songs and instrumental pieces that form the canonic repertoire as revived and reconstructed under substantial state initiatives and Uyghur nationalist enthusiasm since the mid-twentieth century. As a cultural heritage, it has been involved in two seemingly conflicting processes: simultaneously as a major tool for the state to implement its “minority” policies and a crucial marker of Uyghur national identity. It was picked by the Chinese state as a sophisticated form of “minority” performing art for preservation and the showcasing of cultural diversity. More recently, it became China’s entry for UNESCO’s proclamations in a series of Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity, representing China in the highest profile of international culture venues.3 A symbol of cultural heritage and major source of national pride, muqam also embodies the pinnacle of Uyghur civilization and offers renewed pathways for the Uyghur imagination of a national past that is rooted in music and art. Musician Shirmuhemmet

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Nuraxun captures it well as he asserts that “On ikki muqam is like twelve very tall mountains in the world; very few other ethnic musical cultures can reach its height.”4 It is in this context that this chapter considers muqam a musical project of “minority” modernity, in which the Chinese state and the Uyghur share an invested interest in promoting an idealized, classicized rendering of the traditional Uyghur genre. The revival project that has brought about On ikki muqam as we know it today is also fundamentally a collaborative one, although the two endeavors serve radically different purposes. The modern muqam revival project, as noted in chapter 1, was pioneered in the early 1950s in Ürümchi, where a team of musicologists known as the “Working Group for Arranging Muqam” (Ch. mukamu zhengli gongzuo zu), led by Wan Tongshu of Central Music Conservatory in Beijing, made a series of studio recordings of Turdi Axun and a number of other muqam masters who had traveled from Kashgar and Ili to the provincial capital as part of the recording project. Follow-up ethnographic trips were made in the late 1950s across the Uyghur territory to identify parts, melodies, and texts that had been uncertain or considered “missing” in the original recordings, resulting in the publication of a two-volume melodic transcription, On ikki muqam, in 1960. These initial scholarly ventures served as the basis for a series of performance and research projects that resumed in the late 1970s after the Cultural Revolution. Among these, the professional performing troupe Shinjang muqam ansambili (Xinjiang Muqam Ensemble) was formed in the 1980s to create audiovisual recordings of the reconstructed muqam. It was involved in two major audiovisual publications of On ikki muqam: the first was released as twenty-four cassette tapes in 1993, the second as twenty-four CDs and twelve video compact discs in 2001. Local scholars refer to these, respectively, as the “second” and “third” editions (with the initial recordings in the 1950s being the “first” edition), each accompanied by a set of edited melodic and textual notations (1993 and 1997). Differences between the two editions (discussed below) are not trivial and are reflected in the repertoires of different generations of musicians. Those who graduated from Shinjang sen’et inistituti during much of the 1990s had been taught the texts (and melodies) of the second edition, whereas graduates from the early 2000s on learned mainly from the third edition, which is considered the most comprehensive by local scholars.5 Marked by a sense of timelessness, the project is conceptualized to be monumental in that it celebrates the completion of half a century’s concerted national effort in salvaging and revitalizing an allegedly endangered tradition. These studio recordings, in contrast, reveal a reformist soundscape that is contemporary. Synchronized monophonic choral singing is interspersed with alternating female and male solos, performed by professional vocalists in a mixed chorus. The instrumental part is supplied by a pan-ethnic ensemble, 62

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featuring an orchestrated instrumental texture with cautiously controlled dynamic and tempo changes. The project also comes with a research unit, which is tasked with finishing the incomplete scholarly work of the pioneers, including publishing transcriptions and audiovisual recordings of On ikki muqam and other regional muqam genres, as well as continuing to identify “missing” pieces through fieldwork and historically informed composition.6 It is important to note that despite official reconstruction and revival, muqam remains actively practiced among musicians through local transmission networks and practices. Its repertoire, practices, and aesthetics have been passed down through the traditional ustazshagirt (master-apprentice) system and a variety of sacred and secular occasions (to be discussed below). The earliest written record of the titles of some of the music the masters recorded in the 1950s is Tewarikh-i (Tewarixiy) musiqiyun (History of musicians; c. 1854/1855 [AH1271]; edited and translated by Enwer Baytur and Xemit Tömür 1982), a hagiographic-style text that chronicles the lives and anecdotes of seventeen musicians from ancient Greece to sixteenth-century Central Asia—including Pythagoras (570–495 BC) (51–53) and Fārābī (872–950) (53– 54), to whom the history of muqam is often traced by local scholars.7 The majority of the musicians listed in the text are from the fifteenth-century Timurid court in Herat, alluding to a common late medieval Central Asian musical legacy that is rarely acknowledged today. Attributed to Möjizi (Molla Ismetulla binni Molla Németulla Möjizi), Tewarikh-i musiqiyun is hitherto the only known Chaghatay (or East Turki) manuscript that focuses on music and musicians.8 Its entry on Princess (melike) Amanisaxan (1534–1567), the last and the only female of the seventeen musicians (65–68)—and one of the only two musicians from what is the Uyghur territory today (the other being Yüsüp Qadirxan Yarkandi, the thirteenth musician listed [58–59])—is the sole written source for the modern reconstruction of her life stories.9 Möjizi attributed some of these muqam titles to specific musicians in history: Abu Nasr Al-Fārābī (872–950) created Rak, Oshshaq and its merghul (instrumental pieces), as well as Özhal and its three merghul (53); Mewlana Ali, of Khorasan, created Chöl Iraq (54); the Persian poet Nūr ad-Dīn ‘Abd ar-Rahmān Jāmī (1414–1492) created Ejem and its two merghul (54–55); the great poet Newa’i (1441–1501) created Nawa (55–56); Yüsüp Qadirxan Yarkandi, the famous musician at Rashid Khan’s court, created a muqam titled Visal (58–59); the fifteenth-century poet Pahlawan Muhammad kushtigir (wrestler) created Chaharzarb, Chahargah, Dugah, Penjigah, Mushawrek, Segah, and Bayat (59–63); the Chaghatay poet Yūsuf al-Sakkākī (1160–1229) created Bayat (64); and finally, Princess Amanisaxan created Ishret enggiz (65–68). Notably, the titles of some of these muqam were also mentioned in

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two ghazals that appeared in the lyrics included in the latest muqam edition (1997). The first is a ten-béyit (couplet) ghazal (“Mughenni chek meqamh “Rak”ni bezm ichre mestane”) by the poet-musician Naqis (Molla Sabir binni Abduqadir Naqis) (1843–1922) of Yéngisa; this ghazal was adopted as the text of the fifth dastan song of Penjigah in the published notation (1997) and its muqedimme in the recording (2001). The second is an eight-béyit ghazal (“Setarim tarigha jan rishtesidin tar eship salsam”) by Meshreb (Bābārahim Mashrab, 1653?–1711), adopted as the text of the muqedimme prelude of Rak.10 Both ghazals reference the emotional and social contexts associated with these muqam titles, serving as a “proof ” of the common belief among local scholars that the “compositions” these titles refer to have existed for several centuries. About two-thirds of the titles mentioned in Tewarikh-i musiqiyun appeared in Turdi Axun’s recordings in the 1950s, which became the core repertoire of the reconstructed On ikki muqam.11 Yet it is difficult to trace the connections between the anthological suites performed as muqam today to these historical titles, as not much is known musically about the latter. The extent to which the poetic association of these titles corresponds to actual musical contents remains a question that begs further critical research. As Light (2008, 163–164) cautions, in Möjizi’s mid-nineteenth-century text, muqam “should be seen as a musical system that composers used for singing a poetic text,” and specifically, the canonical repertoire/sequence, known as shu’be (lit., “branch”), may have been understood separately from the actual compositions derived from it. In other words, when a muqam was “created,” it might have meant either inventing a new modal scale system or writing a composition based on an existing one. No such distinction is made, however, in the On ikki muqam repertoire today. The order of the twelve muqam suites was established in the 1950s based on that in which the pieces had been recorded in Turdi Axun’s performance. As published in Uyghur on ikki muqami (1997), the twelve suites are (1) Rak; (2) Chebbiyat; (3) Segah; (4) Chahargah; (5) Penjigah; (6) Özhal; (7) Ejem; (8) Oshshaq; (9) Bayat; (10) Nawa; (11) Mushawrek; and (12) Iraq.12 The etymological root of these titles is a popular topic of scholarly guesswork.13 Each of these titles prescribes—at least in theory—a set of pitches, motives, tonalities, modulations, and other features of a modal scale or tonal melodic system that is unique to each suite and connects, in some ways, all its internal pieces. However, unlike Arab maqām and Indian rāg, where modal scales are abundantly theorized, the exact tonal, melodic, and motivic details of muqam are obscure, rarely a topic of serious scholarly research and hardly discussed among musicians for pedagogical or performing purposes. Musicologist Zhou Ji was among

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the most enthusiastic in his effort to establish a systematic modal theory for muqam. He contended that at some time in history there was a more comprehensive system of muqam modal theory, but it has not survived. One of his goals was accordingly to identify the specificities and internal logics of these modal scales through a kind of reductive analysis, sometimes using machineassisted pitch measurements of the recordings made in the 1950s or collected in his fieldwork.14 In their seminal research, During and Trebinjac (1991, 22–34) also attempt to delineate the scalar steps of each muqam, which is identified also with its tonic(s), endnote(s), and modulatory pitches. However, to most musicians, the scale and pitches used in a particular muqam do not seem to exist as an abstract concept independent of the actual melodies being sung or played on instruments. When asked about the musical differences between one muqam and another, most of my teachers and informants simply noted that they had different ahang (tunes); some explained that each has its own xaraktér (character), mung (feeling), or puraq (fragrance, flavor). The last two are important concepts in Uyghur music. The comment I received most from my instrument teacher on my performance was puraq chiqmidi (the flavor didn’t get out). He would then correct my ornaments, and sometimes ask me to play more yumshaq (soft, gentle) here and there. All these features point to the atmosphere, mood, or ethos carried by these modal scales, as is commonly discussed in South Asian rāg, but are rather vague, inconsistent, and perhaps undertheorized in Uyghur music.15 Among the musicians with whom I discussed the extramusical associations of muqam, most were disinclined to be specific and did not seem convinced that a single set of emotional contents could be assigned to a particular muqam. This is sometimes understood as “the loss of maqâmic sense in ­Central Asia” (During 2006). To local musicians, how a particular muqam feels is often a personal matter that is difficult to theorize and explain in words. About half a dozen muqam are generally understood to belong to one of the two groups, within each of which the muqam are “closer to each other” (bir-birige yéqin). The first group usually includes Oshshaq, Nawa, and Chahargah, which are heard as profound, serious, and heavy. The second comprises Rak, Chebbiyat, and Penjigah, which are often described as lightweight, straightforward, and ochuq (bright, open). The other muqam are less clear. Abdushükür Muhemmet Imin (1997, 274) further divides the muqam into three groups: (1) Bayat, Ejem, Nawa, Oshshaq, and Chahargah; (2) Penjigah, Sigah, and Özhal; (3) Rak, Iraq, and Chebbiyat. The muqam in each group are “close to each other” (bir-birige yéqin). Composertheorist Sulayman Imin is the most explicit in making such extramusical connections for each of the muqam (1995, 207–208):



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Muqam

Küyi xaraktéri (character of the mode/scale)

Rak Chebbiyat Mushawrek Chahargah Penjigah Özhal Ejem Oshshaq Bayat Nawa Segah Iraq

ochuq-yoruq (open, honest, bright) ochuq (open, frank) yumshaq (soft, gentle) yumshaq, mungluq (soft, mournful, melancholic) nisbeten ochuq (quite open, honest) nisbeten yumshaq (fairly soft) ochuq (open, frank) yumshaq, mungluq (soft, mournful, melancholic) nisbeten ochuq (quite open, honest) nisbeten ochuqraq we siliq (quite straightforward and smooth) yumshaq (soft, gentle) siliq (smooth, pleasant)

The belief about the loss of muqam’s extramusical association contributes to a broader scholarly notion of “cultural loss” and its salvage mentality. Not only are the modal theories and their “senses” believed to be “lost”; the muqam repertoire as they were recorded in the 1950s and 1960s are also generally considered “incomplete.” To start with, two sets of recordings of Turdi Axun’s performance of the Kashgar/Yarkand repertoire were made in Ürümchi: the first in July 1951 on electric wire, the second in August 1954 on magnetic tapes. The total length of these recordings is slightly over twenty-six hours, comprising 245 ahang (tunes) and 2,494 misra (poetic lines) (as included in the 2018 CD set Junggo Uyghur on ikki muqami: Tunji ün’alghu nusxisi). The length and number of tunes vary greatly among these muqam suites. Penjigah, the longest of all twelve, is nearly three and a half hours and contains thirty-five ahang, while Iraq, the shortest, is about one hour, with only six ahang. What complicates the story is that it was common for Turdi Axun and other masters to sing the same poetic text or even melody in more than one muqam, casting further doubt on whether muqam suites may be understood as discrete, independent “musical works,” and whether each of these titles (and the melodic modes they allegedly implied) may be understood as distinct. The mainstream scholarly explanation for such discrepancy and inconsistency follows one about “cultural loss.” The “golden era” of muqam, it is hypothesized, took place in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries at the Chaghatay khanate in Yarkand (1514–1705), particularly with the patronage of Abdureshid Khan (r. 1533–1560), after which, so it claims, muqam was in decline. This is understood as a trend that is consistent with the general decline of court patronage of music in Central Asia, notably after the reign of the Timurid ruler Sultan Husayn Bāyqarā Mirza (r. 1469/1470–1506), in whose court the famous poet-musician Newa’i (Ali-Shir Navā’ī, 1441–1501) had served. Möjizi’s Tewarixiy musiqiyun—the only surviving historical text on Uyghur muqam—may 66

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then be considered as corresponding, albeit remotely, to the mid-nineteenthcentury resurgence of music treaties in shashmaqām in Central Asia. The decline persisted into the mid-twentieth century, when, according to the official histories, very few musicians were able to play the “entire set of twelve muqam,” with the notable exception of, among others, Turdi Axun, Qasim Axun (1877–1956), and Ömer Axun (1909–1995) of Kashgar; Sulayman Axun (1891–1963) of Khotan; and Rozi Tembur and Zikri Elpetta (1915–1987) in Ili (Zhou Ji 2005, 213). That Uyghur muqam had a remarkable past but was on the wane during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries has become a scholarly cliché, which coheres with the glorification of the state’s research and revival project since the 1950s to “rescue” a presumably dying “minority” music tradition. What counts as “complete” in the muqam repertoire? As Qeyyun Turdi (2012, 109) puts it, the ideal (mukemmel) repertoire should have twelve suites, symbolizing twelve months in a year. Additionally, each muqam should have thirty ahang (tunes), and the entire repertoire should have 365 ahang, corresponding, respectively, to thirty days in a month and 365 days in a year. If it takes two hours to perform each muqam, he continues, then the entire repertoire will take twenty-four hours to play, which is the length of one day. These hyperidealized numbers are not merely symbolic; they also speak to the pursuit of a teleological integrity, an ultimate endpoint for the muqam project and its salvage ethnography, whose stated goal is not only to save muqam from the threat of extinction but also return it to its past glory. A “complete” cycle in each of these multisectional suites of the idealized repertoire of On ikki muqam starts with an unmetered prelude muqedimme and moves through somewhere between twenty and thirty songs and instrumental pieces. They are connected, sometimes rather loosely, by a framework of modal scales, melodic motives, and tonal schemes that mark each muqam as unique. The internal pieces are grouped and sequenced into three major sections or “movements”: chong neghme, dastan (neghme), and meshrep (neghme). This tripartite structure is unique to the Kashgar/Yarkand-based On ikki muqam repertoire, the genre that is considered the most “complete” and prototypical of other regional genres (which are typically shorter, with fewer internal pieces). Each internal piece is defined by a meter or a metrical cycle, which is by and large consistent across the suites; for example, all muqam have teze and are all identified by a six-beat cycle. Table 3.1 shows all the internal pieces of Penjigah as reconstructed in Uyghur on ikki muqami (1997). I focus here mainly on chong neghme and briefly describe the contents of the other two movements (see Metrozi Tursun 1995). This table reflects an idealized, “complete” sequence often taken for granted in muqam studies. The rhythmic patterns that outline the metrical cycles serve

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Table 3.1  The Idealized Formal Structure of a Muqam Suite 68

Sections (titles and descriptions) Muqedimme (Muqam béshi)

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Chong Neghme

Cycle 1

Cycle 2

Teze (& Merghul—Chüshügüsi) [A lengthy song in a slow, 6-beat cycle] Nusxa (& Merghul—Chüshügüsi) [There are two nusxa songs in Penjigah: (1) a 5-beat cycle; (2) a 13-beat (5+8) cycle; both moderately slow.] Mustehzad (& Merghul—Chüshügüsi) [A 5-beat cycle in a moderate tempo.] Yarim Saqi (& Merghul—Chüshügüsi) [A 7-beat cycle only found in Oshshaq; Penjigah has no yarim saqi.] Jula (& Merghul) [A shorter, uplifting song in a 4-beat cycle; moderately fast.] Senem [A short, fast song in a 4-beat cycle with a pounding feel.] Chong Seliqe [A fast 5-beat (3+2) cycle.] Kichik Seliqe (& Merghul—Chüshügüsi) [A lengthy song in a 4-beat cycle in a moderate tempo; the mainstay of the second cycle.] Peshru [A shorter, syncopated fast song in a 4-beat cycle.] Tekit [A brief song in a limping compound duple meter, with takk as downbeat.]

Metrical Cycles Unmetered, somewhat improvised



Sections (titles and descriptions)

Metrical Cycles

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Dastan

Dastan songs and their instrumental merghul are ordered numerically as “Birinji (first) Dastan—Merghul,” “Ikkinji (second) Dastan—Merghul,” “Üchünji (third) Dastan—Merghul,” etc., up to as many as five in the standard edition (there are more in some of Turdi Axun’s recordings). The dastan songs feature a combination of several 2-, 4-, 6-, 7-, and/or 9-beat metrical cycles. Penjigah has five dastan songs and their merghul.

Meshrep

Meshrep songs are ordered numerically as “Birinji (first) Meshrep,” “Ikkinji (second) Meshrep,” “Üchünji (third) Meshrep,” etc., up to as many as four in the standard edition (some of Turdi Axun’s recordings have as many as nine). Meshrep songs do not have merghul. Penjigah has two meshrep songs (in the standard edition). The first is in a 7-beat meter; the second is in a pounding duple.

Birinji Meshrep:

Ikkinji Meshrep:

The idealized formal structure of a muqam suite, as exemplified by the songs and instrumental pieces included in Penjigah in the reconstructed audio recording (2001). The lower notehead (of the transcribed metrical cycles) refers to the lower-pitched sound produced by striking the center of the framed drum (the dumm sound), where the upper notehead refers to the higher-pitched sound produced by striking the rim of the framed drum (the takk sound, usually made with the ring fingers, or finger snapping if the framed drum is rested on the lap). Transcribed by the author.

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more often as templates on which percussionists build in an actual performance. They are also sometimes implied on melodic instruments rather than played out on the dap framed drum, especially in the Ili repertoire, where percussion instruments are usually optional. The European meters used in Uyghur on ikki muqami (1997) do not accurately represent the rhythmic details of these metrical cycles. I made changes to better reflect how they are felt in actual performance and to correct the apparent mistakes. Two contrasting pitches are distinguished in the notated rhythms: the upper (takk) symbolizes a higherpitched, drier sound played, usually with the ring finger, at the rim of the dap, whereas the lower (dumm) refers to a lower-pitched, more resonant sound produced by striking the dap toward the center. Chong neghme is the main bulk of a muqam. Its music and text are known among older musicians simply as muqam. As a structural unit, chong neghme is unique to the On ikki muqam repertoire. Yet some of its internal pieces are found in other regional genres. Its music is assumed to be descended from ancient courts, although there is little musical evidence to substantiate this popular claim. In theory, chong neghme includes ten self-contained pieces. The first of these is teze. It is a weighty, solemn, and long poetic song that features a six-beat rhythmic cycle. The poetic song is followed by an instrumental postlude called merghul (or teze merghuli) that elaborates on the teze song, concluding with a sung endpiece called chüshügü, which may be of varying lengths. Both merghul and chüshügü follow the same metrical cycle of the preceding song and make use of its melodic materials. Not every song has a chüshügü; only teze, nusxa, mustezat, and kichik seliqe employ this “song—instrumental postlude—endpiece” structure. In contrast, pieces that are lighter and believed to have origins in dance music, such as senem and chong seliqe, come as standalone songs (but it is worth noting that in Turdi Axun’s recordings some of these songs end with a rather extensive instrumental passage). Altogether these ten pieces are organized through two sequences, each moving from heavier, slower items (such as teze, nusxa, kichik seliqe) to lighter, faster ones (such as jula, senem, chong seliqe, tekit). The first sequence has seven pieces, starting with teze and ending with the quintuple-metered chong seliqe. The second sequence has three pieces; it progresses from the main song kichik seliqe to the triple-meter tekit. Finally, the melody typically returns to a brief, somewhat unmetered coda to complete chong neghme (see table 3.2). Pieces in the next two movements, dastan and meshrep, are identified numerically as birinchi (first), ikkinchi (second), üchüchi (third), and so forth. Each of these pieces features a distinct metrical cycle. There are usually somewhere between three and six dastan songs, each followed by its merghul postlude that elaborates on its preceding song. The origin of these dastan songs is unclear, although most believe that they are related in some ways to the 70

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narrative singing of folk epics known also as dastan: half-sung, half-spoken rhymed texts performed in both secular and sacred contexts by a self-­ accompanying specialist known as dastanchi (see Rahile Dawut and Anderson 2016). However, in musical terms, the dastan epic singing is distinct from, and should not be confused with, the dastan songs and instrumental music in the muqam repertoire. Most of the dastan pieces reconstructed in On ikki muqam are based on the Ili repertoire of muqam, which has no chong neghme (I will return to this point later). Lastly, there are typically two to four meshrep songs in a muqam suite, and they have no merghul. Some of these meshrep songs may have been derived from the music of Sufi ritual traditions played by ashiq dervishes and other itinerant musicians (see Harris 2019). In the Ili repertoire, these songs may sometimes replace or be added to the dastan songs, and they are often optional in a performance. The term meshrep also refers to a formalized community gathering that incorporates storytelling, jokes (chaqchaq), songs and dances (naxsha-ussul), and even mock court hearings, punishments, and didactic speeches (see Aygül Muhemmet 2013). Each region has its own meshrep tradition, the best known of which is probably the so-called otuz oghul meshrébi (lit., “thirty guys” meshrep) in the Ili valley (Dautcher 2009, 270–282). In recent years the state has promoted a version of meshrep that is cleansed of its sacred contents, and has banned local meshrep gatherings and activities (see Harris 2020). The extent to which the meshrep songs of muqam are related to the music played at meshrep community gatherings is uncertain and remains a topic of scholarly interest. More than a few sources point to the fact that muqam’s tripartite structure may be less ancient than commonly assumed. Wan Tongshu (1960, 21) notes from interviews with Turdi Axun and other musicians that the idea of connecting the three “movements” into one suite was rather recent; Kashgar musician Hélim Sélim “organized and arranged” from what had originally been three separate repertoires to form the tripartite suite some eighty years earlier. Liu Feng (1987 [1951], 28), a research team member, quotes from local musicians as saying the “missing” dastan or meshrep songs are indeed not lost; they have never been there. Light (2007, 60–61) also quotes from interviews with one of Turdi Axun’s disciples named Ahmad, who maintained that it was Turdi Axun who included the dastan and meshrep songs to extend muqam into its current tripartite form. Despite assumptions about what constitutes a “complete” suite, not every muqam recorded in the 1950s (and edited later) has all (or the same number of) internal pieces. For example, while teze, nusxa, chong seliqe, kichik seliqe, and tekit are present in all muqam (Penjigah has two nusxa; Mushawrek and Penjigah have two kichik seliqe), the piece yarim saqi is found only in Oshshaq (but

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nevertheless assumed to be a part of a “complete” suite). In the original recording, Iraq, the shortest and most “incomplete” of the twelve, only includes teze, kichik seliqe, and tekit. Based on the assumption that at some point in history these shorter muqam suites were more “complete” and thus longer, the revival project has concerned itself with rectifying the inconsistencies, deviations, and findings that do not conform to this idealized framework. Accordingly, the presumably “missing” pieces were supplanted through ethnographic research or historically informed composition in order to “fill the gap.” At the same time, some of the “excessive” pieces were taken away or reassigned to another muqam in order to standardize the length of each. Musicologists well versed in the tradition have been recruited to serve also as composers to recreate the “lost” music. Most of the pieces in Iraq as heard today, for example, were restored through reconstructive compositions, because Turdi Axun performed only a handful of pieces in Iraq for the recording project in the 1950s. One of these musicologists is Abdulla Mechnun (1955–2022). He contends that the muqam he “composed” serve strictly to fill the gaps and therefore are not creative in nature but historically informed, substantiated by research and cultivation in the tradition. Once a draft was finished, he explains, he would gather musicians, scholars, and other muqam experts for trial listening sessions to offer comments to ensure that the music reflects its original flavor.16 A quick glance at the three officially published editions of muqam reveals that the total number of songs has increased from about 245 in Wan Tongshu’s transcription (1960) to 281 in the 1993 edition and finally to 326 in the last edition—or almost 360 if abiy chesme and Ishret enggiz are taken into account (see below). Nearly all of the added pieces are in the chong neghme, which has most “missing” pieces. Indeed, the completeness symbolized by the numbers Qeyyun Turdi described—twelve muqam, 365 songs, and twenty-four hours—has been a topic of much controversy. The number “twelve” may be related—at least symbolically—to the system of twelve sets of modes called shudūd, which can be traced back to the theoretical writings of basid court musician Safī al-Dīn al-Urmawī (d. 1294) and Timurid music theorist ‘Abd al-Qādir ibn Ghaybī al-Marāghi (b. 1435).17 However, in local Uyghur practices, these muqam suites have never been meant to be performed in their entirety. A number of scholars have disputed the symbolism associated with the number twelve. Among the most prominent critics is Tursunjan Létip (b. 1950),18 a composer, theorist, and educator who argues against what he considers a mythologization of an otherwise flexible and lively genre. No historical document has mentioned the number twelve, he said, and there had likely been not twelve but more than twenty muqam in the past. He made a list of twenty-one titles accordingly (2002, 6). Tursunjan maintains that the notion of “twelve muqam” is connected to the 72

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fact that the researchers only gathered twelve relatively “complete” sets of suites from Turdi Axun and Rozi Tembur in the 1950s. Before that, he notes, there was no concept of “twelve” or any fixed number; musicians would refer to individual muqam and sections by their names (such as “Penjigah dastan”; this remains a practice among local musicians). Tursunjan believes that Wan Tongshu and his research team are responsible for fixing the titles, numbers, and order of the muqam and the internal pieces. He cites the audio recordings of Turdi Axun’s interviews to argue that there should be more than twelve titles, but Turdi Axun was unable to remember the rest.19 Tursunjan maintains that two additional works, Ishret enggiz and Ruxsari, should be added to the repertoire as the thirteenth and fourteenth muqam. Eleven melodies and 112 lines of text that belong to Ishret enggiz, a muqam attributed to Amanisaxan, had been recorded in 1950, but its text and notation were only published in the 1997 edition as a supplementary volume with sixteen pieces of abiy cheshme (which is not an independent muqam but a concluding section attached to the end of each muqam).20 Neither abiy cheshme nor Ishret enggiz was included in the twenty-four-CD set On ikki muqami (2001). According to Tömür Dawamet (1927–2018), past chair of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Ishret enggiz, abiy cheshme, and mustehzad (a song in chong neghme) were recorded from the performance of masters Qasim Axun and Rozaxun Qalunchi. He calls this repertoire the “three jewels” (üch enggüshter). Excerpts of these three works were first revealed and performed for a group of scholars at a muqam conference in 1996 (Tömür Dawamet 1997, 1–12). Ruxsari, on the other hand, is a “new muqam” composed by Zikri Elpetta in 1939 based on the music he had written for staged dramas in the 1930s, and it has never been included in the On ikki muqam repertoire.21 In order to preserve the integrity of the “twelve” muqam, the editors of Uyghur on ikki muqami (1997) deliberately used a blue cover for the supplementary volume of Ishret enggiz and Ruxsari to distinguish it from the other twelve green-covered volumes. Tursunjan considers this absurd. He is also critical of the attempt in recent editions of muqam texts to replace poets of the broader Central Asian origins with local Turkic authors, which he thinks is historically flawed. These critical questions point to the modern synthesis of On ikki muqam as a national project whose aim was to create a fixed corpus of musical and textural works. The ambivalence about these inconvenient muqam pieces as well as the inconsistencies of songs and lyrics among the editions continues to be polemic among intellectuals and musicians. To musicians like Tursunjan, muqam should be practiced more as a creative art rather than a museum artifact. He encourages composers today to write new muqam based on traditional musical language. In the middle of one of our interviews, he retrieved a dusty paper folder from a bookshelf in his study to

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show me a handwritten score of one of his compositions: a “new muqam” he composed in 1975 titled Qizil rawaq muqami (Red chamber muqam), written based on the late eighteenth-century Chinese classic novel Honglou meng (Dream of the red chamber; Uy. Qizil rawaqtiki chüsh). Tursunjan took away the word chüsh (dream) because he did not want the title to be too long. He was first introduced to the novel through a Uyghur translation by Abdukérim Xoja during the Cultural Revolution. “I bought the book at a bookstore in Ghulja and was planning to read it back home in Qorghas [Ch. Huocheng]. But a heavy rainstorm came and I was stuck in Ghulja, where I finished reading the entire book and fell in love with it.” That was during the final years of the Cultural Revolution, when playing and listening to most traditional Uyghur music remained off-limits. “The Uyghur people had no songs to sing at weddings and banquets,” he explained, “so I came up with the idea of composing music that the authority would likely approve.” Then he picked up a dutar in the summer of 1975 and completed his new muqam in a few months.22 The entire work is about an hour long and includes most pieces in the chong neghme movement, two dastan songs, and two meshrep songs. Tursunjan showed me the eight-volume Uyghur translation of the novel, read a few lines that he had adapted for the lyrics, and sang an excerpt of his “new muqam.” He said it was a great translation, even better than the original Chinese text (he is fluent in both Uyghur and Chinese). The muqam he wrote was so well known in Ghulja, Tursunjan added with much pride, that people at that time called it the “thirteenth muqam” (after the twelve canons). He had planned to publish the muqam in the late 1970s, but the political climate changed as the Cultural Revolution ended: many among his Uyghur critics considered it inappropriate to set a Chinese story to Uyghur music and call it a muqam. He arranged to have it recorded on magnetic tapes in 1979, with himself singing and playing the dutar, but the work remained controversial, and he was unable to get it published or recorded.23 Tursunjan is hardly the only critical voice of the muqam project, yet his unique approach to creativity has put him at odds with other musicians and intellectuals who believe muqam should be performed and listened to primarily in the realms of cultural authenticity and national heritage.

An Olturash Notwithstanding the controversies, muqam remains a musical and literary genre actively practiced among local musicians. In folk contexts, the term muqam has acquired a wide range of meanings, and its music may be played on locally specific combinations of instruments accompanying singing. One of the most important regional muqam genres is based in the Ili valley. In contrast to 74

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the long, elaborate multisectional suites in On ikki muqam, the Ili repertoire is generally much shorter. A suite is rarely longer than an hour in most performances (and often much shorter). The notion of a “complete” suite—its length, sequences, and melody and text selections—is also largely absent among local musicians, whose performance decisions are based primarily on community routines and in-group preferences. Known as the Ili wariyant (variant) of On ikki muqam, the Ili repertoire is believed to have been brought over from Kashgar in the 1880s by Muhemmet Molla (a.k.a. Karushang Axun) (c. 1843–1923?) (Memtimin Hoshur 1995, 39–44) to the Ili valley. Most scholars consider the Ili repertoire an “incomplete” version of On ikki muqam rather than a distinct genre, owing to the fact that it does not have any of the songs in chong neghme. A muqam sequence in Ili normally starts with muqedimme and is followed by a few dastan songs (and their merghul postludes) or meshrep songs, or both. In the early 1950s the Ili masters Rozi Tembur and Abduweli Jarullayof (1910– 1998) were invited to join the recording and transcription project in 1951 in Ürümchi, alongside Turdi Axun and other musicians from the south. A fullscale ethnographic recording project was then conducted a few years later by the Han musicologist Jian Qihua (1924–2022), who had been assigned to study the Ili repertoire on two separate trips in 1958–1959 and 1962–1963. He made about five hours of recordings performed by a group of Ili musicians led by Abduweli Jarullayof, who played altogether fourteen muqam suites (Jian Qihua 1988). The titles of ten of them overlap with those of On ikki muqam—Rak, Chebbiyat, Mushawrek, Chargah, Penjigah, Ozgal, Ejem, Oshshaq, Bayat, and Nawa—while the remaining four seem to be unique to the Ili repertoire. Some of the dastan and meshrep songs in the Ili repertoire were preferred to those in the Kashgar/southern tradition (some of which are significantly different) in the On ikki muqam project, making this Ili wariyant a vital constituent of the national repertoire and endowing it with a sense of classicism.24 It was late spring in Ghulja, the day before Ramadan. Like other most sought-after musicians in town, Bawdun, a musician in his early forties, had been invited to join and play music at olturash gatherings the last two or three nights. It was more common than most would admit for men to get together one last time over food, liquor, music, and jokes before the onset of Ramadan, after which social activities would be more restrained. The invited musicians are often friends or individuals the host knows, albeit indirectly, rather than anonymous entertainers. As special guests they would enjoy the dinner together with the participants and sometimes also receive a small cash honorarium. Olturash are “among the most important events” in Uyghur life and “a key site for understanding the performance and practice of masculine identities” (Dautcher 2009, 144).25 Music is indispensable in most of these gatherings. A special guest jokester or musician, Dautcher writes, “was sufficient to raise the

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standard of olturash entertainment above that of the everyday, and a gathering with a top jokester and a top musician was an event long remembered” (146). I had the good fortune to join no fewer than two or three dozen olturash from c. 2003 to the late 2010s, most of which were anchored in singing and instrumental music played by some of the finest musicians in town. The styles and genres heard at olturash varied greatly. Musical performances typically started off somewhere in the middle of these evening-long gatherings after a few hot dishes and several rounds of drinking. The repertoire normally comprised several shorter songs as well as a couple of yürüsh medleys of about ten to fifteen minutes, featuring a combination of time-honored local folk tunes and instrumental pieces, new compositions, and occasionally also Turkish, Uzbek, and other foreign tunes. It was infrequent but not impossible to hear excerpts or an entire suite of muqam. In most olturash I joined in Ghulja and other towns in the broader Ili valley, the staple instruments were the dutar and the tembur; other instruments, such as the satar, iskripka (violin), guitar, or accordion, were not uncommon. In olturash where skilled musicians were present, most music of the night would be prepared and supplied by them, although musically inclined attendees would sometimes join in singing extempore one or two songs they knew toward the end of the event. Olturash performances by skilled musicians were often recorded and widely shared on social media (and previously, on bootleg cassettes or VCDs sold at markets or privately circulated); these remained one of the chief unofficial means of music transmission. Bawdun promised that what had taken place at the olturash a couple of nights earlier, at which I was also present, would not happen again on that night. “I’m really sorry about what happened. I knew none of those sarang [fools]. I was just asked to play music there,” he said apologetically. “Those sarang drank too much,” he continued, “and did all the nasty things after they’d gotten drunk.” He was referring to an olturash we had joined earlier that week in Jaghistay, a predominantly Uyghur town some fifty kilometers south of Ghulja, in a Sibe (Xibo) “autonomous” county called Chapchal. There were about two dozen men, most of them local government officials Bawdun had only been introduced to through a common friend. Most of the men were already quite drunk halfway into the gathering, at which point two of them broke into a fight over a small dispute. It took a while for the host and a few others to separate and calm them. Some participants continued to talk loudly while Bawdun and the other musicians started playing music. What seemed to irritate Bawdun most, however, was that two or three men, clearly very drunk, rose from their seats to dance while the musicians were playing a soulful instrumental piece. Dancing was certainly not inappropriate at olturash, although it had been rare among esteemed vocalists and instrumentalists. It was the perceived disrespect, lack of appreciation, and sense of ignorance 76

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among the olturash participants that annoyed him. Not trying to hide his displeasure, Bawdun put his instrument into its padded soft case right after finishing the last note. “Mangayli [let’s go],” he said, standing up and directing me to leave with him right away. We eventually left after some minimal farewells to the host. “I’m the host of tonight’s gathering,” Bawdun assured me once again, while coordinating carpool with other attendees who planned to drive, making sure that there would be enough seats for everyone and that the drivers were not planning to drink at the olturash. Being a host usually means taking care of all the logistics as well as paying for the meal and alcohol. “We’ll be heading to a beautiful place in the countryside. All the people who’ll join tonight are my best friends since childhood, and they all know music,” he reassured. We arrived, right before sunset, at a nondescript brick house off a county road in a yéza (village) after about forty minutes of driving in his car. Tucked away in the southern reach of the Ili territory, this rural province, calming and tranquil, was known mostly to the locals as a getaway destination. In front of us was a farmhouse that, over the past few years, amid the thriving domestic rural tourism, had been turned into a family-run business, catering to customers driving down from the city (Ghulja) to enjoy a dinner or weekend gathering in one of the yurts or gazebos that stretched across the picturesque woods and farmland. The owner of the farmhouse, Muxtar, was in his fifties and known among the close-knit music circles in Ili as a very fine singer of yerlik (local) muqam and songs. He led us through a winding muddy path that extended into the woods, branching off to a few isolated yurts, one of which was our “VIP booth” of the night. The noise of the traffic receded into the background. About a dozen men in their late thirties and early forties were seated on a carpeted raised platform (supa) in the yurt, around a row of short tables. Muxtar brought in a few large bottles of homemade qétiq (yoghurt) as an appetizer. His family staff members served black tea, naan, milk tea, and cold and hot dishes. Bawdun was clearly in a good mood, joking about this and that. He introduced his friends one by one and told interesting anecdotes about each of them. He described how, when he was a kid, he would flip a small basin (kichik jawur) upside down to beat rhythms and learn to sing songs. He also made fun of the singing of someone he had come across on social media. After some more stories and jokes, he raised his glass to toast, which turned out to be more like a short speech. He said how grateful he was to have friends together, and especially guests from Hong Kong. He explained to the group, with much pride, about my research on Uyghur music, about how they should do the best to offer help. “I don’t have money,” his eyes drifted back to me, “but we’ll give you our best music. If you’re pleased, then I’m at peace” (xatirjem).

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The sky turned much darker and rain began to pour down, so heavy that water started to drip from the ceiling and the rim of the yurt. Some of us went out to pull up another flap of the vinyl cover to stop the rainwater from entering through the yurt’s roof. The hanging light bulbs, which had already been quite dim, suddenly went out when Bawdun was showing us some photos on his mobile phone—the power was knocked out by the thunderstorm. Some of us turned on the flashlights on our mobile phones. Muxtar managed to get us a few emergency candlesticks from storage. The party continued with more jokes, chatting, food, and a few more rounds of drinking. Alcohol consumption was restrained; no one was pressured to drink, and those who had been assigned to drive on the way back did not even touch the glasses. Sufficiently fed and mildly intoxicated, Bawdun and two other musicians (who had learned music primarily through oral transmission in the local context) retrieved their instruments from the cases and started to tune up: the quintessential Ili trio of the satar, the tembur, and the dutar. The participants seemed ready for some music at that point. It took a little longer for the satar, which has almost a dozen sympathetic strings, to tune. The yurt, then soaked with rainwater, served effectively as an acoustic absorber that filtered out the excessive reverb and highlighted the rich overtones ringing out from the satar’s sympathetic strings as well as the lower frequencies of the dutar. Bawdun and his co-musicians were taken by surprise and visibly gratified by the damp yurt’s acoustics. In the flickering light of the candles, and under the incessant rain, everyone listened religiously to the sound of the instruments. “Yamghurdimu chalidighan musikantlarmiz” (We musicians play even in the rain), said one of the musicians, composed and self-assured. The musicians then discussed among themselves the tuning, repertoire, and sequences. And the music began. The performance started with some shorter muqam songs (from Rak) and a couple of yürüsh medleys of Ili songs, between and among which there were more drinking, jokes, smoking, and food. An hour or two passed, and it was deep into the night. Everyone seemed ready for the centerpiece of the night. After briefly checking with his two co-musicians and Muxtar, the farmhouse owner, Bawdun turned to the larger group, asking, in an unassuming tone, “Would you like it if we played Penjigah?” Everyone was pleased to hear that.

Penjigah Penjigah is the fifth suite in the On ikki muqam repertoire and is among the most “complete” ones. In On ikki muqami (1997), Penjigah has 342 lines of lyrics (misra), making it the second longest—after Rak, which has 368 lines 78

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(Abdure’op Teklimakaniy 2009, 174). Turdi Axun recorded altogether thirtyone (vocal and instrumental) pieces for Penjigah in the 1950s, totaling almost three and a half hours, the longest among all the recorded muqam suites. As the title of a musical work, Penjigah was mentioned in Möjizi’s Tewarixiy musiqiyun as having been created in the fifteenth century by poet Pahlawan Muhammad kushtigir (the wrestler). Princess Amanisaxan is said to have played Penjigah at her father’s request for the visiting sultan. She played it on the tembur, not the satar (as seen in popular representations), although the two instruments were interchangeable in some historical contexts. The muqam repertoire in Turpan also has Penjigah as one of its eleven suites; its modal scale is highly comparable to that of the Ili and Kashgar versions. The term Panjgāh is also seen in a number of Central Asian and Middle Eastern traditions. Rāst Panjgāh is a basic Persian dastgāh, which is broadly related to rāst in Arab maqām and Turkish makam. Panjgoh is a suite in Khiva and the larger Khorezm’s alti-yarim (six-and-a-half) maqām—so called because one of them contains only an instrumental piece, and Panjgoh is the “half” maqām. Finally, the repertoire of Iraqi maqām also has a Penjigah. The connection between most of these pieces and/or modal scales with Penjigah in Uyghur muqam, however, seems to be primarily etymological. A performance of muqam in the Ili tradition normally starts with muqedimme (a.k.a. muqam, muqam béshi, bashlinish neghmisi), a prelude that is normally around three to five minutes in the Ili version, much shorter than its counterpart in the south. The prelude is unmetered; its melody follows the vocalist’s realization of the poetic rhythm of the ghazal poetic text. Most existing recordings of muqedimme made in the 1950s of the Ili master Rozi Tembur are not longer than five minutes. Muqedimme may be played as an instrumental solo or sung with instrumental accompaniment. Any instrument may be used to play or accompany muqedimme, although the instrument of choice in Ili is the tembur. In folk practices, musicians from different lineages or local traditions often keep their own versions of ghazal for each muqedimme. The language of the poetry is Chaghatay, or East Turki, the classical Turkic literary language of the Timurid and subsequent eras. The muqedimme was to be sung by Muxtar. He used a text by Huweyda (Xoja’nezer Ghayib’nezer Huweyda) (1704–1780), an eighteenth-century Sufi East Turkestani poet whose ghazals had been included in Turdi Axun’s singing and subsequent editions of muqam lyrics, alongside the poetry of the earlier (and arguably better known) Turkic poets such as Newa’i (Ali-Shir Navā’ī, 1441–1501) and Meshreb (Bābārahim Mashrab, 1653?–1711). Light (2008, 124) characterizes Huweyda’s style, as seen in the ghazals sung by Turdi Axun, as “more serious and explicitly religious, singing didactic songs about ethics and the value of suffering.” Four of the muqedimme texts recorded in 12 muqam

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tékistliri (Twelve muqam texts) (Qurban Barat 1986) include ghazals by Huweyda—these are Mushawrek, Penjigah, Ejem, and Oshshaq—but this local (yerlik) version that Muxtar sang is not found in any published muqam text and is believed to be unique to local musicians in Ili. It has six couplets, each of which ends with the poetic cadence -im bar. Each line has fifteen or sixteen syllables. The poet’s name is written/sung into the last couplet, a kind of musicalpoetic signature that is common in ghazals. Séni ishqingdin, ey dilber, ejayib karbarim bar; Yürekim quwweti ketti, yürerge ne medarim bar.

Oh, my dearest, I am very devoted to your love; The strength of my heart is gone; I have no energy to walk.

Tapar rewzane könglüm yaru dostlarni körüp teskin; Kéche seyyareler yengligh ne aramu qerarim bar.

My heart would find comfort day by day seeing dear friends; I don’t have peace as the stars in the night.

Méni ef ’i yilan chaqti, közümni uyqusi ketti; Tang atqunche yürermen, ne yatar, ne olturarim bar?

A venomous snake bit me, and I fell asleep; I walk until the dawn comes; neither could I lie down nor sit down.

Meni bichare bulbulghe terehhum eylegil, ey, Oh, rose, have mercy on the poor nightingül; gale, Kichedin ta seher ghem shaxide feryadu zarim Lamenting and wailing on the tree branch bar. from night to dawn—I weep. Aya badi seba, yetkur, ghubari koy yarimdin; Közümghe sürme eyley dep, anga köp intizarim bar.

Hey, morning breeze, bring the grief from my love; Let me tint my eyes, with my deep yearning for him.

Huweydani mezarighe barip yarim temasha qil; Unupdur lale’i hesret, xezan bolmas beharim bar.

Go to Huweyda’s mazar to take pleasure, my dear; The tulip of sorrow has sprouted, not withered in my spring.26

It is indeed not uncommon for older musicians to know three to four versions of texts for one muqedimme song and choose one of them to sing at a time, depending on the context (and sometimes also the mood) of the occasion.27 In the edited texts of On ikki muqam, it is also common to combine excerpts of two or three ghazals, each by a different author, in a single muqedimme. The same ghazal can also appear in different muqam songs. None of the musicians and other participants of the olturash seemed to know the text of this local version. A few retrieved their mobile phones, getting ready to record this rare performance. The melodic outline was similar to most other 80

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renditions of Penjigah’s muqedimme that I had learned and heard before, an important aspect of the musical identity of Penjigah that unites local and individual varieties. Therefore, without actually knowing the text of this yerlik version, the instrumentalists were still able to accompany the singing. The tembur led the instrumental texture and was lightly supported by the satar and the dutar. The accompaniment was light and restrained, offering a minimal heterophonic outline of the vocal melody with a stroke pattern of dotted rhythms that gravitate toward the downbeat, as is idiomatic in the Ili style of tembur accompaniment. The muqedimme may be understood as a Uyghur counterpart of the broader Central Asian, Middle Eastern, and South Asian unmetered preludes, which serves to explore the modal scale through an arch-shape melody that unfolds the melodic motives. Yet in Uyghur and most Central Asian court traditions, the extent of improvisation is limited; each muqedimme has a largely stable melodic framework and set of motivic devices. The melody moves up from a low/middle register through a number of overlapping tetrachords (or pentachords) and ascending figures to reach the climactic point, called ewj, at about three-quarters of the way through the piece, after which the melody is brought back through a number of quick steps to its initial tetrachord. Altogether the prelude spans around one and a half octaves in the Ili repertoire. It is profound and reflective, but also succinct. The musicians tuned the “tonic” to around D, the standard of most performances of Penjigah today. This “key” also seemed to be most comfortable for the musicians, whose instruments were of standard sizes, materials, and string thicknesses. In more traditional practices, the concepts of absolute pitches and fixed keys were largely absent, and instruments were tuned, generally speaking, to match the singer’s range. The “key” often depended on the preference of the vocalist, which might vary from day to day, and the instrumentalists’ comfortability with string tension.28 The “tonic” of the recordings and notations of Penjigah I have come across vary greatly (see table 3.2), alluding to the fact that the “mode” (which derives from the intervals between the pitches) may be a more important consideration than the exact pitches (that is, the “key”). The tuning (sazlish) of the satar may offer a way to understand how melodic modes are conceived. The satar is a bowed lute that has one melodic string and approximately a dozen sympathetic strings. One commonly heard standard tuning on the satar in Ili outlines a D-major scale, with the melodic string fixed at D (a whole tone above the middle C), and the sympathetic strings (starting from the lowest) at A–B–d–e–f#–g–a–b–c#’–d’–f#’.29 Yet in local practices the tunings are more varied. The melodic string is usually set at around C or a little lower; the sympathetic strings, generally speaking, are tuned to reflect most of the pitches used in the modal scale. In the 1950s Wan Tongshu (1986, 18–25) identified nine

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different ways to tune the sympathetic strings during his research among the musicians from the south: six of these are pentatonic, and three are hexatonic. He noted (1960, 49–50) that Turdi Axun used only two different tunings to play the twelve muqam suites: the first six, including Penjigah, used a pentatonic tuning. The tunings used by two other musicians he consulted—Xudaberdi Axun of Kashgar and Musa Axun of Yarkand—were more varied. Here are three different ways of tuning the satar for Penjigah identified in Wan (1960): 1. Melodic string at C; sympathetic strings: C–C–D–E–G–A–c–d–e–g–a– c’ (by Turdi Axun) 2. Melodic string at D; sympathetic strings: E–G–A–B–d–e–g–a–b (by Xudaberdi Axun) 3. Melodic string at B; sympathetic strings: C–D–F–G–A–c–d–f–g–a–c’– d’ (by Musa Axun) Generally speaking, the strings’ configuration implies whether to understand the pitch of the melodic string as the first step (as in the first tuning) or the fifth step (as in the second and third tunings) of the scale. In this sense, the third tuning is conceived similarly to the second, except that the melodic string is tuned a half step lower (B rather than C), likely to accommodate ornamentation options. This practice is comparable to the tuning of the dutar, which is normally tuned to a fifth—known as chong pede, the “big interval,” which is G–d in standard tuning today, but usually a little lower in local contexts. The open outer (melodic) string of the dutar is conceptualized as the fifth step of the scale. Yet if the outer string is conceptualized as the first step of the scale, then musicians would often tune the dutar to a fourth—known as kichik pede, the “small interval,” which is A–d—so that the open inner (drone) string (A) becomes the fifth step of the scale, to “harmonize” the “tonic” (d). Yet, in the case of Penjigah, if the melodic string is to be conceptualized as the fifth step of the scale (and if it is tuned to D), the “key” would be too high (“tonic” as G) for most female and even male voice ranges. It is thus common for the tuning to be lowered to around B in order for the open outer (melodic) string to be kept as the fifth step of the scale.30 The xaraktér (character) of a muqam is thus primarily a matter of mode rather than key. Although most musicians would not associate Penjigah with the weight and melancholy that characterize Nawa, Oshshaq, or Chahargah, Penjigah is also not as bright as Rak or Chebbiyat, and it carries with it a sense of seriousness. Sulaymin Imin considers Penjigah a mode that is “quite open and honest” (nisbeten ochuq-yoruq). The opening muqedimme is where the xaraktér of a muqam is established. Here I borrow from a number of studies on the comparable unmetered prelude in the Uzbek and Uyghur traditions (Khashimov 1992; Harris 2008, 79–80; Sumits and Levin 2016, 338) to sketch the phrasal 82

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Figure 3.1  Sketch of the phrasal structure and melodic contour of Penjigah’s muqedimme. Transcribed based on a field recording made in May 2017 in Ili Prefecture, by author.

structure and melodic contour of this version of Penjigah’s muqedimme (figure 3.1). I divide the melodic contour of muqedimme into six parts (plus the instrumental introduction): starting with the principal level (repeated), moving through the middle level and the higher level before reaching ewj, the climactic peak, after which the melody descends back to its opening range. I also adopt an analytical framework that considers the melodic movement as organized around superimposed tetrachords or pentachords (as scale fragments; cf. jins [pl. ajnas] in Arab music) as they are construed. The transcription is based on the yerlik version performed at the olturash I described earlier. The motive that marks Penjigah as it unfolds in the first line of muqedimme is a descending tetrachord from the fifth through the second step of the scale,

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ending on the “tonic” at D. This melodic figure appears throughout Penjigah, most clearly heard as a short cadence in the merghul of the first dastan (to be discussed later). The melody then develops through a series of upward shifting tetrachords or pentachords, starting on the third, fifth, and seventh steps of the scale, the last of these reaching the peak (ewj) of high F# (the third step of the scale) of the arch-shaped melody. Despite scholarly efforts to outline the notes used in each muqam (Sulayman Imin 1995; Zhou Ji 2005, 120), the exact pitches and microtonal intervals used in a particular muqam are often inconsistent and ambiguous. Here, in Penjigah, it is clear that some of the third (F#) and sixth (B) steps feature a lower microtone (as they are played on some instruments); the second step (e, in the higher octave) of the scale also appears to be elaborated microtonally. Yet these microtonal intervals are more clearly heard in the instrumental parts than in the vocal, and they are primarily used in downward melodies. Fretted Uyghur instruments do not have microtonal or quarter-tonal (charek) steps on the fingerboards. Their frets are low—either nonmovable plastic frets or nylon-tied frets, or a combination of both—leaving little or no room for the strings to be “pressed down” to alter the pitches or add ornaments. Instead, microtonal steps are achieved through vibrato and other means of ornamentation, by oscillating between the adjacent chromatic steps to produce an unstable pitch on the step. On the satar, for example, the (left-hand) index or middle finger would normally reach the higher of the two adjacent pitches through an upward glissando and quickly slide back to the fret immediately below, and up again (and sometimes down again)—which makes it somewhat similar to a lower mordent. These ornamented, fluctuating notes may be compared to the concepts of half-flats and half-sharps as commonly referred to in the study of some Arab and Turkish genres, yet in Uyghur music they serve more as nodal points that the melody passes through, moves around, and slides back and forth. The seventh step, which is otherwise kept at C-sharp, is also sometimes lowered a semitone (C-natural here), especially in the short, fourpitch instrumental interludes (known as chaulgu, lit., “instrumental”) played between the phrases (c–B–G–A), a distinguishing motive of the muqam. This flatted seventh becomes more prominent in the first dastan song, in the ascending tetrachord starting on A (fifth step). The identity of a muqam thus depends on a number of musical features that cannot be prescribed by a simple sequence of pitches that form its “scale.” Indeed, whether or not the melodic modes in Uyghur muqam constitute consistent sets of pitches remains a topic of scholarly debate.31 Most musicians I consulted found it difficult and were disinclined to outline the exact pitches used in a particular muqam, hinting at the fact that these pitches do not exist independent of the actual melodies in a piece of music. Zhou Ji usefully summarizes the characteristics of muqam’s modal scales in three main points (2005, 120–122): 84

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1. There may be two or three ending notes in a single modal scale; their intervals may be minor seconds, major seconds, major thirds, perfect fourths, and perfect fifths; 2. There are plenty of both ascending and descending ornamental figures, constituting the individual character of each melodic mode. That is to say, melodic modes in muqam consist not simply of sets of melodic steps but also patterns of ornamentation figures; and 3. It is common to see several quarter-tonal pitches on a step, as a result of distinctive melodic movements. Altogether it suggests that concepts such as tetrachord, quarter tones, and scales (as composed of discrete pitch-steps) are somewhat limited in understanding how muqam operates musically. The same may also be true for the categorical “extramusical associations” of muqam, a notion that is also largely absent among musicians today. To many, the knowledge of muqam is embedded in a larger aesthetic context of practical procedures and musical choices, in which theoretical delineations such as spelled-out scale steps and explicitly stated affects or ethos are rarely primary means of teaching and learning. It may thus be problematic to consider the local indifference to these non-indigenous concepts as a “loss”—as a decline of a once more complete and sophisticated musical system in the past—rather than a distinctiveness of the Uyghur art tradition that musicians inherited. In the Ili repertoire, muqedimme is followed by a multipart “movement” called dastan, where the meter is established. As explained, the term dastan is used today to refer to at least two different but possibly historically connected genres. As an oral literature of epic poems, dastan is a narrative genre that uses rhymed texts to tell stories of heroic, sacred, and other themes. Some of these dastans were authored by known individuals, among the most famous of whom is Abdurehim Nizari (1776–1851) of Kashgar, who wrote Rabiye-Se’idin and Perhad-Shérin, among others.32 Meanwhile, dastan is also a movement in the On ikki muqam repertoire. It typically includes a number of songs with lyrics drawn from a variety of sources, such as oral epics and qoshaq (short, rhymed quatrains). Each dastan song features a unique metrical cycle and ends with the instrumental piece merghul, a kind of “postlude” that elaborates on its preceding dastan song. Percussion instruments, such as the dap framed drum, are optional in the Ili practice (and generally not used in private occasions), where rhythmic patterns are created instead through various strumming and bowing patterns on the stringed instruments. These merghul may be performed independently as solos or attached to the end of a medley of folk songs (yürüsh) of a comparable melodic mode. The merghul expands and elaborates on the melody of the preceding song and serves as a culminative endpiece.33

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Similar to other muqam songs, different versions and regional traditions of both the text and melody of these dastan songs exist. The version(s) a particular musician knows also depends partly on when and from whom they learned it. Both published editions (1993 and 1997) of Penjigah include five dastan songs and their merghul, which aptly illustrate the five metrical-rhythmic types commonly seen in dastan songs. Although the melodies of these five songs and their sequence are identical between the two editions, their texts are entirely different (see table 3.2). The transcriptions also often do not match their corresponding recordings. The version of Penjigah best known in Bawdun’s group is a trio of dastan songs (and their merghul) that circulate widely in Ili. Yet none of these appears in the latest edition (1997) and recordings (2001). Nearly everyone at the olturash knew this version and joined the three instrumentalists singing all the way through the end of the muqam. The lyrics of the first dastan song came from a qoshaq, a form of oral Turkic poetry that features short rhymed verses often of unknown origin.34 This qoshaq is only seen in the published score in 1993; all other editions, printed and audiovisual, use different texts. Yet this qoshaq is the most frequently sung among musicians in Ghulja and the broader Ili territory. In contrast to ghazal and other Arabo-Persian poetic texts, which are rhymed couplets of somewhere between nine and sixteen syllables in each line, a qoshaq is shorter and more syllabic, typically with seven or eight syllables in one line (although there is a longer type of qoshaq that has eleven or twelve syllables in one line). The poetic meter (wezin) used in these qoshaq is called barmaq (lit., “finger”). This qoshaq has twelve lines, grouped into three quatrains. The second and fourth lines of each quatrain are rhymed (abcb defe egcg). The first and third lines of each quatrain are, in practice, also rhymed with the added nonlexical vocable ayare. The poetic meter is structured roughly as (S) L–S–L–S–L–S–L (S: short: L: long). Almidin rengdar idim(e) (ayare), Renggimni sarghaytti piraq. Ong yénimda ot köyidu (araye); Sol yénimda ishtiyaq.

I was colored like an apple, (Yet) sadness made me pale. Fire (still) burns on my right side; On my left there (still) is passion.

Ishtiyaqni tarta-tarta (araye) Héch bir madarim qalmidi. Rochiwindek sarghiyip(e) (ayare) Uchargha halim qalmidi.

Passion ripped away, I have no more strength. I’m eaten up (by sadness), like a fly that Has no strength to fly.

Rochiwin bolsa kishi Uchsa qanatini süzüp. Bu köngül qandaq chidaydu (ayare) Yaridin ümid üzüp.

For a person to be like a fly, That struggles to flap its wings to fly. How could this heart endure Breaking off with (his) lover.

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Table 3.2  The different musical and textual sources in the printed (scores and texts) and audiovisual editions of Penjigah since the 1950s, focusing on muqedimme and the dastan songs

Muqam: Between National Heritage and Local Practices

Years

Titles and Descriptions

1960

Title: Uyghur xelq klassik muzikisi: On ikki muqam (Uyghur folk classical music: Twelve muqam) Description: Melodic transcription only (no text); edited by Wan Tongshu et al.; tonic: C; includes: - One muqedimme [transcription does not match the audio in Junggo Uyghur on ikki muqami (2018)] - Three dastan and merghul 1. A 3-beat song [became the “fourth dastan” in Uyghur on ikki muqami (1993 & 1997)] 2. A 7-beat song [became “third dastan” in Uyghur on ikki muqami (1993 & 1997)] 3. A song marked “6/8” [comparable to the “fifth dastan” in Uyghur on ikki muqami (1993 & 1997)]

1970

Title: On ikki muqam: Tékstliri (Twelve muqam: Texts) Description: Text only (Cyrillic script); edited by Batur Ershidinov; includes: - One muqedimme, two ghazals: 1. “Chün ölermen bir nefes ol dilrebani körmisem” [by Newa’i; seven couplets] 2. “Terehhum étmidi ol gül” [by Nefisi; four couplets] - Three dastan 1. “Nagah kéche bir baghda kördüm özümni” [from Senuber; five quatrains; identical to Penjigah’s “second dastan” in 12 muqam tékstliri (1986); became Chebbiyat’s “first dastan” in Uyghur on ikki muqami (1993)] 2. “Agha bekler jawal berdim” (six quatrains) 3. “Xuda bizni yaratti” (five quatrains) (continued)

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1986

Title: 12 muqam tékstliri (Twelve muqam texts) Description: Text only (Arabic script), edited by Qurban Barat; includes: - One muqedimme, two ghazals: 1. “Waderixa, sedderixa ketti ömrüm bilmidim” [by Huweyda; five couplets] 2. “Terehhum etmiding ey gül menu shikestige zinhar” [by Zohuri; four couplets] - Two dastan songs 1. Missing 2. “Nagah kéche bir baghda kördüm özümni” [from Senuber; four quatrains; became Chebbiyat’s “first dastan” in Uyghur on ikki muqami (1993)] 3. “Qaba pelekning derdidin” [from Ghérip-Senem; three quatrains; Rak’s “fourth dastan” in the same edition also used this text]

1987 Text

Title: On ikki muqam Description: Text only (Cyrillic script); edited by Batur Ershidinov; includes: - One muqedimme, two ghazals: 1. “Jewheri dilni …” [by Meshreb; eight couplets] 2. “Ölgiche bendeng bolay, ey shahi xubanim sanga” [by Nöbiti (Newbetiy); seven couplets; this ghazal is used for Penjigah’s “first nusxa” in Uyghur on ikki muqami (1993 & 1997)] - One dastan: “Manga chüshken te’niler barchige chüsher” [five quatrains; became the “third dastan” in Uyghur on ikki muqami (1993)]

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Titles and Descriptions

1988 (1958–1963)

Title: Bei Jiang mukamu (Muqam of northern Xinjiang) Description: Transcription and edited by Jian Qihua based on performance by Abduweli Jarullayof et al. during 1958–1963; text only in Chinese and English translations; tonic: A; includes: - One muqedimme: “Saba yetküz salam méni” [by Huweyda] - Two dastan and merghul 1. Same melody as the “first dastan” of Uyghur on ikki muqami (1993 & 1997) 2. Same melody as the “second dastan” of Uyghur on ikki muqami (1993 & 1997)

1992/1993

Title: On ikki muqam (Twelve muqam) Description: Twenty-four audiocassettes, performed by Shinjang muqam ansambili; tonic: C#/D; includes: - One muqedimme [unidentified text] - Five dastan and merghul: 1. Unidentified text [by Zelili] 2. “Körmidim sendek jahanda ayjamal dildarini” [same melody & text as Uyghur on ikki muqami (1993)] 3. “Manga chüshken te’niler barchige chüsher” [same melody & text as Uyghur on ikki muqami (1993)] 4. “Otluq ahimdin bolup shem’iy shebistan bu kéche” [same melody & text as Uyghur on ikki muqami (1993)] 5. Unidentified text (continued)

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1993

Title: Uyghur on ikki muqami (Uyghur twelve muqam) Description: Notation (melody & text); tonic: D; includes: - One muqedimme: “Sanga yüz sükri, yareb, bizge adil padishah qilding” (by Nefisi; 10 béyit) - Five dastan and merghul: 1. “Almidin rengdar idim” [from a qoshaq; three quatrains; 2-beat] 2. “Körmidim sendek jahanda ayjamal dildarini” [by Qelender; four couplets; 2-beat] 3. “Manga chüshken te’niler barchige chüsher” [from Ghérip-Senem; three quatrains; 7-beat] 4. “Otluq ahimdin bolup shem’iy shebistan bu kéche” [by Nizari; four couplets; 3-beat] 5. “Séni leyli’i re’nadek ajayip dilreba derler” [by Zelili; five couplets; marked 6/8]

1997

Title: Uyghur on ikki muqami (Uyghur twelve muqam) Description: Notation (melody & text); tonic: D; includes: - One muqedimme: “Junun deshtide bizni bir guruh ewwareler derler” [by Meshhuri; eleven couplets] - Five dastan and merghul [all melodies identical to Uyghur on ikki muqami (1993), but all texts different] 1. “Qaysi gülshenning yüzüngdek bir guli re’nasi bar” [by Se’idi; five couplets; 2-beat] 2. “Ey sening jadu közüng ser fitne’I axir zemen” [by Huseyni; five couplets; 2-beat] 3. “Nazliq dilber, bir sözvüm bar aytayin” [from Senewber; four quatrains; 7-beat] 4. “Izdedim könglümni janan gulshenide jan bile” [by Nizari; eight couplets; 3-beat] 5. “Mughennni chek meqamh “Rak”ni bezm ichre mestane” [by Naqisi; ten couplets; marked 6/8]

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Titles and Descriptions

2001

Title: Junggo Uyghur on Ikki muqami ilmiy muhakime yighini xatirsi (China Uighur twelve Muqam symposium precious souvenir for collection) Description: Audio recordings (24 CDs); tonic: C; includes: - One muqedimme: “Mughenni chek meqamh “Rak”ni bezm ichre mestane” [by Naqisi; text identical to Penjigah’s “fifth dastan” in Uyghur on ikki muqami (1997)] - Five dastan and merghul 1. Identical to Uyghur on ikki muqami (1997) 2. Identical to Uyghur on ikki muqami (1997) 3. Identical to Uyghur on ikki muqami (1997) 4. Identical to Uyghur on ikki muqami (1997) 5. Unidentified text

2005

Title: Esli yézilish bilen Uyghur on Ikki muqami tékistliri (The text of twelve muqam in the original script) Description: Text only; edited by Abdure’op Teklimakaniy; all identical to Uyghur on ikki muqami (1997)

2009

Title: Uyghur on Ikki muqami: Tékistliri üstide tetqiqat (A study on Uyghur twelve muqam texts) Description: Text only; edited by Abdure’op Teklimakaniy; all identical to Uyghur on ikki muqami (1997) (continued)

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2018

Title: Junggo Uyghur on ikki muqami: Tunji ün’alghu nusxisi (China’s Uyghur twelve muqam: The original recordings) Description: CDs; original audio recording by Wan Tongshu in the 1950s; performed by Turdi Axun et al.; tonic: ~C#; includes: - Eleven tracks are listed under Dastan. Except for tracks #20 (first dastan), #29 (third dastan), and #30 (third dastan merghuli), all are unidentified or listed simply as naxsha or naxsha merghuli - Five songs: 1. A 3-beat song [melody transcribed in Uyghur xelq klassik muzikisi (1960)] 2. A 7-beat song [unidentified] 3. “Nagah kéche bir baghda kördüm özümni” [both melody and text of this song became Chebbiyat’s “first dastan” in Uyghur on ikki muqami (1993)] 4. A 2-beat song [unidentified] 5. A 3-beat song [melody used in Uyghur on ikki muqami (1993) but not the text, which is also not seen in 12 muqam tékstliri (1986)]

In the vocal line, the initial three or four syllables of each line of the text are set to a dotted rhythmic motive that starts every line. The last syllable is set on a melisma, after which this initial part of the poetic line is repeated but set to a different melody that joins the second part of the poetic text. The satar routinely anticipates the first note of each vocal line by starting one beat earlier (or at the last beat of the last “measure”), as a kind of melodic cue, setting the first pitch for the singers, and introducing some layering and anticipated rhythm to the texture. This figure ends with a three- or four-beat melisma on the last syllable, after which the initial syllables are repeated (set to a different melody) and the rest of the entire line is sung. Generally speaking, the stress in Uyghur poetry falls on the last syllable of a word. For example, in the first line, the stresses are on -din, -dar, and -dim. These stresses (or secondary stresses) also fall on the downbeats of the metrical cycle (either the first or the second of the two-beat cycle). The melody follows an arch shape that is typical in Uyghur songs. The first couplet outlines the descending tetrachord or pentachord that characterizes Penjigah (as heard in muqedimme), starting with a short rise to A and then cascading down to D, the presumed “tonic.” The second couplet explores the next tetrachord (A-B-c-d). The melody of this couplet is identical in each quatrain, which makes it sound like a refrain. The ewj (peak) takes place in the first two lines of the third quatrain (Rochiwin bolsa kishi; uchsa qanatini süzüp) on the tetrachord A-c#-d-e#; the latter is repeated to wind down the melody from the highest tetrachord/register. The melodic contour is similar in the next two dastan songs. For example, of the four quatrains in the third song, the first two are set to a melody in the lower-middle range, where the last two explore the higher range and reach the ewj. The text of this song is taken from the dastan epic Ghérip-Senem. Its melody features a limping seven-beat meter that is common in Uyghur music. It may be understood as a kind of three-plus-four, with the first three beats in a duplet or quadruplet. This song is unique to the Ili tradition. It was used in the second edition of On ikki muqam (1993) but replaced by a text from the dastan Senewber in the third edition (1997). The melody explores two tetrachords in a descending fashion: first A-G-F#-E-(D) and then d-c-B-A. Here is the text of the first quatrain.35 Manga chüshken ten’iler(e) ’ barchige chüsher, Tegmigin sen yarimgha(ye) ’ Alla heqqide. Sen yarimgha tegmiseng ’ (way) méhneting ashur(ye), Tegmigin sen yarimgha(ye) ’ Alla heqqide.



The mockery on me will come down to everyone, Don’t hurt my lover; God bless. If you don’t hurt my lover, your merit will increase, Don’t hurt my lover; God bless.

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Unlike the qoshaq used in the first dastan, each line of text in this dastan is longer and has twelve syllables, divided into two hemistiches: seven and five syllables, respectively. The first, second, and last lines—both the first and second parts—enter on the upbeat of the duplet or quadruplet, which intensifies the limping action. The only exception is the third line, both parts of which start on the downbeat as it explores the higher register. Note that a nonlexical vocable (“way”) was added to the second part of the third line, before the word méhneting, to ensure that the singing starts on the downbeat. All four lines are rhymed. The poetic meter is roughly S–S–S–L–L–S–L for the first hemistich and S–S–L–S–L for the second. After the second quatrain, the melody shifts to the higher register in the first two couplets of the third and fourth quatrains, culminating in the climax of the dastan and the entire performance. The poetic-musical structure of this couplet is distinctive. The first three lines are rhymed (-ip), while the last line is the same across all four quatrains. In the melody, the first line starts, in a proclamatory manner, on the high D, the “tonic,” with four pairs of a short-long (S–L) or light-stress (ᴗ –) motif (atam séni ewe-tiptu), with the stress on the second syllable of each pair (comparable to iambic meter), so that each word is slightly shifted and does not fall precisely on the strong beat of the melody. The last pitch extends over two metrical cycles, serving effectively as a fermata. This initial gesture is followed and elaborated immediately in the next phrase: a long poetic line formed by joining together the last five syllables of the first line (permanlar qilip) and the second line (which itself has fifteen syllables, the longest in the entire dastan: Ne ishing bardur séning yaxshi-yamanni perq étip), where the driving short-long rhythmic motif is used at least five times in the line (qilip; ishing; séning; yaman; étip). Its melody soars up to around high F# and descends back to the tonic (D) in the lower register. Remarkably, the text is set to the melody with intense syncopation, further displacing the semantic structure of the text and the metrical cycle’s cross-rhythm. Every major word in this line either falls on a syncopated/weak beat or follows the short-long rhythmic motif, setting it apart from the rest of the dastan. Atam séni ewetiptu permanlar qilip; Ne ishing bardur séning yaxshi-yamanni perq étip. Qulaq salghin Abdulla, sözümge kirip; Tegmigin sen yarimgha Alla heqqide.

My father sent you to execute his commands; Your task is to differentiate between what is good/right and what is bad/wrong. Listen to my words carefully, Abdulla; Don’t hurt my lover; God bless.

The lyric of this dastan (of this edition) is taken from Ghérip-Senem, a wellknown Turkic epic whose texts are featured prominently in both the second and third editions of On ikki muqam. In this particular scene, Princess Senem 94

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Figure 3.2  Penjigah, third dastan, first and third quatrains. Transcribed based on a field recording made in May 2017 in Ili Prefecture, by author.

speaks to Abdulla, son of the military chief Shawazi, who made King Abbas (Senem’s father) dissolve Senem’s betrothal with Ghérip and send him into exile, so that Abdulla could marry Senem himself. Here Senem asks Abdulla to “differentiate between what is good/right and what is bad/wrong” and not to harm Ghérip. In her analysis of modern theatrical and cinematic versions of Ghérip-Senem, Dilber Thwaites (2001, 144–180) argues that the medieval Central Asian epic should be read in the modern context of Uyghur nationalism. She suggests that the character Abdulla, the “principal agent of evil” in the story, “could be seen as representing Chinese cadres in Xinjiang and also those Uyghurs who act as representatives of the Chinese regime” (153), while Senem, the female protagonist, “may represent a truly autonomous homeland, culture, nationhood and hope for the future” (152). A couple of participants of the olturash were apparently so moved and mesmerized that they responded by shouting woy at the end of this couplet—a verbal appreciation commonly heard among musically informed participants at olturash.36 It is worth noting that in the official recordings (1993), this dastan song was rearranged for a female chorus, presumably impersonating Senem in an effort to dramatize the song, casting it as a female “love song.” Such theatricality of muqam singing is most obvious in the last set of audiovisual recordings (2001), in which, as Light observes (2008, 285–286), “many dastan quatrains have been replaced by ghazals and folk verse about pairs of lovers,” and, in the case of Penjigah, “each dastan is given a title referring to a romantic dastan plot.” For example, in the official video of Penjigah (2001), the first dastan is titled after another Turkic romantic love epic, Tahir-Zöhre, and the audience is showed, correspondingly, an MTV-style romantic story between two lovers.37 In contrast, the singing at the olturash was fraternal and communal, and we should resist any interpretation of the text as a mere reiteration of a romantic love story from the distant past. It was approaching midnight, local time, and the olturash was about to end. Some of us sat up to shake hands with the musicians to express gratitude for an evening of impeccable performance. As host, Bawdun proposed the final toast to thank everyone for joining the olturash. He suggested that the group pay a visit to master Musajan Rozi (1925–2018) the next morning at his retirement home in Penjim, a small town some twenty kilometers northeast of Ghulja. At ninety-three, Musajan was highly respected among the younger generation of Ili musicians for his lifelong contribution to the performance and teaching of Uyghur music.38 Bawdun told me that this group of brothers would visit the master on a regular basis in the past, but they had not done so for a while because everyone had been busy, and my visit was a good opportunity for them to make the trip. Everyone concurred, and coordinated to bring food, gifts, and other necessities for the master. After the toast, Bawdun confirmed once again 96

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that there would be enough alcohol-free participants to drive everyone back to Ghulja. We thanked Muxtar, the farmhouse owner, for his singing and hospitality. Everyone seemed very pleased by the past few hours of music, jokes, and companionship. To those who cherished these gatherings as opportunities for deep nourishment and mutual support among close friends, each olturash was a unique experience. As a musician explained afterwards, the pieces he and his fellow musicians had chosen to play and sing at an olturash depended much on who the participants were. They reserved the best music only for those who knew and were appreciative of it. The most fondly remembered olturash were those where the host was considerate and invested in taking care of every single detail with great sincerity, treating the participants like patrons (often also paying the bill), and where the participants were attentive to one another and cared about making the most of their valuable moments together. Above all, it was about cultivating a sense of camaraderie. It was a commitment to reclaiming and restoring a sense of social belonging at a time when traditional identities were endangered and so much of the music’s social meaning was dispossessed. It was also about the passing on of the good practices of giving alms to the poor, paying proper respects to the elders, and sustaining communal values and virtues, all of which were in crisis. Last but not least, it was about ensuring that these much cherished social-musical gatherings would not be destroyed by heavy drinking and other misbehaviors, as alcoholism and other outcomes of misery in everyday life had claimed so many lives, relationships, and communities. Ramadan would soon start. A couple of musicians muttered to each other about how this past week they had been put through long daily sessions at work to repeatedly recite and copy political slogans to ensure that they would not fast or pray during Ramadan. The olturash that night was likely the last gathering before Rozi héyt (Eid al-Fitr), which would be in about a month’s time. Yet as friends, families, and other fellow Uyghur disappeared into the mass incarceration camps one after another, no one knew for sure what the next gathering would look like, or whether it would happen anytime soon.

Musical Heritage and Nation It is fair to say that, to many local musicians, the music of muqam as recreated in the post-1949 state project is not often conceived as inconsistent with the more fluid, orally transmitted local genres and practices of muqam. This is particularly the case among middle-aged and younger musicians who acquired their techniques, repertoires, and musical tastes through both music school training and the folk or family context, where multiple influences coexist. The

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confluence of the old and the new, the national and the local, may be understood as a distinctly modern condition, brought about by the indoctrination of muqam as art (sen’et) and heritage (miras) in the modern day, through which musicians and intellectuals make sense of their national music and narrate its history. Writing about ideas of modernity in Syrian music, Shannon (2006, 79) argues that the concept of “heritage” operates both “as the substantive media through which notions of authentic culture are constructed and transmitted across the generations . . . and as a process of framing and authorizing interpretations of the self, community, and nation.” In the case of muqam, it is this selective process that identifies and promotes what is presumably the finest of the Uyghur past as musicians seek to locate their most convincing genres or styles. Its outcome—a grander, canonic set of “fine” music—asserts itself in the transcultural realm as a candidate for the world’s traditional music in the new century. This urge to connect the local to the intercultural is captured by a motto displayed on the wall in the former rehearsal auditorium of Shinjang muqam ansambili, which demands that its members “work hard to let Uyghur muqam to embrace the world” (Uyghur muqamini dunyagha yüzlendürüsh üchün tirishayli). It speaks to an intercultural musical place for the centuriesold heritage that relies on staged authenticity in its own making. Meanwhile, the modern reinvention of the Uyghur national music is complicated by the hegemonic presence of the state in maneuvering how its “minorities” should sound like in the global circuit of world music. This entails a broader understanding of what Trebinjac (2002) calls China’s “state-sponsored traditionalism” to look at the centrality of muqam in the shifting preferences and strategies of the state’s “minority” cultural policies. Officially released muqam recordings, especially those of the most recent editions, are abundantly heard as the default Uyghur soundtrack in media, tourism, commercial outlets, and official occasions, including, notably, on a record that contains about thirty “classical Chinese songs and musical pieces” brought into outer space by China’s first unmanned lunar orbiting spacecraft Chang’e One (named after the Chinese/East Asian moon goddess) in 2007—a clear attempt to emulate the Golden Record brought into space by Voyager 1 in 1977. The Uyghur entry on this record comprises, specifically, the first three pieces of Penjigah—muqedimme, teze, and birinji nusxa, taken from the official recording (2001). Similar to the case of UNESCO’s proclamation of muqam as an “intangible cultural heritage,” the inclusion of muqam and other traditional Uyghur performing arts in the highest profile of China’s national self-representation speaks to the state’s effort in prescribing a discourse about its “minority” cultures on the global stage. Here and elsewhere, the notion of “heritage” figures prominently, following over half a century of hyper-exotic representations. Anxieties over cultural loss are entangled in the cliché of progress and multiculturalism as 98

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China reinvents its own national outlook. It is in this context that Uyghur muqam emerges in the twenty-first century as a national heritage of and for the Uyghur as it is co-opted by the state for its own political ends. In the broadest sense, Möjizi’s biography in the nineteenth century may be considered seminal in the longue durée of muqam revival that has resulted in the On ikki muqam repertoire today. Yet the differences are worth noting. For one, the premodern notion of muqam was less likely a fixed repertoire of compositions than an encyclopedic compilation—a musico-poetic anthology that may be compared to the many textual compendia created or copied in late medieval Central Asia. In this sense, “twelve” (on ikki) was likely an approximation, possibly never meant to be a precise number. Turdi Axun and other muqam masters studied by the Chinese musicologists in the 1950s were, in some sense, musical polymaths who contributed to the compilation and maintenance of the muqam compendium. Their memory might have been compromised at an old age, but the idea of reciting a static bulk of “works” from the beginning through the end in a performance was unlikely a routine. In contrast, the large-scale reworking of muqam since the early 1950s is unique and distinct in that it worked systematically to install a series of new practices and aesthetics that have brought muqam closer to a “classical” repertoire of music that is analogous to European art music. The process through which muqam attained its canonic status is comparable to what Goehr (1992) describes as the ideal of Werktreue in nineteenth-century European art music— the “work concept,” the packaging of what were more fluid performing practices and selections into largely fixed repertoire of “works” that is considered timeless, monumental, and transcendent. As noted earlier, a major part of the On ikki muqam repertoire today is based on the rearranged and polished transcriptions as well as the historically informed compositions created over the past few decades. Efforts to homogenize and systematize the repertoire and its musical and textual elements constituted the major bulk of modern scholarship on muqam. In effect, such reification corresponds to what Goehr (1992, 246) characterizes as a way “to bring music of the past into the present, and then into the sphere of timelessness,” in order to “strip it of its original, local, extra-musical meanings.” The Uyghur case here, additionally, carries a colonial overtone. As Goehr writes, “by severing all such connections, it was possible to think of it now as functionless. All one had to do next was impose upon the music meanings appropriate for the new aesthetic.” The post-1950s reappropriation of muqam, dastan, meshrep, and other traditional Uyghur genres for the state’s own politico-cultural goals begs to be understood as a similar process, a topic that will be discussed more thoroughly in the next two chapters. On the other hand, the Uyghur search for a national musical heritage offers a case that may be compared to what Stokes (2010, 2) describes, in his work on

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Turkish music, as a moment of “nostalgic backward glances, shifting cultural hierarchies, new technologies, and anxieties about national heritage.” The revival project establishes a meta-genre of muqam with the Kashgar-based On ikki muqam as the most comprehensive, exemplary model—the core corpus of Uyghur muqam—related in varying degrees and different ways to the several subnational and local muqam and non-muqam genres. Elsewhere I borrowed Gladney’s (1991) idea of ethnogenesis to look at muqam as a modern process of a national integration that has brought about a multilayered nexus of musical heritage for the shifting local, national, and global musical identities (Wong 2006).39 Such musical ethnogenesis is aptly realized in the enormously popular Muqam (1984), a surrealist oil painting by the prolific Uyghur painter Ghazi Emet (1933–2017).40 The work depicts an imaginary performance that includes musical instruments of various regional traditions and historical periods that would have otherwise never appeared in the same ensemble: the Dolan rawap and Dolan qanun, for example, playing alongside a bass ghéjek and a xushtar, both newly minted modernist instruments from the 1960s and 1970s; and loud outdoor instruments such as the naghra drums and zurney double reed playing together with the dutar and other primarily domestic instruments, to cite a couple of mismatches. The musical sound portrayed here is similarly surreal: some musicians are deeply infatuated with their own playing, displaying an ecstatic countenance that evokes Sufi trance, while others are self-composed, suggesting a soundscape that is profound and polished. The national heritage is presented here without time and context, incorporating assorted styles and genres into an ambiguous musical space in which the past is revisited, synthesized, and reconstructed. Yet its ambience is anything but entertaining, far removed from the meek merriment fabricated in most other “minority” visual arts in the late twentieth century and beyond. There are no flattering smiles; the faces of some musicians even show traces of suffering and torment. In it there is an unwillingness to acquiesce that is often unheard or misconstrued, a place of national nostalgia where traditional music finds its modern voice.

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CHAPTER 4

Singing Muqam in Uyghur Pop

T

he last chapter examined muqam as both a modern repertoire of reconstructed “works” and an orally transmitted living tradition that is invested with deep communal ties and national sentiments. Between and across these two musical realms lies a wide spectrum of practices, styles, and aesthetics for the creative endeavors in Uyghur music today. This chapter picks up on this theme to look at muqam also as a repository and source of creativity in modern musical expressions. As Harris (2008, 78) writes, muqam should be seen “less as an actual body of music and more as a kind of idealised framework surrounding a much more fluid oral tradition, from which individual musicians would learn and perform different parts, and into which musicians might slot their own local repertoires and compositions.” Here I expand on this idea to look at the intersection of muqam and popular music by examining how muqam songs have been adapted and covered by a number of high-profile pop singers. Specifically, I look at how sound icons and templates from muqam have afforded pop musicians a culturally situated place to encounter global styles and aesthetics. Rather than being a constraint, the canonic classical repertoire has served as a flexible frame for pop musicians to actualize a national soundscape—imagined or otherwise—through expressive means that are highly accessible and speak powerfully to the mass audience. Muqam has also operated as a platform for adapting varied approaches to traditions and heritage. Musicians strive to acquire and project an authentic voice—both physical and metaphorical—for the credible reinterpretation of muqam songs in popular styles. In this process they also gain the much-needed cultural capital to assert their ways of being subaltern in modern China. Uyghur pop inhabits an ambivalent yet critical cultural space. Its audience overlaps only minimally with that of other pop styles in Xinjiang and across China. Uyghur pop is stylistically hybrid and enjoyed across classes and 101

generations among primarily in-group audiences. Yet it is at the same time an aesthetic tool for articulating differences by participating in identity processes. It makes differences audible, against all the concocted harmony and unity in public, official spheres. Pop is also arguably the most efficacious Uyghur national genre that transcends regional styles and local preferences. Audience members identify not only with the musical styles but also the personas of the celebrities. Prominent musicians in the pop industry, such as Abdulla Abduréhim, the inimitable “king of pop,” often also take on a moral role as bearers of communal values and celebrity role models who promote the common good and upkeep of national traditions. The latest pop styles also calibrate the extent and modes of cultural modernity and serve as templates for other forms of creativity, defining what it means to be modern. Senses of nationhood and their credible means of expression are also frequently indexed in pop through the sampling and appropriating of both local and foreign styles. In addition, Uyghur pop, Anderson (2020) writes, “has long allowed for a certain kind of spiritual resilience and political resistance in the Uyghur homeland.” Yet such vibrancy is eclipsed in the mainstream Chinese music industry by the deeply racialized image of singing-and-dancing “minorities” as described earlier. This image and its Orientalist logic find the often reflective, melancholic text—both musical and literal—of Uyghur pop unfit for the celebratory soundscape desired in official representation. All in all, Uyghur pop occupies a niche market that, until fairly recently, has been almost entirely inaudible to non-Uyghur audiences. For the same reason it has also preserved some extent of integrity, which has made it a precious authentic national voice that is at once marginal and privileged. The Uyghur pop industry is relatively young. A small catalog of Uyghur vocal and instrumental music was recorded and released in short runs on 78 rpm and later 33 1/3 rpm vinyl discs during the 1950s and early 1960s by the state’s China Records. Yet most of these were short excerpts of muqam and folk melodies, with rather limited circulation. The local recording industry did not start until the state-owned Shinjang ün-sin neshriyati (Audiovisual Publisher) was established in 1984 and began releasing cassette tapes of local folk and pop singers in a variety of styles. The first private, independently owned label, Nawa, was established in 1994. In most of the years since, it has maintained a roster of top-notch singers built upon an extensive distribution network and a trustworthy relationship with the government. Major labels today, such as Dil küyi, operate largely on the same model. Music videos proliferated in the late 1990s with the advent of inexpensive technology for producing VCDs (and later DVDs), offering musicians and producers a new dimension for visual narratives. Global musics ranging from rock, hip-hop, and jazz to styles from Turkey and the broader Middle East and Central Asia have found their ways into the Uyghur pop soundscape via pirated audiovisual copies and the Internet in 102

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recent years. The latter has revolutionized the “cassette culture” by facilitating more individualized modes of consumption and low-budget production. The explosive growth of the pop industry since the late 1980s has taken place under ample state scrutiny. Most Uyghur-language audiovisual products have been released or distributed under the titular marker of one of the “audiovisual publishers” inside or outside Xinjiang, and Shinjang ün-sin neshriyati remains the listed label of a good number of albums (plastinka) today—means by which the state oversees the “minority” music industry through surveillance and censorship. Meanwhile, a thriving underground market of homemade audiovisuals—previously circulated on cassettes or VCDs/DVDs and more recently uploaded and shared as audiovisual clips to social media and streaming platforms—provides cheap and often more up-to-date alternatives for niche audiences to stay abreast of the latest styles and trends. Online video sharing platforms play an increasingly important role as repositories of music from even broader dimensions of historical periods, stylistic genres, and regional specificities. Traditional performing contexts such as olturash gatherings and various types of parties (weddings, circumcisions, etc.) remain some of the most cherished private occasions for the circulation of new and older music.1 Similarly, the small-scale private singing and playing of muqam songs in gatherings, as described in chapter 3, continue to be a well-kept tradition in local settings, occupying the intimate realm of music making.

The Double Life of a Pop Singer A senior Uyghur musician from an official performing troupe once grumbled in an interview with me about the “poor discipline” of some young vocalists in his troupe. Some of them held part-time jobs (which seemed to be an open secret), he said, in nightclubs and restaurants where they sang pop songs until very late at night, and as a result, they were oddly disengaged and did poorly during the troupe’s daily rehearsals. What further concerned him, he added, in a somewhat disdainful tone, was that these vocalists had picked up some “modern Turkish and Uzbek styles” and adapted some of these in the singing of muqam songs. Shir’eli Eltékin, a conservatory-trained muqam vocalist of Shinjang muqam ansambili (Xinjiang Muqam Ensemble) and simultaneously one of the bestknown pop singers, was conceivably one of these “ill-disciplined” members the senior musician was complaining about. Shir’eli came from an impoverished family near Kashgar. Upon graduating from Shinjang sen’et inistituti (Xinjiang Art Institute) in the late 1990s, he was assigned a job in the muqam ensemble as a vocalist. Similar to many other established pop singers, Shir’eli was affiliated with the ensemble as his idare or orun (work unit), a remnant of the socialist Singing Muqam in Uyghur Pop

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employment system where musicians received a salary and basic benefits package and were kept under tight control. Some considered such affiliation a prestige and professional recognition to boost their fame in the pop music industry, which sometimes actually earned them the majority of their income. These off-duty jobs were usually tolerated as long as they did not become too disruptive to the troupe’s rehearsals and performing duties. Some with a charming face and robust voice, like Shir’eli, had chosen to develop a second career as a pop singer. Shir’eli rose to popularity soon after his debut album Yolliringgha qaraymen (Waiting for you) (2001/2002) and became one of the best-selling pop singers. He was distinguished from some of his senior male colleagues in the ensemble as more suave, urbane, and versatile, qualities that appealed to his younger, primarily female fans. Shir’eli was a featured singer in a couple of Uyghur disco clubs in south-central Ürümchi around 2005. He sang on average four to five songs a night, for which he was paid about a hundred yuan. Although he considered it a reasonable amount of extra income, some of the top singers, he grumbled, would be paid fifteen or twenty times more at these private gigs. Once in a while, he would join performing tours to different towns across the Uyghur territory. Some of these tours were smaller-scale and selforganized (and had to be kept from the knowledge of the “leaders”); others were jointly organized by the troupe and independent production companies as a means to generate income for both the musicians and the troupe. One of these companies, of which Shir’eli was a contract artist at that time, was Dolan, which ran also as a record label. It pioneered a program that sponsored young musicians to train in Turkey, where they would typically stay for several months or a year to learn singing, the guitar, and other musical and stage skills. “I would have gone too,” Shir’eli said, “but my son was just born so I couldn’t leave for an entire year.” Instead, he was considering the path of some famous pop singers who were sponsored by their affiliated naxsha-ussul ömiki (song and dance troupe) to pursue a graduate degree at Shanghai Music Conservatory. “I would like to learn other singing styles, such as bel canto, to advance my skills,” he added. “But why?” I asked. “You already sing very well and are quite famous among the girls,” I teased him, referring to the two teenage waitresses who had just come to get his autograph at a newly opened Uyghur chain restaurant in southern Ürümchi where we liked to hang out. “It’s very tiring to sing muqam the way we do; I was very exhausted after two hours of singing,” he said. “If I knew how to use different methods of singing, it would be easier. One day I want to be like Dilber [referring to the renowned Uyghur soprano Dilber Yunus (b. 1958)], not most other singers, whose only audience were the Uyghur in Xinjiang,” he added. His wish to study abroad or in Shanghai never materialized, and his experience of being confined to the local pop market and its musical tastes was hardly unique. 104

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Similar to many other Uyghur pop singers, Shir’eli included in his repertoire a wide spectrum of pop styles, ranging from East Asian soft-rock ballads, to Turkish and Uzbek ethno-folk, as well as upbeat, disco-ready dance beats for bar and nightclub patrons. A majority of his songs preach to his pubescent audience the feelings of first love and yearnings for a sweetheart (e.g., “Qizlar bar” [There are girls]). Others are more serious, addressing topics of family and community (e.g., “Anijan” [Dear mother], to be discussed below). His voice is sentimental and soulful, yet he distinguishes himself from other pop singers by his solid intonation and a touch of precision, which reflect years of professional training. What further makes Shir’eli unique among other pop singers is that he has covered a good number of muqam and other traditional songs in new arrangements. His interpretations typically feature heavily synthesized, guitardriven accompaniment, blended with one or two idiosyncratic Uyghur instruments (often tembur, rawap, or ghéjek) and sounds sampled from various sources. The muqam songs covered often come from sections that feature some of the catchiest melodies, such as jula, dastan, and meshrep. It is this repertoire that is the focus of this chapter. The double life Shir’eli led as both a state-employed professional singer and a part-time pop celebrity is evocative of the bifurcated musical world experienced by many Uyghur musicians today. The public, state-promoted façade of Uyghur music includes primarily Chinese-appropriated “minority music” and the staged performance of Uyghur music by professional troupes. Both of these have received enormous media attention, catering to official narratives about tradition and multiculturalism. As explained in chapter 3, the focus of music scholarship, mostly funded under state projects and published in Chinese, has also been largely on traditional genres. Public performances of muqam, especially the reconstructed repertoire of On ikki muqam, also received the most attention and sponsorship. The lower-profile world of Uyghur music, on the contrary, comprises local genres of singing, instrumental music, and pop, which have largely been inaudible in the state media and academia until fairly recently. This includes olturash gatherings as portrayed earlier, which are confined largely to local, in-group settings. Yet these genres and styles constitute the largest share of the domestic entertainment market, and they enjoy huge popularity among local audiences. They offer what Spinetti (2005, 194) calls the “decentralized possibilities of aural experience” through unofficial media and performance settings. Pop musicians borrow from a wide spectrum of local and international styles to fashion their unique voices for targeted listeners. Successful attempts are quickly duplicated or usurped by other musicians, forming new stylistic blends that can never be easily contained by regulators and propagandists. For musicians like Shir’eli who set foot simultaneously in the private and public musical worlds—being at once a semi-independent pop singer and a Singing Muqam in Uyghur Pop

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professional vocalist with a state performing troupe—the exigencies to reconcile between the two realities are regularly felt. Shir’eli prides himself on his solid musical foundation in muqam, vis-à-vis the amateurism he identifies in the singing of some top-selling celebrities. Rather than being an ill-behaved, halfhearted member of the troupe (as he was likely perceived by his senior colleagues), Shir’eli sees himself as committed to upholding Uyghur culture in his music. Unlike some of his colleagues, he only drinks in moderation (his face turned red after a small glass or two of even very mild alcoholic drinks, such as beer), and he told me he had never used drugs despite being offered marijuana by a colleague in the troupe. Many like him also experience in pop what is often absent in professional troupes: an inventive space where musicians are not mere state employees required to attend tedious daily rehearsal sessions, performing according to standardized notation and in homogenized styles on uniformly “reformed” instruments. In many important ways, Uyghur pop offers an individualizing space, through which musicians feel empowered to explore the distinctive modes of expressivity and bridge the divergent spheres of public and private music making. The duality of voice also affords musicians like Shir’eli a privileged position to straddle the correspondingly divided musical worlds.

Voices and Styles Uyghur pop assumes a wide spectrum of loosely defined styles. Musicians often, rather unhelpfully, distinguish between the broad categories of xelq (folk) and harizqi zaman (modern). Generally speaking, the folk style refers to songs, traditional or newly composed, based on local musico-poetic forms and distinctive puraq (flavor) and accompanied by traditional instruments, sometimes with synthesized accompaniment outlining triadic harmony with an ethno-pop vibe. To many in the audience, these folk/ethno-pop songs serve as vessels of history and tradition by bringing local melodies, styles, and individual musicians to the mainstream pop market. The modern style, by contrast, is closer to the Western sense of pop. It is indebted to an array of foreign influences inflected with local nuances and personal preferences. It is common to hear Uyghur instruments incorporated as sampled “ethnic flavor” and featured playing intros, interludes, or countermelodies against a heavily synthesized texture and drum machine. Despite the strong preference for Uzbek and Turkish sounds in recent years, the groundbreaking styles of Uyghur pop in the late 1980s and early 1990s were primarily an imitation of East Asian experimentation with Western electropop and pop-rock. Mehmud Sulayman (1968–2020), a pioneer of Uyghur pop, released his first album, Salam dostlar (Hello friends), in 1989. He maintains that his early influences came primarily from pop music in Hong Kong, Taiwan, 106

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and Kazakhstan, particularly the Almaty-based Uyghur band Yashliq (Youthful), whose pop-rock songs fascinated him and inspired much of his music. These influences are heard in his second album Méning yultuzum (My stars) (1993). Similarly, some of the early songs of Abdulla Abduréhim (b. 1969) show traces of Cantonese or Taiwanese Mandarin soft rock of the late 1980s—see, for example, “Janane” (Darling) from Qara tupraq (Black earth) (1993), his first album (released only on cassette tape). Another icon of early Uyghur pop is Exmetjan Memtimin (1969–1991), who pioneered a unique fusion of rock electric guitar and traditional Uyghur elements. In reality, the styles of most Uyghur pop lie somewhere in between the “folk” and the “modern.” An example here is Shir’eli Eltéken’s song “Anijan” (Dear mother). The metaphor of “mother” is evoked in contemporary Uyghur songs often in association with typically reflective and melancholy music characterized by senses of nostalgia, grievance, and sacrifice. The “figure of the idealized mother,” a common trope in Uyghur pop, as Harris puts it, is “invariably depicted as careworn, weeping, nurturing, self-sacrificing. . . . The mother is essentially wet with flowing tears and white milk, and she is a key signifier in the rhetoric of sentimentality and pathos.” She quotes Abdumijit Dölätov, a Kazakhstan-based Uyghur poet and lyricist who maintains that “mother means country, flat, motherland. . . . Mother is all we have. We are an oppressed people, but the one thing you can’t take away from people’s hearts is mother, no power can stop mother love” (2005b, 634–638). Anijan

Dear Mother

Bolmas idi hemrahim naxsham. Anijanim étmisang elley. Bolarmidim hayatqa ashiq. Méhribanim étmisang elley. Ashu sadda sözliring anglap. Alem-malem zewq tolghanmen. Elleylerdin hayatim eylep. Men hem hapiz bolup qalghanmen. Séning ashu elley tüpeyling. (Ana janim) men hem hapiz bolup qalghanmen. Anijanim tenha dursen. Perzentilerge rehlima dursen. Hem tebibim hem baha dursen. Méhri derya bibaha dursen.

I wouldn’t have my song as companion, My dear mother, if you don’t sing lullabies. I wouldn’t have passion for life, My loving mother, if you don’t sing lullabies. Hearing your simple words, I filled the world of suffering with pleasure. Nurtured by (your) lullabies, I have also become a hapiz. Because of your lullabies, (Dear mother), I have also become a hapiz. My dear mother, you are the only one To offer to the children. You are everything to me, You are the priceless love of the river.

The rhymed couplets of the lyrics are reminiscent of the text of muqam songs. Each line has nine syllables. All except for two couplets repeat once, resulting in a total of eight stanzas (including the return of the first two at the Singing Muqam in Uyghur Pop

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end) in the entire song—each with two couplets or four lines (including repetitions). The singer remembers the love of his mother, whose simple, pure (sadda) words in her lullabies have guided his life as a hapiz, the lead reciter in Sufi rituals, and filled the suffering world with pleasure. Here, the affliction and disappointment in the real world is contrasted with a homeland—physical and metaphorical—symbolized by his mother’s lullabies, an idealized musical past that seems to be fading at present. The singer eulogizes his mother, whose priceless love is “the river” (derya)—commonly understood to be referring to Tarim, the “mother river” of the Uyghur nation. The self-identification as a hapiz also explores the sacred role the musician sees for himself. The music video correspondingly depicts a homecoming journey of the singer. The singer is portrayed by Shir’eli himself. At the beginning of the video he is seen dressed in modern urban outfits—T-shirt, blazer, leather belt, and dress pants—carrying a black briefcase, and walking down a country road, initially paved and gradually becoming dirt, leading into small alleys of a village of mud-brick houses. The trope of retreating from the modern world to the rural home is common in Uyghur songs. On his way (presumably from the city) to visit his mother in his home village, the singer recalls his childhood memories with his mother. This flashback scene shows a woman taking her young son to the town—clearly Kashgar’s now-demolished ancient city—and buying him his first musical instrument, a child-sized version of the rawap plucked lute, which Shir’eli plays. Scenes of Shir’eli wearing a white traditional Uyghur shirt singing in a dark studio, the “present,” contrast with episodes of his childhood memories, constituting the diachronic narrative of the music video. Eventually he arrives at his rural home at the end of the song and reunites with his mother, who is now an aged, pale woman with little expression on her densely wrinkled face.2 The blending of traditional and pop elements in the song deserves some discussion. It starts off with a repeating four-measure chord progression (i7– IV9 –iv 7–v 7), reminiscent of post-1970s East Asian pop ballads. A synthesized texture establishes the instrumental intro in a moderate-tempo quadruple meter. This sound is contrasted immediately at the entrance of the ghéjek in the latter half of the intro, which, with its idiosyncratic nasal timbre as well as the microtonal ornaments and the rich glissando figures, stands out markedly in the synthesized texture and its equal-tempered tonality. The melodic action is furthered by Shir’eli’s emotive, melancholic voice, now entering in a medium-low register with a similarly ornate vocal line. A repeating rhythm is then established on the dap, playing alongside the drum machine. The arch-shaped melody of the song unfolds itself into several ascending and then descending phrases that correspond to the structure of the rhymed couplets. 108

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The first two couplets, each of which repeats itself once, start in a relatively low register in F# minor. The voice, rich in ornaments, then gradually explores the brighter medium range in the relative major key (A major) during the third couplet, which also repeats itself before returning to the lower register in F# minor for the next couplet. Now an instrumental interlude, led by a melody on the ghéjek, comes in, playing an extended elaboration of the intro. The flashback scene in the music video concludes right before the voice comes back, leading to the climax in the next phrase. The intensity then declines as the melody descends into the next stanza, followed by the return of the first two couplets, which completes the arch-shaped melody with a gloomy line that returns to the initial range. The song employs musico-poetic settings that resemble Central Asian poetic songs. One example is at the couplet “Anijanim tenha dursen . . .” (My dear mother, you are the only one . . . ). This line is sung twice. Its melody reaches the highest pitch of the song (high B) during the second appearance of the word anijanim (my dear mother). The climax is reminiscent of ewj, the culminating point of the melody and the poetic text. Shir’eli’s voice now turns hoarse, moaning, and a little whimpering in a high register, something not common in his other rock songs or pop ballads (not to mention those sung in official shows). This intensely arresting moment resonates throughout the song with the lamenting quality of the ghéjek melodies and the lyrics. In the music video, episodes showing Shir’eli recording in the studio are synchronized—side by side, and sometimes overlapped—with blurry images of his mother, who now appears wearing a traditional Uyghur dress and a headscarf, standing in a dignified manner in front of the Héytgah (Id Kah) mosque in Kashgar, the most important Uyghur architectural symbol. Perhaps coincidentally, this scene is reminiscent of the famous images of the great twentieth-century ArabEgyptian singer Umm Kulthūm (1900–1975) posing near the Sphinx. These images, as Lohman (2010, 126) describes in her study of the interpretations of Umm Kulthūm’s images and music, “cast the singer and her art as fixed and ‘authentic’ elements of the national heritage.” Here, in “Anijan,” the rural and the national places are coalesced and crisscrossed by the song’s voice and the national-folk soundscape, telling a story about the singer. The compelling figure of a compassionate, enduring mother further works to project a national geist that is rooted in the rural past through a home-returning journey. The metaphors of both mother and her lullabies, which the tormented singer seems to have lost in the present, offer a musical attachment to his childhood, a past, both personal and national, that awaits retrieval. The stylistic hybridity exemplified in this song is normal for most pop singers and their albums. When I asked Abdulla Abduréhim about how he had chosen the songs for his album Tenha söygü (Lonely love) shortly before it was released in 2005, he explained that the strategy had been to cater to the tastes of Singing Muqam in Uyghur Pop

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as many audience groups as possible. Two or three songs, he explained, were written in modern pop styles fitted with lyrics about romantic love, and a couple of others were rearranged from folk music for middle-age or older listeners. There would usually also be one or two traditional tunes reinterpreted in a poprock accompaniment. A good example is “Séni dédim” (I told you), a favorite number in his concerts and gala shows. Abdulla also sang the Uyghur cover version of Ricky Martin’s “La Copa de la Vida,” the theme song of the 1998 France World Cup. The Uyghur version is called “Hayat longqisi” (a literal translation of “La Copa de la Vida” or “The cup of life”), included in the album Shérin chüsh (Sweet dream) (1998). The song includes an extended interlude played on the double-reed pipe zurney toward the end. The festive vibe played (and symbolized) by the zurney serves the Uyghur-Latin crossover well. It is thus difficult to generalize what constitutes a typical Uyghur pop song. Seasoned listeners are often explicit about their preferences. One of the stylistic approaches that has gained much popularity since around 2000 can be illustrated by another Abdulla song, “Yol bergin” (Bestow a path). It represents one of the most common musical forms in his oeuvre. Written in B minor, the song features a simple verse-refrain, two-part form, set in a quadruple meter to a moderately slow tempo. The second part is melodiously analogous to the first (and elaborates it) but sung an octave higher. Abdulla’s signature nasal vocal timbre delivers a deep sense of melancholy, creating a somewhat pleading sound that corresponds to the lyrics. The lyrics comprise four rhymed couplets (-ep and -et). Each line has eight syllables, except for the second line of the third couplet, where the word qiyinimisun is skillfully contracted in the song to maintain the eight-syllable poetic rhythm. The synthesized keyboard, electric bass, and standard drum-kit accompaniment provide a normative soft-rock texture. Similar to many other songs of his, an instrumental interlude, here played by the tembur, paraphrases the vocal melody, giving the song a staple ethnic flavor. Indeed, many of these instrumental intros and interludes are some of the most memorable melodies. They also serve effectively as a secondary refrain—see, for example, “Untalmidim” and “Xelqim bar,” among many others. The lyrics of “Yol bergin” read like an introspective prayer: Yol bergin Yol bergin yol izdigenlerge, Sepirige aq yol tilep. Yol bergin pak mihring bilen, Yükseklerge ketsun örlep. Köngüldin su ichsun köngül, Qiyinimisun yürekni hesret. Yazning altun aptipidek, Hemmimizge, yaghsun amet. 110

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Bestow a Path Bestow a path on those who have searched for it; And bless them a good (safe) journey. Bestow a path, with your mercy; And let them rise up high. Hearts are to comfort other hearts; And not to torment suffering hearts. Like the summer’s golden sunshine; May blessings be upon all of us.

The mourning and generally dark sensibilities painted in this song are hardly unique and have invited analysis of how popular Uyghur styles may be listened to as an expression of national sentiments. Smith (2007, 120–123) considers the genre of “new folk”—recorded contemporary folk songs composed by professional musicians using traditional singing style and accompaniment—an important medium in which nationalist messages have been conveyed. The use of head voice and nasal inflections, the traditional timbre and strumming patterns of music instruments, and the subtle tone shifts and melismatic melodies written in the minor mode, Smith argues, create a sense of mourning and tragedy that are characteristic of the “new folk” style, making it an ideal vehicle to “reflect prevalent social and political concerns” and to “construct and reproduce an alternative social, political and national consciousness.” Likewise, Harris (2002, 273) argues that the predominance of “tragic notes” in these songs is a reaction to the official image of “minority” happiness stereotyped in “songand-dance” performances. The bass register of the voice and typically minor feel of the melodies of the “new folk” singer-songwriter Ömerjan Alim, Harris notes, establishes a pan-Uyghur national style that “transcends or overlays local traditions, thus increasing the songs’ popularity and ability to disseminate political messages” (Harris 2005b, 636–637). It would not be unproblematic, however, to call Abdulla a singer of national resistance. His songs are indeed sometimes derided by older musicians as contaminated by excessive outside influences, and belittled by professionally trained musicians as not sufficiently sophisticated. His attempts to incorporate elements of traditional music, particularly muqam, into his songs have also been described as practices that are “perhaps not so far removed from that of Western musicians who sample ‘exotic’ music for the ‘world music’ market” (Harris 2002, 276). In the pop music industry, Abdulla has indeed established himself as a compliant “minority” artist approved and sometimes also welcomed by the state. Despite his fame and wealth, Abdulla remains a member of Opéra ömiki, the state’s opera/drama troupe, which he joined upon graduating as a theater major from Shinjang sen’et inistituti in 1991. Notwithstanding his own busy performing and recording schedules, Abdulla frequently participated in the troupe’s major productions, including, in 2005, the musical drama version of Muz taghqa kelgen méhman (Guests from the ice mountains; Ch. Bingshan shang de laike), an adaptation from a synonymous propaganda film produced in the 1960s. In the musical drama, Abdulla plays the heroic “minority” role of Amir, a Tajik soldier who bravely fights the enemies and saves his country and people under the leadership of a Communist army general. In 2007, with nearly two dozen Uyghur-language albums and compilations already to his name, Abdulla released his first Chinese-language album, titled Ai yi cheng hui (Love has become ashes).3 In 2008, he was selected to perform at Singing Muqam in Uyghur Pop

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the pre-concert of the Olympic Games opening ceremony in Beijing, a very prestigious honor enjoyed only by a small number of top-notch musicians. The song he sang at the concert, “Dolan meshrébi” (Dolan meshrep), will be discussed below. Subsequent publicity and media exposure swiftly put him on the map of “minority” singers in the Chinese pop industry. Abdulla was named one of China’s 150 outstanding artists by the Cultural Bureau. In 2011, he appeared on the state’s flagship China Central Television Station, singing “Dolan meshrébi” at the annual Lunar New Year (Spring Festival) Gala, a much watched and politically charged TV show where non-Han performances had almost always been occasions for propaganda. Abdulla was awarded a “grand prize” (te’deng jiang), an unprecedented honor for a “minority” artist, in the program.

“The King of Pop” Abdulla came to pick me up in his Hyundai Elantra, which he told me was his brother’s. We went for lunch at a high-end réstoran (restaurant) called Miran, located on Jenubiy shinxua yoli (“New China” Road South; Ch. Xinhua nan lu) in southwest Ürümchi. We were greeted by the manager at the entrance of the restaurant. Two waitresses then led us to the dining room on the second floor, where a white grand piano sat by the window. The pianist, who had otherwise been playing soft background music, switched to improvising one of Abdulla’s songs upon seeing his arrival. Abdulla seemed to be quite pleased. He flashed the pianist a smile and hummed along for half a minute or so. He was blunt about his popularity. A production company called Mingyol (Thousand Roads), he said, was about to hold a singing competition in which the contestants would imitate his singing style. Many young people from Kashgar and Khotan, he recalled, imitated his voice so well that they sounded almost exactly like him. There was a saying among the Uyghur in the south, he continued, with much pride, “The first word a baby says is not ‘mother’ or ‘father’ but ‘Abdulla.’” Abdulla was born in 1969 in Maralbéshi, a Dolan town northeast of Kashgar. He moved to Ürümchi in 1987 as a student to attend Shinjang sen’et inistituti, majoring in acting (aktyorluq). Soon after graduating in 1991 he joined Opéra ömiki and at the same time started his career in the pop music industry. Abdulla identifies himself as a second-generation Uyghur pop singer, and he considers singers such as Izzet Ilyas (b. 1967), Abliz Rehim, and Pettar Rehim— all of whom had started their career in the late 1980s—as his forebears in the first generation. When asked about what makes him unique among his generation of pop singers, Abdulla believes it is his continual effort to explore and 112

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bring new styles to his audience. He characterizes the early 1990s as an experimental period when he spent much time figuring out his own character, particularly after he released his first album, Qara tupraq (Black earth), in 1993. He formed a band called Teklimakan in 1994 with some of the finest Uyghur rock musicians at that time, and they experimented with a range of sub-styles within the primarily Euro-American and East Asian pop-rock soundscape. Members of the band parted after a few years. “We argued too much,” Abdulla remembers, “because they’re all top musicians, and sometimes that’s difficult.” He formed another band called Saba at about the turn of the new century, which supplied the sound for apparently all his recordings and concerts. “Not everyone in Saba is top-notch,” he said, “but they all have good personality; their musical skills will improve.” Abdulla writes some of his own songs, but most of them are solicited or penned by Ablet Ablikim, one of his two nephews (the other being the famous singer Möminjan Ablikim). Both Ablet and Möminjan appeared frequently with Abdulla in concerts as singers and rose to their own stardom under his nurturing. Abdulla said that he had been picking songs for the new album with his team members in the morning before our meeting. They received six songs composed by a musician well versed in muqam. “It looks like we’re going to use at least two of them,” he said. Abdulla was working on a song about meshrep, which he claimed “would introduce to the audience the distinctive Dolan tradition of meshrep. It’s important that the young people today know our own traditional art.” Abdulla had released all but the first of his albums with Nawa, a local record label and distributor. He said he had been fortunate to have a record label as a partner. “Some record companies said they would pay me more to release my songs with them,” he said, “but they mostly wanted to make quick money and didn’t have any long-term planning.” His best-selling album so far (by 2005) was Shérin chüsh, which had sold more than seventy thousand copies (and countless more pirated ones). It was also his first album released both on cassette tape and CD, at a time when CDs had just become more available in Uyghur pop and before piracy became a major concern. Piracy had become so serious in recent years that, he said, a few other record labels, in order to increase profits, would sell the master tapes to the underground piracy business to make pirate copies even before the authentic copy hit the market. Abdulla was proud of his commitment to adapt traditional music in his songs. He experimented with incorporating elements from Dolan muqam, his hometown tradition, back in the 1990s.4 “People at that time didn’t know much about Dolan muqam and I mostly just wanted to experiment with different styles in my songs,” he explained. “But when these songs came out, everyone liked it. . . . I think people should be responsible for their own culture and keep Singing Muqam in Uyghur Pop

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the old, traditional culture by using new ways to show it. I took an old melody and added a new arrangement to it. At that time, if you didn’t add new sound and just played the Dolan ghéjek and rawap, the young people wouldn’t pay attention to it,” Abdulla elaborated, rather enthusiastically. He said he had been doing some research on Dolan music in recent years and learned much more about these folk styles. He also listened to a lot of Uzbek pop, which he thought was better produced with higher quality and cleaner sound. “Some Uzbek pop songs,” he said, “used elements that sounded very similar to Uyghur traditional music here in Yarkand. I believe some Uzbek music has roots in Uyghur music. Lyrics are very important,” Abdulla maintained. He used the poems of contemporary poets in his songs, a majority of which were about love. The three albums he released in the first few years of the new century all had the word söygü (love) in their titles: Tünji söygü (First love) (2000); Xiyaldiki söygü (Imaginative love) (2003); Tenha söygü (Lonely love) (2005). Abdulla emphasized that there were many kinds of love, and he also included lyrics about family, fathers, mothers, and friendship in many of his songs. Similar to other Uyghur celebrities I have interviewed, Abdulla shunned most political topics. I had the opportunity to talk to one of his personal assistants who was trained in drama and also a member of Opéra ömiki and served as Abdulla’s driver, translator, and bodyguard. I asked him why, given his fame and wealth, Abdulla did not form his own company and detach himself from the troupe. “It’s politics,” he replied, bluntly. “The more famous you are, the more the government doesn’t want you to leave the idare [work unit]. If I were to leave the idare, I could leave any time, because I’m nobody. But Abdulla is different. He’s so popular, and the Cultural Bureau is worried that his popularity would gather some kind of undesirable sentiments among the people.” He continued, “When I was with Abdulla in Germany on tour last time, we were warned by the Cultural Bureau not to say that we were ‘Turkic people’ or to include any expression that had the word ‘Turk’ in it. They instructed that we should always say we’re Uyghur from China’s Xinjiang.” If Abdulla didn’t stay in the troupe, he proceeded, “we wouldn’t even be able to receive permission to perform outside China, or even to tour to other towns inside Xinjiang. They simply wouldn’t approve our requests,” he added.5 Toward the end of our lunch meeting, Abdulla told me he had started learning English about half a year earlier. His English teacher was translating some of his older songs into English for him to sing, potentially contributing to an English-language album in the near future. He said there was a recent invitation to tour in the United States, but the Cultural Bureau rejected his request and instead assigned him to play in a drama that obliged him to travel to Beijing for its production. “It’s a good opportunity for me,” he grumbled, “but amal yoq” (there’s no way out). 114

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“Dolan meshrébi” Abdulla became widely known among the non-Uyghur audience in China in 2008 when he released his second Chinese-language album, Xibu gewang (Song king of the western region; Uy. Gherbiy dunya naxsha cholpini) (2008). The eleven songs on the album feature new compositions as well as Chinese cover versions of some of his greatest hits, sung with new arrangements and slight melodic or rhythmic modifications (mostly to accommodate the Chinese language). All except for one song were sung in Chinese, and the only exception is “Dolan meshrébi,” the song Abdulla mentioned to me earlier. It is telling that “Dolan meshrébi” became the first Uyghur song that launched Abdulla’s appeal in the Chinese market: aside from the pre-concert of the Olympic Games opening ceremony in Beijing, he was frequently seen singing this song at different high-profile national occasions. A number of Abdulla’s earlier songs had experimented with incorporating traditional musical forms and modal scales in the pop idiom. A notable example was “Rast”—by composer Ablet Ablikim and lyricist Muhemmet Eli Zunun—which attempted to invoke the character of maqām rāst, a melodic mode found across Central Asia and the Middle East but not identified in Uyghur muqam today (despite the similarities between the modal scales used in Penjigah and maqām rāst). “Dolan meshrébi” represented a continuation of such effort, and the source of appropriation was then a vernacular Uyghur tradition. Listeners would not miss the traditional elements and sound sources incorporated in the six-minute song. It comprises four metrically contrasting sections, proceeding from an unmetered introduction (mimicking the meditative muqedimme prelude in a muqam suite) to a moderately fast section in triple meter with a strong rhythmic drive. The third section is slightly faster, with a somewhat limping feel created by a recurring syncopated 3+3+2 pattern outline on the dap framed drum. The song then accelerates into the frenetic final part, in duple, sung against a pounding rhythm in fast tempo. The metrical design as well as the occasional rhythmic juxtaposition between duple and triple mirrors those of a typical muqam suite in the Dolan tradition. It is a clear attempt to capture Dolan’s energetic improvisatory qualities. Sampled tunes of two distinctively Dolan instruments are clearly heard in the prelude: the plucked zither qanun and the Dolan version of the plucked lute rawap. The qanun is not seen in most other Uyghur traditions; the Dolan rawap has sympathetic strings, a fretless fingerboard, and a slack goat-skin membrane, which altogether resemble the Afghan rubāb more than other Uyghur lutes. The interactive heterophony in the instrumental texture and the responsorial chorus after each vocal line are also clear attempts to reproduce the wild Dolan soundscape. Singing Muqam in Uyghur Pop

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Abdulla’s bold, assertive voice here also represents a stark contrast to his mellower timbre in some other songs.6 The sampling of traditional Dolan music in the song speaks to the growing market for “minority” musical authenticity in recent years. An ethnolinguistic subgroup of the Uyghur, the Dolan preserve in their music a number of features that are believed to be more ancient than other Uyghur genres, ranging from the sympathetic strings on the instruments and their primordial constructions, to the allegedly less refined styles and expressivities (see chapter 6). Abdulla was certainly quick to pick up the ongoing Dolan fetishization. At the same time, the song “Dolan meshrébi” also represents an attempt to reclaim his Dolan roots through popular music. This is, first and foremost, reflected in the marketing of the album and of Abdulla himself. A tagline on the front cover and posters of this album reads “He is a descendent of the Dolan people.” In various interviews with Chinese media, Abdulla was unambiguous about his wish to present the real Dolan culture in his music (Qin Yu 2015). This idea is echoed in the self-reflective lyrics, which have five quatrains. Each line has seven or eight syllables. Each quatrain ends with the word meshrep, the words before which are consistently rhymed (hawa, rawa, dawa, haya, nawa). Dolan meshrébi

Dolan meshrep

Ana yurtum ara töhpe, Miras bibaha meshrep. Boghulgan dem nepeslerge, Shipaliq sap hawa meshrep.

Meshrep, the priceless contribution and heritage of my motherland. Meshrep, the healing pure air to the stifling breath.

Kamalet tapti qoyningda, Muqam elneghme jambazlik. Ezelidin zadi Uyghurgha, Ijazetsiz rawa meshrep.

It is where the perfect and complete songs of muqam are founded. Meshrep has always belonged to the Uyghur people, without (anyone’s) permission.

Béghi sen qan-qérindashliq, Inaqliq jan köyerlikning. Hosul pexring adawetlik, Jarahetke dawa meshrep.

Meshrep, a garden of siblings, Amicable and soulful friends. A pride of harvest, A cure for wounds and hatred.

Yene sen katta seynasi, Ulugh insaniy xisletning. Séningde en’ene resmiy, Yosun shermiy-haya meshrep.

Meshrep, you are also a lavish courtyard of great humanity. In meshrep there are great traditions, rules and manners, shame and humiliation.

Yene yüksel quyashtek, Parlisun pak rohi milletning. Baghash etsun bu alemni, Ésil neghme-nawa meshrep.

Like the rising sun, Let the nation’s righteous spirit shine. Let the virtuous songs and music of meshrep embrace this human world.

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The trope of authenticity looms large here. The text, which is a tribute to meshrep, explicitly connects meshrep with nation (millet) and motherland (ana yurt), both potent metaphors of the Uyghur nation. Meshrep is therapeutic; it heals wounds, enmity, and other ailments of the human world. The song is also a statement about cultural ownership: meshrep indisputably belongs to the Uyghur. The adverb ijazetsiz (without approval) in the second couplet is set to the melody in an emotionally intense manner. As a kind of punchline, it is sung three times over an extensive melismatic passage in the last line. This echoes the name of the album, which describes Abdulla as the “song king of the western region,” a moniker that has otherwise been known among the Chinese audience as belonging to Wang Luobin, whose appropriation of Uyghur songs is considered by Uyghur as musical theft (as discussed in chapter 1). It would not be a stretch to read Abdulla’s album title as a cloaked commentary on Wang Luobin’s appropriation of Uyghur music and an attempt to reclaim cultural ownership. This is further confirmed by a tagline in the album that describes Abdulla as “a legendary figure who has conquered the musical scene of the western region” (chengba xiyü yuetan de chuanqi renwu). This line is an unmistakable response to Dao Lang, the pseudonym (adapted from Dolan) of the neo-Orientalist Chinese singer Luo Lin, who is promoted as a “legendary singer whose voice has conquered the western region” (gehou zhengfu xiyü de chuangqi geshou). Indeed, in interviews, Abdulla was explicit about Dao Lang’s music being inauthentic and not representative of Uyghur music (Qin Yu 2015). The attempt to reclaim not only the term “Dolan” but also its music from these Chinese “song thieves” is evident.7 Questioning the authenticity of Orientalist Chinese singers such as Wang Luobin and Dao Lang—which, as a matter of fact, is a critique not uncommon among liberal and sympathetic Chinese audiences—after all, is a much safer strategy than engaging other aspects of Uyghur grievance. Yet the extent to which the song and the album represent a categorical critique of exoticism to his newly acquainted Chinese audience is doubtful: notably, the lyrics of the song appear only in Uyghur in the liner notes; the Chinese subtitles shown on TV shows are also deceptively simplified, omitting a few important lines. The song might thus be catering as much to Abdulla’s mainstream Uyghur audience, offering an opportunity to listen to and talk about a previously overlooked vernacular tradition. In some sense, it is exemplary of a credible adaptation of traditional elements and the national musical past they symbolize. The outcome is a song that achieves a number of seemingly contrasting goals: it glorifies a national tradition and experiments with stylistic hybridity while also making a statement about cultural authority by critiquing musical exoticism. The sound it projects caters to both the renewed Chinese market of “minority” authenticity and in-group Uyghur audiences. Singing Muqam in Uyghur Pop

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Abdulla’s involvement in official shows as well as the double life he lives as both a member of a state performing troupe and a Uyghur national celebrity has afforded him an advantageous position to articulate and make audible his statements. Such visibility and the messages in his songs may be compared to what Rose calls the “contestation over public space, the meanings, interpretations, and values of the lyrics and music.” Symbolic references in lyrics and music— even if they managed to evade censorship—represent only part of the resistance. As Rose argues in her study of rap, “to dismiss rappers who do not choose ‘political’ subjects as having no politically resistive role ignores the complex web of institutional policing to which all rappers are subjected, especially in large public space contexts. . . . It is not just what you say, it is where you can say it, and how others react to it, and whether you have the power to command access to public space” (Rose 1994, 124). It is therefore rare for Uyghur audiences to dismiss Abdulla and other Uyghur celebrities’ efforts to establish themselves as subcultural Chinese musicians as either instances of state co-optation or simply shrewd business strategies to set foot in the lucrative market. To those who resist such simplistic interpretations, these efforts are what Scott (1990, 2–4) has famously called the “public transcript”—an “open interaction between subordinates and those who dominate,” which is a “more or less credible performance, speaking the lines and making the gestures he knows are expected of him.” The legacy of Abdulla also represents a promise for many in his audience. His phenomenal success demonstrates a path for national Uyghur styles to be audible in the modern, post-traditional world without being reduced to exotic stereotypes. The song is about meshrep; it is also about the genre of pop, as a preferred venue for Uyghur singers to register an alternative sense of being at once modern and ethnic in a “minority” social world where modernity and ethnicity have always been mediated by the state and its pervasive system of subordination. To critique Abdulla’s involvement in official shows and publicity in the Chineselanguage market as an indication of political subservience—or worse, as preached in official media, as instances of “harmonious ethnic relations”—would be to miss the versatility and resourcefulness of Uyghur artists and pop cultures.

A Passion for Muqam If Abdulla’s muqam-inspired pop songs remain attempts of cultural appropriation that should be listened to through the critical lens of authenticity and (mis) representation, then the muqam songs reinterpreted by Shir’eli Eltékin may offer another way to see how traditional music is repackaged for its modern and almost exclusively local, in-group audience. At first glance, Shir’eli’s album Muqam ishqi (A passion for muqam) (2007) appears to be a compilation of 118

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muqam songs. Half of the fourteen tracks—all Uyghur—printed on the back cover are titles of muqam songs such as “Chahargah meshrep” and “Mushawarek dastan,” terms that are unfamiliar and obscure to most of his teenage fans. A very different soundscape is revealed upon listening: these songs feature an eclectic mix of synthesized dance beats in a techno-rock style with a modern Arab/Turkish flavor, with melodies and texts taken directly, nearly unaltered, from the classical muqam songs, fused into a soundscape that is essentially pop. They are muqam; they are also pop. Shir’eli included no fewer than a dozen muqam songs on his first and third albums.8 Compared to Abdulla and most other Uyghur pop singers, Shir’eli had more solid training in muqam, yet he also acquired a stronger appetite for global pop styles. He has never sung in Chinese or tried to cater to the Chineselanguage market in his songs, most of which target the younger local Uyghur audience. His musical influences came also less from East Asia than Central Asia and the Middle East: the music of the Almaty-based Uyghur rock band Derwishi and the Turkish pop singer Tarkan (b. 1972)—whose songs were available on pirated CDs and VCDs in almost every Uyghur record store during much of the first decade of the new century—represented some of his early musical influences, Shir’eli admitted. He also plays the Turkish bağlama and sampled its sound in some of his songs. Similar to many other Uyghur pop singers, Shir’eli admires styles and bands in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Turkey as forebears of music modernity. He looks up to musicians in these countries not only for their technology and business models but also for how they have included their national sounds in pop songs. As a professional muqam vocalist, Shir’eli feels strongly committed to teaching his young audience about the “great heritage of muqam.” Not unlike Abdulla’s, his approach has been to reinterpret muqam songs through a range of new sounds and expressive means that sometimes shock his senior colleagues in the professional troupe. A few tracks on his first album, Yolliringgha qaraymen (Waiting for you), experiments with singing muqam songs and other traditional tunes with a rock accompaniment, including Chebbiyat’s “Jula” and Nawa’s “Ikkinchi meshrep,” alongside the soft-rock love songs and disco dance music. Shir’eli emphasized to me repeatedly that, despite the pop arrangements, the muqam songs he reinterpreted were essentially muqam. He sees himself as no less an upholder of the great national tradition than his senior colleagues in the troupe and other traditional musicians. He is proud of his pop rendition of muqam songs, sometimes more so than the staged performances in which he participated as a featured singer. These performances often cast muqam as an ancient court tradition. Images of reconstructed palaces, royal costumes, and music patronage pervade the films, televised dramas, and documentaries produced by the Cultural Bureau, several of which feature Shir’eli as a singer-actor. Singing Muqam in Uyghur Pop

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In a number of musical scenes that reconstruct court performances in the music videos of Chebbiyat, for example, Shir’eli is dressed in a prince costume singing muqam songs at the court, accompanied by an ensemble of instrumentalists and dancers. Shir’eli dresses himself as a prince again in the music video of his pop song “Nawa muqamning meshrébi” from the album Yolliringgha qaraymen. The song was taken from the second meshrep song of Nawa. In the music video, he first arrives at the palace with a female dancer, bowing dutifully to a trio of older, bearded royal patrons who have been sitting by a long table filled with food, awaiting entertainment. A few seconds into the video, to the surprise of the royals, a modern rock band emerges from the background. Dressed in modern outfits, the band members start off the song with a rock instrumental riff played by mixed pop and traditional instruments: electric guitar, electric bass, rawap, dap, and a tablah drum. Confused and somewhat offended, the royals shake their heads, disapproving of the band and its rock music. Shir’eli now reappears in front of the royals, dressed in a Western suit. He points his finger at the band, which then vanishes and then, in a second or two, magically reappears, poking fun at the three royal members, who are left further dumbfounded. The narrative about the tension between the old and the new is reinforced musically by the interplay between the rawap and the electric guitar in the instrumental intro and the interlude. The short intro is in two parts: two cycles of a four-measure chord progression (I–V6 –IV6 –V) in a moderate tempo and duple meter, followed by a repeating four-measure instrumental solo carried by a single rawap, which establishes the modal feel of the muqam song through a catchy tune with microtonal inflections. In the music video, the audience is presented with quick alternating close-up shots of fast-picking rawap and electric guitar playing in virtual competition. The electric guitar plays a solo in the interlude with idiomatic rock diatonic melodic figures and no chromatic or microtonal references. This contrasts with the vocal melody (which is doubled and elaborated by the rawap throughout the song), singing in traditional timbre with microtonal inflections. As I will argue in chapter 5, the rawap and its “reformed” stylistic practices embody a musical stereotype for “minority” enlightenment as fashioned in post-1949 modernization projects. Yet the modern rawap tradition is at once appropriated by Uyghur musicians as an idealized musical icon for modernity. In a study of the role of the violin in twentieth-century South Indian music, Weidman (2006, 25) notes that the violin “not only became a vehicle for conveying Karnatic music to modernity but also came to be seen as essential to preserving Karnatic music’s authenticity.” The rawap here—and the use of traditional instruments in other instances of Uyghur pop songs in general—may be heard as assuming a similarly double character: while it symbolizes the authentic Uyghur “voice” by mimicking the vocal melody and carrying its 120

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microtonal idiosyncrasies, its versatility and modern attributes also work to bring traditional music to the realm of modernity. An amateur rawap performer himself, Shir’eli likes to compare the rawap to the guitar. His basic view is that the guitar is a much harder instrument to play than the rawap, because the latter has one melodic and six sympathetic strings: “It’s easy to play chords on the guitar, but on the rawap you only play the melody.”9 He tried to advance his skills on the guitar but found it too difficult. The comparison between the rawap and the guitar is also a musical statement about the commensurability between these two instruments, echoing similar comparisons in the modernist reform project (such as between the ghéjek and the violin; see chapter 5). The music video, which teases the royals by singing rock versions of muqam songs at their court, may also be read as a derision of the obstinate mindset of Shir’eli’s senior colleagues and perhaps also the official interpretation of muqam. It reveals the disconnect with traditional music often felt among younger musicians. This is not to suggest that references to ancient kingdoms and the centuries-old musical and literary tradition do not appeal to the musicians and their audience, and could not have been appropriated for nationalist causes—they do, as a matter of fact. Rather, at play here is what Scott (1990, 115–118) calls “ideological negation,” a counterideology that is articulated in the form of elaborate replies to domination in the hidden transcript of the subordinate groups. Similar to Abdulla’s attempt to reclaim Dolan music from the Orientalist Chinese singer-songwriters, Shir’eli’s pop interpretation of muqam songs here serves to retrieve the Uyghur heritage from its official rendition and representation, something the song works to negate.

Between Muqam and Pop This section takes a closer look at the sampling and appropriation in two of Shir’eli’s muqam songs from the album Muqam ishqi to examine how references to traditional music in pop music may be listened to as creative assemblages that address the unique subaltern experience of Uyghur cultural modernity. As explained in chapter 3, most muqam songs are identified by their distinctive metrical cycles, heard as the alternation of the lower-pitched, more resonant dumm and higher-pitched, drier takk drum strokes, hit respectively near the center and at the rim of the dap framed drum (and notated as “D” and “T,” respectively). To musicians and listeners well versed in muqam, the pop reinterpretation of muqam songs may be listened to as having two simultaneous layers of metrical cycles: the first is the original pattern implied in the vocal melody (sometimes spelled out on a dap and/or another drum); the second is the Western meter—usually duple or quadruple—used in the pop rendition. Although in most cases the pop song’s meter appropriates the metrical cycle of Singing Muqam in Uyghur Pop

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the muqam song (for example, Jula’s two-beat meter conceived as duple), the strong-weak pattern implied in the Western sense of meter may sometimes deviate from the original metrical cycle. Shir’eli’s reinterpretation of Chebbiyat’s dastan song is a good example here. The meter of the original muqam song is a four-beat cycle marked by a syncopated pattern on the second and fourth beats (the third beat is an elaboration of the first). In the pop song, titled “Chebbiyat dastan” (2003), the syncopation is replaced—or displaced—by a straightforward downbeat quadruple pattern outlined by the drum machine, while, notably, the vocal melody retains nearly the exact rhythm (and its implied metrical cycle) of the original muqam song. In other words, the singer does not change the stresses and metrical feel of the vocal melody when adapting it for the pop version. It is true that both renditions may be understood as operating under a four-beat metrical cycle, and the difference between them is subtle to most cultural outsiders. Yet what makes Uyghur music distinct is a range of syncopated, limping, and other “irregular,” “displaced,” “additive” rhythms. Not unlike Small’s (1998, 269) understanding of ragtime as not merely a rhythm but also an “African attitude to rhythm,” it is important not to overlook the musical message carried in rhythms, ornaments, and other distinguishing features identified as traditional in Uyghur music. The rhythmic displacement resonates in a larger context of musical contrast: between the linear muqam melody sung with all the authentic vocal timbre and ornamentations retained, and the functional triadic harmony (with some creative use of secondary dominants) in the MIDIgenerated accompaniment. Similar to Abdulla’s example discussed above, musical elements from the past and the present form a polyphony that goes beyond superficial sampling and appropriation. The singing voice formulates a resounding statement about authenticity: it serves as a material embodiment of the national tradition it purports to represent through the pop idiom. Sampled sounds sometimes also work as veiled commentaries. Another well-liked song on the album Muqam ishqi is its title track, “Chahargah meshrep.” Chahargah is often considered the most important and sacred muqam for its association with ashiq religious mendicants. Meshrep songs likewise “not only form one section of the Twelve Muqam but are also part of the Sufi repertoire, performed as part of their sama rituals and also sung by mendicant ashiq in the bazaars and at the shrine festivals” (Harris 2008, 65). As explained in chapter 3, part of what the state’s muqam project did was downplay the religious content in these Sufi poems by replacing them with secular texts about mundane love. Many of these meshrep songs are represented today as upbeat dance tunes that are reminiscent of the singing-and-dancing “minority” stereotype in official shows. This meshrep song covered by Shir’eli is labeled the “second song” in the meshrep section with two tunes (ahang) in the latest edition of muqam transcription (1997).10 122

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It is perhaps no coincidence that Shir’eli has picked a meshrep song from a muqam with a sacred connotation to be the title track of an album about his passion for the art music tradition. The pop song, in duple meter, starts off with an atmospheric techno intro, articulated by an instrumental riff played polyphonically by the tembur and a synthesized plucked string (a sampled sound of a shamisen-sounding pan-Asian lute)—a gesture also used in Nawa’s meshrep song discussed above. The riff features an “exotic” augmented second interval, appropriated from the interval between the second and third steps of the Chahargah mode, resulting in a scale similar to the Phrygian dominant mode, or a version of maqām hijāz in Arab music. This mode comprises the following pitches (assuming that it starts on G, in an ascending order): G, A-flat, B-halfflat (ornamented), C-half-sharp, D, E-flat, and F-half-sharp. Yet, similar to the previous example, when the singing voice comes in, microtonal inflections and ornamentations are clearly heard.11 Another line of ostinato, played by the ghéjek, is heard in the background. Most parts of the text, rhythm, and melody are preserved from the original meshrep song with little alteration. The singing is bouncy but certainly not light; it is dense, profound, and sometimes even stifling. Shir’eli projects a potent voice that marks the musical identity of the muqam song, which, even to less experienced listeners of muqam and Uyghur pop, stands out polyphonically against the pop accompaniment.12 Chahargah meshrep, birinchi ahang

Chahargah meshrep, first part

Eyyu hel oshshaqi boyi wesli jan keltürmishem,

I brought to my life the sight and delicate body of my lover, Bir güli re’na jamalingdin nishan a flower from your charming appearkeltürmishem. ance. Örgülüp Qeshqeru Yeken hem Xoten I wandered in the wilderness of Kashgar, deshtler kézip; Yarkand, and Khotan; Axiri Kiri, Chiri, Ilchi aman keltürmishem. finally, I arrived safely in Kiri, Chira, and Ilchi. Ilchining bazarida bir munche eldin pul tilep, At the bazaar of Ilchi I begged from people, Goshu, yaghu, chay bilip ebjesh qazan and brought meat, oil, and tea to a mix keltürmishem. in a cauldron. Gahi Shoul, gahi Lay Su, gah Gulaxmadin ötüp, I passed through Shoul, Lay Su, and Gulaxma.13 From Chiriliq I brought one ishshek of Chiriliqtin qaq tilep, ishshek chilan dried jujube.14 keltürmishem. Chahargah meshrep, ikkinchi ahang

Chahargah meshrep, second part

Binawalar bille gülxan[da] (Allah) Gülxanda köngülni xush qilip (Allah) (Ah) Demmu-dem (Xuda Allah ye) Ahu pighan keltürmishem (Allah)

I was with the impoverished, Allah! At the bonfire I found pleasure, Allah! Ah, frequently, Allah! I was brought to tears, Allah!

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The song includes an extended coda that comes from the last tune (ahang) of meshrep of Chahargah. The melody in the coda features several reiterative, pulse-pounding phrases. Each of these short phrases ends with the word “Allah” in the melody, answered by a thumping choral shout hoo on a weak beat—a clear gesture that mimics the ostinato vocal rhythm of Sufi devotional chanting in zikr ceremonies.15 Despite the Sufi origin of some muqam songs, such invocation of Sufi ritual soundscape is not heard in any officially produced muqam recordings. Indeed, in the reconstructed muqam recording (2001),16 the word “Allah” in the lyrics was all removed and replaced by dostlar (friends)—among other changes—confirming the state’s effort to downplay sacred references in muqam. Shir’eli told me he had seen Sufi ceremonies in the south some years earlier. These ceremonies had been common in the past, he explained, but forbidden in recent years (he lowered his voice and made a handcuff gesture). The reconstruction of Sufi soundscape in the pop song “Chahargah meshrep” may be heard as a veiled response to the official muqam version of Chahargah.17

Figure 4.1  “Chahargah meshrep” (2007), the beginning of the first and second parts. Transcribed, by the author, based on the pop reinterpretation by Shir’eli Eltékin (2007). 124

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To be clear, symbols of Sufi rituals are not uncommon in staged official shows, but most have been cleansed of their sacred meanings. The most visible of these is the sapayi, an idiophone made of a pair of wooden stocks (or, in older types, animal horns) attached with two metal rings. Despite its Sufi origin as an accompany instrument of ashiq singing, the sapayi is frequently portrayed in official representations rather as a secular percussion instrument performed with stylized choreographic movements. The same is true of the larger-sized dap, which, in the premodern and local contexts, was primarily associated with Sufi and other sacred rituals.18 Importantly, Shir’eli’s evocation of Sufi elements in his pop songs marks an absence, a conscious attempt to recast muqam and meshrep songs in their sacred context. At the same time, not unlike Abdulla’s “Dolan meshrébi,” these songs are carefully packaged in a discourse about his passion for muqam, a “public transcript” that resonates well with official discourses about “minority” musicians and their innate love for their traditional music. It is also a narrative about how muqam and pop are compatible in ways that do not compromise artistic and cultural integrity. Haunting and powerful, these pop-style muqam songs delve into an experimental terrain to make the centuries-old tradition audible and entertaining to the wider public. The reworking of traditional music into the pop idiom also expands the notion of tradition and reconfigures its constituencies. The Dolan elements, muqam melodies, and Sufi soundscapes sampled in these songs are connected through a mission to demonstrate how these traditional, local sound icons have the potential to transcend the boundaries between the old and the new, the traditional and the modern, among other junctures of such embodied musical differences. The mixing and hybridizing in Uyghur pop should thus invite careful listening as processes of meaning making: as creative assemblages, rather than random pastiches, of various local and cosmopolitan sound sources, speaking to the dual experience of being simultaneously ethnic and modern.

Politics and Beyond Shir’eli sings his muqam songs twice, literally: the first time as a member of the state’s performing troupe, in the official versions and styles; the second time in pop arrangements as a celebrity who prides himself as a guardian of tradition for his young audience. In many ways, the power of his music lies in such doubleness, a duality of voice that allows him to straddle the public and private spheres of Uyghur musical worlds. He refuses to choose one or another, and he aims to belong to both. His pop reinterpretation of muqam songs serves to encapsulate cultural memories in a highly audible and visual way, an effective Singing Muqam in Uyghur Pop

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repository of tradition that keeps the muqam repertoire relevant to his young audience. All these speak to a uniquely subaltern approach of charting the relationship between tradition and modernity, in the sense that modernity is rarely conceived of as a complete detachment from history. As Lipsitz (2007, 88) writes about African American jazz musicians, the enthusiasm for modernity “has often been tempered by the pull of the past,” alluding to a tradition of “refusing to be absorbed completely by either tradition or modernity, but instead fashioning a dynamic fusion built on a dialectical relationship between the past and the present.” Sound icons derived from traditional music, in this sense, may be seen as not so much semiotic but more as interpretative. As Kramer (2011, 24) writes, music as a form of “freestanding signifier” offers “a sense of heightened feeling or expressivity, an experience of subjective engagement that tightly binds the music to its listener and/or performer.” Music’s meaning making is neither unstructured nor unintentional. Instead, to quote from Kramer again, music “positions the subject who listens and/or performs in relation to, but not necessarily within, a certain model (or finite repertoire of models) of subjectivity.” I hope the examples presented in this chapter have demonstrated that pop music affords a cultural and musically situated place for Uyghur musicians and their audiences to figure out what muqam and other traditional musics mean and how they can be related to their encountering of the modern world. The process is necessarily ineffable and thus should be understood in its specific historical and local contingencies. Both Abdulla’s muqam-inspired pop and Shir’eli’s pop reinterpretation of muqam songs also work to actualize an imaged national soundscape that engages stereotyped representations and other subaltern experiences. In some sense, pop music offers Uyghur musicians a grammar. It opens up a rehearsal space to experiment with alternative ways of fitting traditional musical icons, procedures, and expression into a modern national soundscape. This is as much an aesthetic as a cultural process. The singers’ popularity should be understood in part as stemming from their capacity to project and sustain a voice—both the physical singing voice and the metaphorical voice—that is figured as authentic. A good number of pop singers I interviewed claimed that they had regularly done “fieldwork” in remote villages to “collect” folk music and be inspired by folk musicians (this was echoed frequently in media interviews). That “doing fieldwork” is a favorite self-promoting narrative adopted by these celebrities speaks in part to the need for such cultural validation. Pop singers often appear wearing traditional garb and doppa embroidered caps at emotionally intense moments in concerts (for example, before singing a passionate song). Shir’eli is explicitly proud that, compared to other pop singers, his solid training in muqam has given him better vocal techniques and musical tastes. These references to authenticity, I contend, are not simple reflections of race or ethnicity but strategies to define a unique mode of subaltern 126

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modernity that required convincing practices of cultural hybridity to authenticate. It allows musicians to defend against critiques of cultural corruption and to interrogate distortion and exploitation by Chinese “song thieves.” Consequently, the fame of the musicians often hinges on how articulately they have assembled icons of local and global sounds to fashion a credible modern voice for the Uyghur nation. The outcome of such individualizing practice is a new kind of musical collectivity, one that is irreducible to race or ethnicity, neither prescribed nor easily contained by the state. Pop also transcends the stylistic boundaries, defining a genre in which categorical differences give way to universalist discourses. By demonstrating the commensurability between muqam and pop, between the rawap and the guitar, as well as between Uyghur and global styles, these musicians are making a statement about refusing to be trapped and defined by the purist notion of authenticity as embraced in academia and the tourist industry, let alone the official singing-and-dancing stereotype. Hybridizing and mixing are thus practices to realize ideas about universalism in music and society. In an interview in 2009, responding to a question about the inclusion of a Uyghur-language song (“Dolan meshrébi”) in an otherwise all-Chinese album, Abdulla explains that although the Chinese and Uyghur languages are mutually unintelligible, music is universal.19 The liberty to appropriate musical sounds from around the world and be musically cosmopolitan in ways that are not dictated to them by the state and channeled by the Chinese-dominated “minority” discourse was, after all, what they have been deprived of by the colonial power and its Orientalist gaze. Uyghur pop, as Taylor (1997, 81) writes about the music of Ladysmith Black Mambazo under apartheid in South Africa, is “neither an example of resistance or complicity.” It is political, yet it also operates outside the political and even the semiotic. It is an everyday practice that is as much about decency, credibility, and dignity, through which the subordinate develops tactics to cope with the power. For many Uyghur, pop music is very unlikely to be a site for political contest or any open expression of dissent. Yet its styles, lyrics, and other aspects of performance inhabit a shared public space for listeners from across the society to be attached to, and to participate in critical exchange of broadly shared sentiments. A number of Uyghur pop singers have been arrested and put into mass incarceration camps since late 2017, including the enormously successful pop idol Ablajan Awut Ayup (b. 1984), whose song “Meshrep nawasi” (Meshrep tune, 2010) represents yet another successful effort to invoke traditional music in pop.20 Other pop singers struggle to survive amid the ongoing catastrophe. In spring 2017, Shir’eli Eltéken released a song titled “Shi Jinping’gha béghishlanghan küy” (A song for Xi Jinping), which compared Xi to “a sun that has brightened the lives of the people.” Anderson (2020) observes that the “color Singing Muqam in Uyghur Pop

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and sparkle of his voice seemed different; the puraq of his melodic line duller and plainer than ever before.” Meanwhile, Abdulla Abduréhim shaved off his signature mustache in 2018, as many other Uyghur men did after the state had identified beards and sometimes also thick mustaches with “religious extremism.” Although he continues to appear in a number of commercials and online videos, Abdulla has since kept a lower profile. He reemerged in early summer 2020 with an online concert, and later he appeared as host of a weekly talk show series, Xush keldingiz (Welcome), which features him chatting with musicians and other celebrities about their art and life, usually accompanied by a short live performance. Against all odds and fears, Uyghur pop musicians tread an increasingly fine line as they hold steadfast to their tradition and creativity.

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CHAPTER 5

Modernist Reform and Uyghur Instrumental Music

Dawut Awut akigha mersiye

A Dirge for Brother Dawut Awut

Zexmek urang xush nawaringdin, Aylinatti qishmu bahargha. Rawabingni ünletseng lerzan,

When your pick strikes a joyous tune, Even winter would be turned into spring. When you make melodious music on your rawap, The whole universe would be pleased. Spring water would flow into wilderness; Your sentiment would melt the frost mountain. [...] You are the pride and spiritual pillar of Uyghur music. You are the singer, heroic son, and heart of the people. Ah! you left prematurely, Leaving us in deep grief.

Söyünetti pütkül yer-jahan. Deshte chölge aqatti zem-zem, Mungliringdin érip muz dawan. [...] Sen idingghu Uyghur sazining, Iptixari, rohiy tüwrüki. Sen idingghu küychi awamning, Gheyur oghli, baghri, yüriki. Ah, kettingsen bimehel chaghda, Bizni qoyup hesrette daghda.

Héytem Hüseyin, in Hijran mungliri (The sorrow of parting)

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he late (merhum) Nurmuhemmet (Nurmemet) Tursun died in December 2004 at the age of forty-seven after a major heart attack. The entire Uyghur world was deeply saddened about the tragic, premature death of the legendary tembur shahi, the “king of tembur.” “Pütün Uyghur xelqi tewrep ketken idi” (the entire Uyghur nation/people was shaken), as a family member of his put it.1 Hundreds of thousands of people packed the streets in southern Ürümchi to attend his funeral; many traveled all the way from his hometown of Ghulja to pay their last tribute to the master. Almost two decades after his passing, his portraits are still displayed in many record stores, instrument workshops, and music studios across the Uyghur homeland. 129

Nurmemet was an inimitable genius and superstar, remembered not only as one of the best musicians in the twentieth century but also as a national hero. The eldest brother of a respectable musical family in Ghulja, Nurmemet came to Ürümchi in 1976 to start a job as a professional performer at Opéra ömiki, the state’s opera troupe. It was said that he had practiced the tembur for sixteen hours a day, and music occupied his everyday life besides eating and sleeping. He reportedly did not read notation and learned music only through imitation. In the late 1980s, he was reassigned to Naxsha-ussul ömiki, the prestigious song and dance troupe (founded in 1962 based on an earlier group) of which he had remained an enthusiastic member for fourteen productive years until his dismissal in 2002. Audiovisual recordings of his performances—both private and studio-made, authentic and pirated— have circulated widely in apparently every record store and market across the Uyghur territory since around the mid-1990s. Many musicians today claimed to have learned primarily from imitating his styles, techniques, and repertoires through recordings. A tembur soloist once went so far as to say, “I honestly didn’t learn much from the school [referring to the Arts Institute] and the professors there; I mostly just listened to the recordings of Nuri’akam [“my brother Nuri,” as Nurmemet was affectionately known] and practiced by myself.”2 Nurmemet’s professional career took a sharp turn after a controversial New Year’s concert held at Shinjang xelq sariyi (Xinjiang People’s Hall) in Ürümchi on January 1, 2002. “In the middle of the concert,” Nurmemet’s younger sister Senuber (b. 1971), herself a renowned vocalist, remembered, “a poet went onto the stage and recited a poem that he had written. My brother and I had never heard the poem and had no idea what it was about.”3 The poem, titled “Qangha boyalghan naxun” (The blood-stained finger-pick), was later judged by the authority as “advocating separatism,” and the poet, Tursunjan Emet, was arrested, interrogated, and released a few days later.4 A co-musician of Nurmemet who had attended the concert recounted, “In my opinion there’s nothing wrong about the poem. It’s just about the tembur as an ancient instrument, and something that describes how long hours of practicing on the tembur would break the fingers and spill blood. Ten people who listened to the poem could come up with ten different interpretations. It doesn’t mean that the poem itself contains any separatist thought,” he said, raising his voice.5 Nurmemet was then ordered to attend an interrogation meeting with the leaders of the troupe and the Cultural Bureau about his involvement in the incident. “He drank alcohol that morning,” a close friend of Nurmemet told me, “and then went to the meeting. He confronted the officials and said very bad things to them.” As punishment, Nurmemet was dismissed by the troupe. He lost the job, salary, and benefits, and he became deeply dejected, according to several people who knew and were around him. Nurmemet had been invited to 130

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perform at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in 2002. He had gone all the way to Beijing’s Capital International Airport, but he was stopped before getting onto the plane and prevented from leaving the country. He became even more depressed and “basically drank himself to death,” according to someone who was close to him during his final weeks. All public music performances were banned for a while after the incident, and musicians in Ürümchi were all taken to attend year-long political education lessons. Topics related to Nurmemet and that New Year’s concert were treated with extreme caution. Although his music was not banned in record stores and on the Internet, for a long period of time his name largely disappeared from state media and was dropped from publications. Meanwhile, his music became even more popular, especially among the younger generation, who saw him as a musical icon of the Uyghur nation. A number of songs were created to memorialize him, including, famously, “Gülüm ketti” (My flower was gone), the title track of a synonymous album released in 2006, written by the lyricist Xalmurat Ömer and sung by Abduweli Dawut (b. 1953), a master folk singer in the Ili tradition and the most favorite accompanist (on the dutar) of Nurmemet during much of the 1990s. In the music video, Abduweli is seen visiting Nurmemet’s grave in the cold winter, weeping and praying in the snow against a mournful melody accompanied by the tembur and the dutar (which symbolizes the duo), complemented by images of Nurmemet’s funeral and extensive footage of their past performances. Nurmemet and his performance exemplified a kind of ambivalence that was common among contemporary Uyghur musicians. If there was something that distinguished his style, it was the utterly progressive approach with which he reinterpreted traditional pieces, particularly the folk melodies in the Ili repertoire (see chapter 6). He inherited a concertized style that had been associated with China’s post-1950s reformist aesthetics, as realized in the progressive style playing traditional and new music on modified musical instruments, in association with conservatory training and the setup of professional troupes. Among other things, Nurmemet pioneered the use of triadic chords on the three courses of strings on the tembur (as opposed to the traditional practice, where only the outermost double-course strings were used for the melody and the other two courses were for drones and other nonmelodic uses). He expanded the use of synthesized background and chordal harmony in a good number of his recorded pieces in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Nurmemet was also known for his aggressive reinterpretation of traditional pieces, to which he added virtuosic techniques and passages, sped up the slower melodies, and made the fast ones even faster. “The audience liked these sounds,” Senuber explained. “Those albums that my brother added MIDI to the music, they sold better.”

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If Nurmemet and the progressive style he championed may be read as texts of musical modernity, then they tell a story that is not unlike that of the many other subordinate ethnic and racial groups around the world. To many in his audience, Nurmemet’s music spoke for the world beyond, bringing the techniques and styles of the tembur—and, to a slightly lesser extent, the satar, which he also professed—to an unprecedented realm. The reformist ideal and modernist soundscape embodied in his performance might be understood as an outcome of the state-engineered “minority” enlightenment project, as it is, and thus, to some observers, as undesired Chinese influences that Uyghur musicians adopted reluctantly and performed as an act of subservience. Yet if this is truly the case, how can we understand the deep senses of nationhood so often indexed and constituted in these modernist styles? How to reconcile the understanding of reformist styles and forms in Uyghur music as both a reflection of the totalitarian state’s control, which is orchestrated top-down as a core propaganda tactic, and, at the same time, a preferred mode of expression of the oppressed peoples? As minoritized musicians look beyond their musical past to shape and construct their national styles, how can the nationalist qualities of their creativity be acknowledged without totally ignoring the sonic and stylistic aspects of their music? To answer these questions, this chapter examines the post-1950s project of modernist reform on Uyghur music. The analytical focus here is the repertoire of instrumental musical works composed or arranged during the second half of the twentieth century. A vast majority of these works, written with an explicit modernist and civilizing mission to “improve” Uyghur music, employed devices and styles that are derived from nineteenth-century European art music, often performed on instruments that have undergone substantial changes in construction, timbre, and performing practices. Reified traditional styles and musical devices, such as irregular meters and microtonal/nondiatonic intervals, are often featured as repackaged ethnic flavor to decorate works that otherwise are composed using predominantly European procedures. I look at how the “minority” performing bodies—both the physical human bodies and their musical instruments—have been remade in the process. I also take a closer look at the virtuosic capacities that have been built on the musicians and manufactured for their instruments since the 1950s, as well as the reformist ideals that constitute modern Uyghur musical consciousness.

Musical Instruments and Representation Modernist musical thoughts on and modification of musical instruments, context, and practices can be traced back to as early as the first few decades of the 132

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twentieth century in connection with Uyghur Medeniy aqartish oyushmisi (Cultural Enlightenment Associations) during the 1930s and 1940s, as discussed in chapter 2. What characterized the post-1949 period was a full-fledged implementation of these early ideas and practices, culminating in state-led projects of musical reform (islah qilish). If, as Qureshi (1997, 3–4) writes, musical instruments, as potent icons of “social practice as well as personal experience,” offer a “special kind of materials memory, in its dual capacity of a physical body and its embodied acoustic identity”—then it is important to understand the reform project as a tool for assimilation and control over the materiality and meanings of the music of the “minorities.” The identity of a musical instrument, Qureshi notes, is constructed by its “affective, embodied, and social meanings” as well as the “discursive representations of such meanings.” The maneuvering of such meanings to serve political ends, this chapter suggests, is at the core of the post1949 reform on “minority” musical instruments and their music. To understand what it means for Uyghur music to sound modern, it is thus important to examine the aesthetic discourses and representational frames at play. A major icon of Uyghur musical modernity is the rawap, an instrument that possesses complex transnational and local identities. The rawap is a skincovered plucked lute that is closely related to the Uzbek rabāb and Tajik rubob, and is at least etymologically related to the Afghan and Badakhshani rubāb types. The standard rawap repertoire today includes, besides the core Uyghur pieces, a number of tunes of Tajik or Uzbek origins either integral to the tradition or adapted in the modern era. An instrument of choice for stereotyping Uyghur performing arts in post-1950s China, the rawap has been featured prominently in Orientalist films, dramas, images, literature, and music. In particular, the rawap owes its fame among the Chinese audience to a number of high-profile Uyghur/Xinjiang-themed films produced in the early 1960s. These highly politicized films were created with an unmistaken propaganda goal, preaching the official lines of ethnic solidarity and Chinese Communist leadership. The most popular of these is Muz taghqa kelgen méhman (Guests from the ice mountains; Ch. Bingshan shang de laike) (1963), a black-and-white film that contributed significantly to constructing Uyghur stereotypes for generations of Chinese audiences. The importance of this film cannot be overstated: in recent times, it has been readapted into a stage drama (2005), a thirty-episode TV series (2006), and a number of other official productions. Its soundtracks and songs constituted the core Orientalist repertoire in modern Chinese music. During the weeks after the Ürümchi violence in July 2009, when Xinjiang was effectively under curfew for a long period of time, the film was aired on several provincial and local TV channels multiple times a day, interspersed with around-the-clock news about “anti-terrorism” and “anti-separatism,” and the “important speeches” by leaders.

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The propagandist film follows a stereotyped plot. Set in the mountainous region of Tashqurghan near China’s border with Afghanistan and Pakistan in 1951, it centers on Amir, a young Tajik soldier in the Communist armed forces—a model “minority” role. Portrayed as smart, courageous, and patriotic, Amir takes on an undercover mission to probe into an espionage conspiracy of a wicked troupe of enemies from an unidentified ethnicity (yet immediately recognizable as Uyghur from their costume and in a few musical scenes). To audiences well versed in this genre of modern Chinese films, the ending is a familiar one: with leadership and help from Lieutenant Yang (paizhang) of CCP, a Han Chinese, Amir heroically defeats the enemies, rescues his fellow “minorities,” and saves his country. The rawap is featured prominently in the film. In a number of music scenes, it is seen accompanying songs or dance featuring “minority” roles. The wedding scene in the opening of the film, for example, features a new composition titled, in clichéd exoticist terms, “Yukuai de rewapu” (Joyful rawap), set to an uplifting seven-beat (long-short-long-long) meter/rhythm (often indiscriminately stereotyped as Tajik) accompanying a congregational dance. Another well-known example is the enormously famous theme song “Hua’er weishenme zheyang hong” (Why the flowers are so red) written by the prolific Han composer Lei Zhenbang (1916–1977). The song appears three times in the film. It is written in the harmonic minor mode with slight pitch-bending to mimic quarter-tonal intervals. In several scenes where the song is heard in the background, the rawap is seen accompanying Amir’s singing about his courage and passion as a soldier. The same is true for a few other songs in the film, such as “Huai’nian zhanyou” (Remembering a fellow soldier) and “Gebi tan shang fengsha miman” (Sandstorms in the Gobi Desert), where the “minority” actors self-accompany on the rawap. The association between the instrument and the progressive “minority” roles is unmistakable. Most tellingly, the rawap also plays a narrative role in the film. This involves the Tajik shepherd Kala, a major supporting male role, who is cast as an intelligence collector for the Communist Chinese. He is featured in a duet titled “Bingshan shang de xuelian” (Snow lotus on the ice mountains; also composed by Lei Zhenbang) with the leading female role Gülendam (Gulandanmu) also self-accompanying on the rawap. Kala obtains an important piece of information about the conspiracy of the enemies. To safeguard his intelligence, Kala writes it on a small piece of paper and hides it in a secret compartment built inside the fingerboard of his rawap. He is then killed by the enemies, but the rawap is smuggled out by Gülendam to Lieutenant Yang, who then opens it and discovers the hidden piece of paper. The intelligence is critical to the ultimate victory for the Communist army.

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It is interesting to note also the differentiation made in the film between the modern rawap and the regional rawap types, and how the instrument is metaphorically linked to the different non-Han roles established in the film. First, concerning the rawap types, while the Tajik villager Niyaz and his family—the less “enlightened” characters—play the large-sized Tajik-Pamir rubob (which has a wider fingerboard and larger resonating body), the heroic “minority” roles Amir and Kala, also Tajik, are invariably represented—rather erroneously—with the modern Uyghur rawap type. Second, the abhorrent enemy leader, who is marked by his doppa skull cap and dense mustache and beard, and often recites Allah’s name—unmistakably a “bad Uyghur” role—appears playing the dutar, whose mellow and dull timbre contrasts with the bright sound of the rawap. A relatively less “improved” instrument in the reform project, the dutar appears in a few of these “minority” films in association with the old world (see also chapter 2). Here, the modern Uyghur rawap marks what the Tajik rubob and the Uyghur dutar are not: the former symbolizes the future, where the latter belong to the yet-to-be-enlightened past.

Reengineering the Rawap Rawap is the generic name for several types of plucked strings. The standard national (milliy) type is known as the Kashgar rawap. It is made out of a single piece of hollowed-out (oyma) mulberry wood (üjme yaghichi), often decorated with inlaid bone throughout the body and curved barbs (münggüz or qosh münggüz, which symbolizes goat horns) located where the fingerboard and resonating chamber meet. The small hemispherical resonating chamber (kasa) is covered with a python skin. It is held horizontally with both hands close to the chest of the performer. A small plastic triangular plectrum (zexmek) is used to pluck the strings with vigorous wrist movement. There are seven steel (polat) strings—one melody string and six sympathetic strings (sada simi)—running across a nylon-fretted fingerboard (deste). The melody string is fixed at c today, where the six sympathetic/drone strings are arranged according to the circle of fifths (from outer to inner as G–d–A–e–B–f#).6 The last two strings are modern additions; earlier versions of the rawap typically had five strings. It is also common to see a second standard rawap type, known variously as talaliq rawap, chaplima rawap, Uzbek rawap (owing to its assumed origin in Uzbekistan), Ili rawap, or the “reformed” rawap. There are five strings, none of which is for sympathetic purposes: the outer double-course steel strings tuned to d, the middle double-course steel strings tuned to G or A, and an inner single silk or nylon string tuned to D.7 The outer double-course strings are mostly used to play the melody, where the middle double-course and the inner strings

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are mostly for playing chordal harmony. The resonating chamber is more bowlshaped than hemispherical. It is called chaplima (stick-on) rawap because the resonating body is stave construction rather than carved out from a single piece of wood. This is why the chaplima rawap is also called the talaliq (external, of the outside) rawap, and the Kashgar rawap is also called oyma (carved out) rawap. This new instrument was created in the early 1960s by Unity ethnic musical instrument factory (Ittipaq milly chalghu eswablar zawuti) in Ürümchi, based on earlier versions introduced in the early 1950s by visiting musicians from Soviet Uzbekistan and the Ghulja-based modernist composer Osmanjan (1932–1990). This Soviet-Uzbek instrument is itself a product of reform in the 1940s. It is interesting to note that in Uzbekistan, this same instrument is called a Kashgar rawap for its assumed Uyghur origin in Kashgar (Tursunjan Létip 1997, 77). These two remade rawap types lived an exuberant concert life unmatched by any other Uyghur instruments. They also sustain a modern national narrative that recreates the instrument as a powerful icon of modern Uyghur expression. The sheer amount of composed, adapted, and rearranged works of the rawap has come to constitute the post-1950s solo tradition. The rawap is among the first Uyghur instruments taught in modern professional music programs, the earliest of which was established in 1958 in a music program at Xinjiang University, the predecessor of the Music School at the Arts Institute today. The rawap is also the first Uyghur instrument to have a published notation for new compositions or rearranged pieces: the single-volume Rewapu duzouqu xuan (Selected solos for the rawap), compiled by the composer and scholar Pettarjan Abdulla (1935–1994). Published in 1980 (but likely compiled a while earlier), it contains twelve solo pieces printed in staff notation with clearly defined key and time signatures as well as precise rhythm, tempo, and dynamic markings. Five of the pieces are rearranged tunes, where the other seven are new compositions—all are intended to be performed on the five-string “reformed” rawap (the chordal passages would not be possible on any traditional rawap types). The volume plays a major role in indoctrinating the rawap as a modern solo instrument. In addition, a short teaching manual titled Rawap heqqide sawat (Knowledge about the rawap) was published in 1981 (but was probably written in the 1960s before the onset of the Cultural Revolution in 1966/1967). This self-taught instruction manual includes detailed descriptions of the instrument and performing techniques as well as, for the first time, twenty-three finger exercises (meshiq) in different keys and seven set pieces. It serves as the basis for the expanded pedagogical texts and scores edited and adopted at the Arts Institute (e.g., Alimjan Abduqadir 2004, 2012). In traditional and nonprofessional settings, in contrast, the rawap remains an instrument that accompanies the singing of sacred or semisacred genres 136

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such as dastan epic and qoshaq poetic forms by Sufi mendicants ashiq. As a solo instrument, the rawap has also preserved an extensive repertoire of traditional pieces as popularized by the master soloist Dawut Awut (1938–2007) during the second half of the twentieth century (I will return to his legacy below). Scholars commonly identify three or four rawap varieties in the folk or premodern context: apart from the Kashgar rawap, there are the Qumul rawap, the Dolan rawap, and the so-called qoychi rawap (lit., “the shepherd’s rawap,” primarily associated with Khotan). These instruments are united by a number of sound qualities. The resonating chamber is typically covered with goat, donkey, or deer skin, producing a mellower and suppler timbre. Until recently, strings were generally made of gut or horsehair and rather loosely stretched. A fingerboard is absent in the Qumul type (which appears like East and Southeast Asian fiddles), where that of the Dolan type is fretless. Both the Qumul and Dolan types have over half a dozen sympathetic strings, features that are generally considered to be ancient. The frets, if present, are diatonic and made of silk or gut strings (rather than modern vinyl). There are often somewhere between three and five melody strings, tuned fourths or fifths apart. Some regional types in Khotan and the deep south feature sympathetic strings tied to tuning pegs that are fixed on the side of the fingerboard. An early twentieth-century rawap I have come across has its five strings arranged into two outer double-course strings, one middle string, and two inner double-course strings (similar to the tembur); it is smaller and covered with animal skin. The plectrum of these older rawap types is also made of cow’s bone rather than plastic. Most of these rawap are also held at a lower position, closer to the abdomen than the chest. The skin is typically less tight, and the timbre is also mellower, more dampened. Altogether these features advance an earthy sound quality that gives these premodern rawap types a folk identity—vis-à-vis the bowed lute satar (which is associated with more muqam) and the two-string plucked lute dutar (which is primarily a domestic instrument that accompanies folk singing). The modal scales used on the premodern rawap types also appear to be more varied. Regardless of how many sympathetic strings an instrument has, the open melody string—tuned to somewhere around C or D (sometimes one or two steps lower in local settings)—may be conceived as the first, second, or fourth step of the scale. The sympathetic strings are then tuned accordingly (normally fourths or fifths apart). The mode with the fourth step of the scale as open string is used in most traditional pieces, such as “Shadiyane,” “Astanem,” “Qadir mewlan,” and “Gundipay”; the melodic string has been tuned as low as A-flat. The mode with the first step of the scale, or “tonic,” as open string is used in pieces such as “Atush,” “(Kona) Tashway,” and some others, where the piece “Yaru” uses the mode with the second step of the scale as open string. Most of these modal distinctions are blurred or disregarded in modern performances.

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The modern, standardized rawap’s rise to prominence in the mid-twentieth century exemplifies what Buchanan (1995, 381) calls the “complex interface of cultural heritage, aesthetics, political ideology, nationalism, and socio-economic change embodied in the history of music professionalism in twentieth-century culture.” The instrument assumes multiple identities in Uyghur musical life today. It is an icon of a pan-Uyghur musical identity, commonly referred to as the milliy rawap (lit., “the national rawap”) (Alimjan Abduqadir 2004, 1–10). In concert performances and conservatory training, the two modern rawap types are among the most progressive instruments performed in a variety of solo, ensemble, and orchestral settings, supplied with a repertoire of composed or rearranged pieces that exhibit virtuosic qualities. Reformist ideologies since mid-century have considered most of the premodern acoustic qualities obsolete and demanded improvements to equip the instrument with modern concert capacities and, to some extent, to facilitate the composition of symphonic-style works. Gut strings are replaced with more durable steel strings to allow for tighter stretching, and in the case of the chaplima rawap, sympathetic strings are eliminated to achieve a cleaner timbre. A thin steel string is used as the melodic string on the Kashgar rawap, which is fixed at middle C, producing a piercingly bright, penetrating sound in the higher range (previous types used a double-course; see Wan Tongshu 1986, 50–51). Scattered attempts were made in the 1960s to establish the chaplima rawap as a concert solo instrument, as symbolized by “Tengritaghda bahar” (Spring on the Tianshan mountains; Ch. Tianshan de chuntian) and other solo rawap works by Osmanjan. These efforts, however, largely failed. Parhat Dawut, son of Dawut Awut, considers the timbre of the chaplima rawap “not bright enough” for solo performance; he prefers the Kashgar rawap as a solo instrument.8 In the modern rawap tunings are standardized, and the resonating chamber is covered with python skin to ensure stable tension against humidity change. A lengthened fingerboard is introduced to accommodate more frets— currently fixed at around twenty-eight—that are equal-tempered. All these changes brought a collectivized new soundscape, one that is brighter, capable of projecting in concert-hall acoustics, and ready for a wider range of techniques and sound qualities. Pettarjan Abdulla (1980, 1), an Uzbek composer well known for his works written for the new rawap, describes the “reformed” instruments as “better looking, newer, and more scientific than folk rawap types, with fine timbre, [large] dynamic range, and accurate fretting.” All these features, he writes, “have substantially enhanced [the music’s] expressivity.” The new rawap types are often contrasted with the older ones, which are rejected as “poorly made with unrefined materials, reflecting primitive skills, and lacking standard shapes”—all of which “impeded the development of the rawap” (Song Bonian 1987, 20). Musicians who prefer the chaplima rawap often 138

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explain its superiority over the Kashgar rawap and other varieties in terms of progress. Yarmuhemmet Jamaldin (b. 1950), a Ghulja-born musician, composer, and sound engineer and a strong proponent of the chaplima rawap, considers it superior because “you can play chords on it, while many musicians from Kashgar don’t even read notation.”9 Last but not least, a bass rawap based on the chaplima rawap was also created in the 1960s (enlarged with three single strings tuned an octave lower). The bass rawap is indispensable in professional ensembles today, used primarily for harmonic purposes in the middle and lower registers (Tursunjan 2007, 71–88). As if to compensate for the loss of tradition, the decorative patterns inlaid on the fingerboard and resonating chamber—previously made of animal bone or horn but now mostly plastic—have become more elaborate and complex on the body of the rawap over the past few decades.10 This is true also for most other Uyghur instruments, which are much more densely festooned with ornate, reified “ethnic” patterns than they were in the mid-twentieth century and earlier. Instrument makers of the older generation, while sometimes proud of the “progress” in the craftsmanship, are blunt about these inlaid ornaments being basically “useless” and not contributing to the acoustic quality of the instruments. Some note that there has been an increased demand in recent decades for the decorations on the instruments to be more elaborate, so much that sometimes smaller versions of these instruments appear like their miniaturized toys popularly sold as souvenirs at tourist sites.11 Such decorative excess speaks to a kind of ascribed ethnicity: while Uyghur instruments are rebuilt and played to sound progressive (and arguably nontraditional), their bodies are ornamented to look increasingly “ethnic”—a schizophrenia that resonates broadly with other aspects of Uyghur performing arts in modern times.

The Uyghur Violins: Ghéjek, Xushtar, and Iskripka The two prominent bowed string instruments, the ghéjek and the xushtar, further illustrate the sonic schizophrenia that has characterized much of the Soviet/socialist Chinese modernist reform in the past century. Together with the rawap, they are at the forefront of modernist reform on Uyghur instrumental music since the 1950s. The ghéjek was used in the past primarily among the musicians of narrative song forms dastan and qoshaq, as well as by the baxshi shamanic healers. Wan Tongshu describes a premodern ghéjek used by a lefthanded musician in Yarkand in 1957. The instrument has one melodic string and six sympathetic strings, and no fingerboard. It was held at an oblique, almost forty-five-degree angle, not vertically. The premodern ghéjek may be played in both sitting and standing positions. The instrument known as the

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Dolan ghéjek today preserves most features of the premodern ghéjek types; it has one melody string and over half a dozen sympathetic strings. The resonator is covered with donkey or horse skin. The modern ghéjek, in contrast, is a spike fiddle with a spherical resonating body made of coconut wood. It has four melodic strings tuned in fourths (and no sympathetic strings), stretched over a newly added fretless fingerboard. The earliest reform on the ghéjek can be dated back to the 1930s in Tashkent, where, according to Abdukérim Osman, professor of bowed strings at the Arts Institute, an improved ghéjek had already been used extensively in professional ethnic orchestras.12 Semet Abdulla (1911–1976), a musician and instrument maker from Kashgar, is credited today as the first to bring the Western violin (iskripka) from Osh, Uzbekistan, back to Kashgar in the early 1930s. He created three types of ghéjek in the high, middle, and low registers. He ran a very successful workshop in Kashgar and was involved in the work of Kashgar’s Uyghur Cultural Enlightenment Association (Medeniy aqartish oyushmisi). He later joined Kashgar’s Edebiyat-sen’et ömiki (Literature and Art Troupe; Ch. Wengong tuan) in 1953, and he was imprisoned during the Cultural Revolution (Abdukérim Osman 2008, 2:216–217, based on Abdukérim Raxman 1995, 250–253). Semet’s pioneering work became the basis of post-1950s reform. Sympathetic strings of the old ghéjek were all removed to produce a “clean” timbre. The four strings were then tuned to the standard G–d–a–e’ violin tuning (sometimes G–d–g–c). The original “primitive” bow (kamanche) was replaced with the modern violin bow. The spherical resonator was initially covered with python skin in order to create an “ethnic” sound. But that ethnic flavor was later considered by reformers and musicians to be excessively nasal and thick. The python skin was then moved to the interior of the resonating box and stretched over a small wooden frame (not immediately visible from the outside, but it can be seen through the small circular sound holes). The resonating body is now covered with a thin wooden soundboard (yüzlük) at the front, resulting in a mellower skin timbre. Wan Tongshu (1986, 95) writes that “after the ghéjek was reformed, its range and volume were enlarged. The original timbre was preserved but improved to become purer and subtler. Most of the fingering and bowing techniques of the violin are [now] playable on the ghéjek. . . . Not only can the ghéjek be used to perform beautiful folk tunes, it can also be used for dance music with wider range, programmatic music, and Western string pieces.” It is another bowed fiddle, the xushtar, that embodies such divergence between the sound and the body to its fullest extent. The xushtar used today looks like a chubby viola with a slightly curved belly-shaped resonating body with a pair of shaped sound holes. Performers rest the instrument on the left thigh with an inverted U-shaped spike (tizliq) when playing. The xushtar has 140

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Figure 5.1  Comparison between the traditional ghéjek (left) and the modern “reformed” ghéjek (right). Photos by the author.

four strings, tuned exactly like that of the Western violin, running above a violinlike fingerboard. The origin of the xushtar is somewhat obscure. It is believed to have existed over a millennium ago and later somehow disappeared. Instrument maker Exmetjan was in charge of the project in the 1960s to reconstruct this ancient instrument primarily from fresco paintings as preserved at the Bezeklik Buddhist cave temples (located near Turpan; preserving about seventy cave temples dating from the fifth to ninth centuries AD). The outcome of the project, quite ironically, is an instrument that is modernist rather than reconstructive or in any real sense historically informed. The case of the xushtar here is thus comparable to the Chinese four-string lute ruan, which is similarly a reformist instrument created in the 1950s based allegedly on millennium-old printed and visual sources. Both instruments are created without a living tradition; the purported origins in the distant past are primarily discursive, serving as a validation for their assumed historicity. Exmetjan explained that in the 1960s, when this instrument was newly constructed, it was called an eshtar. Seypidin Ezizi did not like this name, Exmetjan remembered, and suggested calling it xushtar (Persian, lit. “eight strings”) instead. The first xushtar was created in 1975 after a series of experiments. This initial version was a “soprano” xushtar with seven sympathetic strings placed under the four melodic strings; the sympathetic strings were tuned

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D–F#–G–A–B–d–f# (Zhou Ji et al. 1996, 2280). To make the xushtar sound more like the violin, two more modifications were made to “improve” its timbre. First, it was determined that the sound of the sympathetic strings had not been “pure” enough, so all the sympathetic strings were removed, leaving only the four melody strings. Second, a thin piece of wooden board was inserted vertically (parallel to the strings/fingerboard) inside the resonating body, effectively dividing the interior chamber into two: the curved belly at the back and the flat resonating chamber at the front. Exmetjan explained that this was done in order to make the xushtar sound even more like the violin, because with this wooden board inserted, the actual resonator became the violin-like flat chamber at the front, and the curved belly became, ironically, nothing more than a mere “ethnic” decoration, with no essential acoustic function. The alto/tenor xushur, bass xushtar, and double-bass xushtar were subsequently created in the 1980s, forming a xushtar family of instruments that became the counterpart of the Western string family (often arranged into sections of first xushtar, second xushtar, and so forth).13 Exmetjan was explicitly proud that xushtar sounded exactly like a violin: “If you stay behind the door,” he said, with slight embarrassment on his face, “you wouldn’t be able to tell whether it’s a xushtar or a violin. The xushtar can produce a very clean and good timbre in the higher registers; it is needed for the ensembles.”14 The xushtar shares the same repertoires of exercises, solos, and virtuosic pieces with the ghéjek, which consists primarily of muqam excerpts (usually the faster sections such as jula and the merghul of the dastan songs played at a faster tempo), new compositions, and pieces adapted from folk songs, Uzbek tunes, and the repertoire of the Western violin (see Abdukérim Osman 2012).15 Musicians are often simultaneously proficient in both instruments, although in larger ensembles where there is multipart instrumentation the xushtar is generally preferred, and the ghéjek is seen more frequently in the performance of muqam and other traditional genres in smaller ensemble settings. To many musicians, both instruments are at once historical and modern. The ghéjek has been aggressively “improved” from its premodern and regional prototypes to become the modern national bowed fiddle; the xushtar, on the other hand, is created based on the imagined history of a centuries-old instrument (as seen only in cave paintings) with no living tradition, all ready to take on new styles, meanings, and aesthetics. Somewhat ironically, it is the other bowed string, the Western violin iskripka (a loan word from Russian), that aligns most closely with the private musical life of many musicians. The iskripka was commonly seen in the 1930s and 1940s, but it gradually disappeared from official discourses and staged shows as the reformed ghéjek and later the xushtar took the stage. At music schools, the violin is taught today exclusively in the Western music programs as 142

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a European classical instrument. The introduction of the iskripka to Kashgar and other southern towns was associated, as noted earlier, with the instrument maker Semet Abdulla, who brought the violin from Uzbekistan in the early 1930s. Where the iskripka is held upright on the lap (similar to the ghéjek and the xushtar) in some of the southern traditions, in Ili, where the iskripka has been indigenized most thoroughly, it is held under the chin like in the West. Unlike the violin, the iskripka is often tuned to G–d–g–d’ to accommodate local keys and modes. The modern master of Ili’s rich tradition of the iskripka was Seytulla(m) Toxti (1941–2000), a native of Ghulja, who spent most of his life as a theater actor and worked at Opéra ömiki. Seytullam pioneered a style of ecstatic iskripka playing that is marked by intensive improvisation and interaction with other instruments (most often the tembur and the dutar). This uniquely Ili style of playing can be heard in the nine pieces recorded on the classic album Munajat (Prayer) (Zimin 1997), featuring Nurmemet Tursun on the tembur and Ghiyasidin Barat (1937–2003) on the dutar. The title track, “Munajat,” was a song of Uzbek origin. It was adapted by Nurmemet for Uyghur instruments after he had heard a performance of this piece on a trip to Central Asia. The Uyghur version showcases a highly interactive, reciprocal heterophony among the three instrumentalists—practices and aesthetics that are opposite to the inflexibility in professional song and dance troupes and concerts.

The “Less Improved” Instruments Not all Uyghur instruments received the same level of reengineering. One of these “less improved” instruments is the dutar, the two-string plucked lute that remains a somewhat domestic and amateur instrument, left largely intact in the modernist project. Its pear-shaped resonating body is stave construction, with alternative dark and light colors; the dark color is üjme mulberry, which is a hard wood, while the light color is chinar parasol, which is a soft wood. The better-quality soundboards are made of older wood, visible with its narrower tree rings. Most post-1950s modifications done on the dutar are common to other instruments: gut or silk strings were replaced by nylon or vinyl; diatonic fretting became chromatic; and the instrument was made longer and larger. The dutar is generally not considered a concert instrument, despite efforts by Abduréhim Héyit (b. 1962) to introduce some level of virtuosity to his performance. An instrument that “everyone knows how to play,” as many musicians put it, the dutar has never been a major instrument at music schools. It is rarely included in professional ensembles; its soft timbre, played by fingernails plucking two loose nylon strings, would easily be overwhelmed by other “better improved” instruments.

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The other plucked lute, the tembur, offers a slightly different case here. While being a transregional instrument found across the entire Uyghur territory, the tembur is arguably the most important instrument in the Ili tradition, integral to the musical identity of Uyghur musicians in the Ili valley. It has preserved a repertoire of uniquely Ili-style tunes, many of which have been adapted on the tembur for so long that they became idiomatic for the instrument. The longest of all the Uyghur lutes (up to about 142 cm, while some earlier versions were around 15 cm shorter), the tembur in its current standardized shape has a pear-shaped resonating body carved out from a single piece of mulberry (üjme) wood and a long fingerboard holding approximately thirty-six unmovable frets, including a few higher-register frets added on the soundboard. The soundboard (yüzlüq) is made of chinar parasol. Regional differences existed in the past: the Kashgar version was smaller than Ili’s, among other local varieties (Mijit Yunus and Shirmuhemmet Nuraxun 2009, 7). In the standardized form today, the five metal strings are in three groups: the inner doublecourse tuned to A (with #31 strings); the middle single-chord tuned to d (with #31 string); and the outer double-course tuned to G (with #32 strings)—that is, from innermost to outermost: GG–d–AA. Regional and premodern types exist, however. One unique modern change made to the tembur—apart from the chromatic fretting (now between seventeen and twenty), tighter steel strings, and so on— is the plectrum. Today the tembur is plucked by a pick called naxun (Persian, lit., “nail”), which is a short piece of steel string (thickness is usually #28) bent to form a pointed triangular shape, tied with a string to the performer’s index finger (bigiz). Most musicians believe that a zexmek plectrum, like the rawap’s, was used in the past (earlier musicians plucked tembur strings with fingernails), yet it is unclear when the change took place. According to Memtimin Hoshur (2014, 46–47), Hüsiyin Tembur first experimented with using the naxun in the 1930s, which was “a revolution in the method of playing” because it enabled the performer to “develop techniques” on the instrument. A musician was quoted saying that “when Hüsiyin played the tembur with a naxun, it’s like one single instrument lighting a fire in my heart” (47). Hüsenjan Jami and his younger brother Abduraxman recounted that their father, Jami Aka (1876–1959), had played with both zexmek and naxun. In addition, a fish-shaped palm rest (aliqanliq) was also added after the 1950s to allow for more rigorous hand movement. The new tembur is certainly the loudest and brightest (and longest) among all the Central Asian and Middle Eastern varieties. It is taught as a major instrument at music schools and serves as a mainstay in professional ensembles; the first tembur major program at the Arts Institute can be dated back to the early 1960s. Performing the tembur at a professional level is no less a full 144

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muscular effort than that of the rawap. The same cannot be said of the dutar, however. The tembur is also remade acoustically to be capable of producing and projecting a wide range of sonorities. Yet compared to the rawap and the ghéjek, the tembur has also preserved a more traditional repertoire and melodies adapted from muqam, as shown in the concert programs and teaching repertoires at music schools (Mijit Yunus and Shirmuhemmet Nuraxun 2009). A number of oral sources suggested that the tembur is not an entirely different instrument from the satar of the past. I came across a late nineteenthcentury satar preserved at a local home in Lükchün. The instrument is longer and bigger than its modern counterparts. Local musicians recounted that the instrument had been passed down from the royal court from at least a century earlier. At that time, it was both a satar and a tembur: “It’s a satar when you bow it; it’s a tembur when you pluck it.”16 Indeed, from an instrument maker’s perspective, the core procedure of making both the satar and the tembur is essentially the same: the resonating body of both instruments is made of hollowed-out üjme mulberry wood, where the soundboard is made of chinar parasol. Interestingly, in music school training, the satar is made to become increasingly similar to the other two bowed strings, the ghéjek and the xushtar. They share a significant number of modern pieces; musicians who play the ghéjek (and the xushtar) often also assume the teaching and performing role for the satar. Finally, in the past, the same instrument often existed in different sizes even in the same local tradition. This was the case for the dutar and the satar, which each had its own so-called female and male versions: the female ones were typically shorter and smaller, made for musicians—not necessarily female—with shorter arms. A Kashgar-made “female satar” I came across measured slightly over 130 cm in length, where a standardized satar today is almost 140 cm, sometimes a little longer. The gender/size distinction is less obvious today, known and used only among a small number of local musicians and instrument makers. The hammered dulcimer chang deserves a brief mention here. In the past, the chang was played primarily as an ensemble instrument that accompanied or complemented the satar and the tembur. Two-bridged and smaller than the chang types commonly seen today, it was present in almost all Uyghur ensembles photographed in the early and mid-twentieth century, often placed on a small bench or simply on the floor (see Memtimin Hoshur 2005). Wan Tongshu (1986, 65–69) notes that the chang was played frequently in urban teahouse and restaurant settings with other instruments. The earliest type of Uyghur chang had eight to ten sets of strings (each set had three to four strings). It was later expanded to between thirteen and eighteen sets of steel strings. The chang type commonly seen in the early twentieth century had fourteen sets of strings over two bridges: seven on the left and seven on the right. Both sides of the left bridge

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(fifths apart) are struck with hammers (choka), where only the left column of the right bridge is used. The pitches on the three columns are arranged into a heptatonic scale. An idiosyncratic technique on the chang largely abandoned today is the use of left-hand index, middle, and ring fingers to press the strings (chékish we bésish) and create vibrato, similar to that on the qanun plucked zither. Wan Tongshu’s transcription of Mushawrek’s teze merghul illustrates how the vibrato was applied on mostly the second step of the scale to produce microtonal inflections (1986, 68–69). It was also heard in some mid-century recordings.17 Reform on the chang began in the mid-1950s and was by and large synchronic with the reform of the Chinese yangqin. Diatonic, heptatonic pitch arrangements were turned into chromatic, twelve-semitone scales. Formulated in the late 1950s, the new chang was made larger to accommodate around eighty-five strings (two to four strings in each set), using hardwood such as walnut or paulownia to withstand the high tension. New techniques such as double strikes and harmonics were introduced to the instrument, where vibrato became difficult with the increased string tension (and thus is almost never used today). There are two main bridges and a small bridge on the left-hand bottom. Finally, a more rounded and resonant sound was created with rubber (rézinka) or felt (kigiz) wrapped beaters. This new instrument was then called milliy (ethnic/national) chang or the “second generation” chang.18

Idioms and Canons It is not uncommon, in older and local practices, for certain pieces to be played more often or even become idiomatic on a particular instrument; the rawap repertoire of Kashgar and Yarkand is a good example (to be discussed below). However, the solo tradition that fixes a musical “work” to a specific instrument (or voice) is largely a post-1950s creation as a part of the modernist reform of “minority” instrumental music. Each of the newly reengineered musical instruments is designated a concert repertoire of new compositions and rearranged pieces. This is best illustrated in the score collection Shaoshu minzu yueqi chuantong duzou qü (Traditional solos for minority instruments, 1981), later expanded as Zhongguo shaoshu minzu chuantong yueqi duzou qü xuan (Selected traditional instrumental solos of China’s minorities, 1990). The selections in these volumes are categorized by nationalities and then by instruments. Nine instruments are listed in the Uyghur section—zurney, balaman, ghéjek, satar, tembur, qanun, dutar, chang, and rawap—each of which is assigned between one and three pieces as its “solos.” Printed in staff notation, these “solos” are de facto transcriptions—some rather imprecise—done by musicologists in the 146

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1950s and 1960s based on folk tunes, muqam, and traditional instrumental melodies. Most of these solos are based, in some way, on traditional melodies; the selections for the tembur, for example, include the instrumental parts of classic Ili songs “Ejem” and “Nimpede,” transcribed from recorded performances of Hüsenjen Jami. A number of these newly minted “solos” come from the instrumental genre merghul. As noted earlier, the merghul is an appendage or postlude that elaborates, develops, and expands on the thematic materials of its preceding poetic song in a muqam or yürüsh medley. The merghul is musically and structurally unique to On ikki muqam (of Kashgar and Ili traditions); genres in most other Uyghur and Central Asian genres show little resemblance to it. Local musicians simply refer to a merghul as a piece from a particular muqam (e.g., Özhal merghuli). In traditional practices, the merghul is often played slightly faster and rhythmically more elaborated than the song it follows. It is not unusual for merghul to be played as independent pieces in older or folk settings. Yet there are two major differences in the way merghul was conceived in the past. First, merghul was mostly not idiomatic to a specific instrument. Second, it was less a fixed repertoire of pieces; many merghul were initially improvisations based on the melody of the preceding song, “played with a stronger character and adapted for instrumental music” (Wan Tongshu 1986). Yasin Muxpul further argues for the folk origins of some of these merghul pieces, which, he speculates, were “originally very short instrumental interludes in the folk narrative tradition dastan” and were then refined in court performances to become “perfected compositions” in muqam as we know them today.19 In folk practices, a merghul is often attached as a concluding instrumental piece to a medley of folk songs sung in the same or a related modal scale. This practice is very much alive in local performances today. In the Ili tradition, for example, musicians would often end a yürüsh medley with a merghul of a similar modal scale, and the decision about which merghul to use is often a spontaneous one (see chapter 6). Importantly, all instrumental works have the potential to function as a merghul; for example, in the Kashgar tradition, the well-known rawap solo “Shadiyana” is frequently used to end folk and sacred singing.20 Some merghul are even named after famous musicians who created or are associated with them. Starting in the mid-1950s, a number of merghul melodies began to be ­rearranged for staged concerts or studio recordings by solo instrumentalists and ensembles. Some of these were made into 78 rpm records, released in the 1950s by China Records. These recordings feature some of the shorter, lighter merghul, such as Rak and Penjigah’s first dastan, and were mostly fixed at about three minutes, the length of one side of a 78 rpm vinyl disc. In order to fit some of the longer merghul into the record, repetitions were eliminated or shortened,

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and sometimes an entire piece was played faster. Merghul from the dastan movement of muqam, especially those in an upbeat duple meter, were preferred to longer and slower ones, or those with irregular or additive meters/rhythms. Among the dozens of merghul that have been passed down or reconstructed in modern times, some are reestablished to stand alone as virtuosic solos or ensemble pieces as well as set works for teaching at music schools. They played an important role in the early stage of creating pedagogical texts for musical instruments. In Rawap heqqide sawat (Mamut Qasim 1981), the first published teaching manual for the rawap, for example, four out of the seven “solos” for the rawap— included as “set pieces”—came from merghul (one from Ejem, one from Chebbiyat’s teze, and two from Ozhal’s dastan). The highest profile of these rearranged merghul is undoubtedly the first dastan of Oshshaq, reworked (by Abdulla Amut) to become a concert solo for the ghéjek (and the xushtar). It starts with an arpeggiated major chord on the tonic (usually played in the accompaniment by the chang). In most performances today, the ghéjek plays a highly virtuosic melody, packed with fast runs, cadenza-like interludes and fillin passages. Some of these novelties were added by soloists (such as Ekrem Ömer) and later became standardized in teaching and performance (Abdukérim Osman 2012, 172–176). This repertoire of rearranged and concertized merghul includes some of the most difficult showpieces in exams and concerts today. It also offers a glimpse into the modern construction of “traditional music” as a multilayered process. The cultural significance of this concert repertoire came through its association with traditional music, as a derivative of a somewhat transcendental national musical past. Indeed, these virtuosic pieces are often indiscriminately played and listened to as muqam, consolidating its canonic quality and becoming its extension. Similar to the appropriation of the “work-concept” as discussed in chapter 3, these fetishized canons became sources for creating new repertoires and styles. In this sense, the “perfected” muqam canons may be understood less as fixed repertoires of an invented tradition and more as a consciousness that is generative and resonates across genres and styles. In other words, the broader canonization process did not stop at the point when the canons were established. In our case here, older performing practices—fluid, orally transmitted, and sometimes improvisation-based—were first standardized to become a stable repertoire that is known to us today as “traditional” or “classical” music, with fixed melodies and texts, and identifiable repertoires, styles, and sometimes also composers and lyricists. These reconstructed and canonized works were rarely conceived as ultimate products (as made clear in the muqam project in the 1950s and 1960s). Rather, they served a foundational role as templates or, in a sense, raw materials for the 148

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modernist project in subsequent decades. As a matter of fact, most of the virtuosic pieces in the modern Uyghur repertoire did not come from a vague, uncertain past but were derived from pieces that had already been identified as somewhat demonstrative. This is comparable to formations of musical canons found across Asia. One well-studied example is the silk-and-bamboo chamber instrumental music from Shanghai and its vicinity, where the so-called eight grand pieces and other core repertoires functioned, in many ways, as intermediaries during the early modern period, a middle step between older practices and newer modernist models (such as the symphonized orchestras).

Virtuosity and Concerto The modernist sound qualities as materialized on these aggressively “improved” musical instruments beg to be understood as corresponding to a synchronic process: that of the reengineering of the “minority” musical body in modern China. As sound containers, musical instruments not only serve as “appendages” of the performing human bodies (Zecher 2007, 7) but also, quite literally, as resonators that are sympathetic of the larger social life of the musicians. At a deeper level, the reform of both musical instruments and their performers may be understood in the context of the adaption of the European Romanticist ideal of musical virtuosity in the modern time—as a proxy for artistic practices and expression, as well as a tool of social management and political control—for both Han and non-Han performing arts. Virtuosity, with its promises of individualism and liberal heroism, presents a paradox for the socialist state in that it appears to be at odds with its collectivist agenda for art and culture. In this section, I suggest that virtuosity may be seen not only in terms of technicality but also, more comprehensively, as a cultural process that reengineers the bodies of both the virtuosos and their musical instruments. How has Uyghur virtuosity in socialist China cultivated a new kind of technicality, one that is built upon the language of European art music, exercised through the state’s institutions of music conservatories and professional performing troupes? To start with, the idea of virtuosity here refers broadly to the celebration of on-stage displays of technical brilliance and the exhibition of extraordinary performing abilities associated with concert performances, as formulated around the mid-eighteenth century in Europe and later introduced to various Soviet-influenced territories for reformist musical experiments. There is no indigenous Uyghur term for virtuosity. The idea of a technically outstanding (mahir) musician who assumes a prominent role as a talented genius or revered master certainly exists in folk and older practices. Yet the modern concept of a concert soloist showcasing progressive styles on modified instruments

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(sometimes with orchestral accompaniment) had been unprecedented until the mid-twentieth century. Few would disagree that Dawut Awut is synonymous with the virtuosic rawap playing in the modern time. Dawut was born in Qeshqer konisheher nahiyisi (Ch. Shufu), near Kashgar, to a musical family. He learned music from his father Awut Axun (Rawap), who had been known as Kashgar’s finest rawap player. Dawut and his father began performing on the stage in Kashgar as early as July 1953. After winning a few prestigious awards, Dawut began his professional career in 1957 as a full-time musician in a performing troupe. An indisputable virtuoso, he is remembered today as both a tradition guardian and a reformer (islahatchi), recognized both for sustaining a revered music tradition and for his effort to modernize it. Dawut continued a modern tradition of rearranging folk tunes for concert performance pioneered a little earlier by another rawap master, Rozek Bashi (1897–1973).21 Dawut is credited further for a number of modifications made on the rawap. These include replacing the gut strings of older rawap types with the more durable and stable steel strings; adding two lower strings to the older version of the rawap for a total of seven; standardizing the tuning (regional and earlier versions of the rawap had a number of tunings and different ways of tuning the sympathetic strings); and introducing, in around 1955 or 1956, the python skin (to replace other animal skins) to achieve a more stable tension and timbre. To enrich expressivity, Dawut developed new finger techniques and changed the performing position. He was among the first who adopted a standing, forward-leaning performing posture in which the rawap is held high up against the upper chest, as is standard today, with the right elbow at a more acute angle to facilitate sound projection.22 The right wrist, moreover, moves rigorously to drive the strumming and plucking patterns. This technique is clearly heard in modern compositions as tremolo passages that impersonate sustained melodies and legato phrasing otherwise performed on a bowed string or by the human voice, a technique said to be introduced to the rawap by composer Osmanjan (1932–1990) from the three-string Mongolian plucked lute shanz (Gao Shouxin and Fu Shengsong 1994), which is a close sibling of the Chinese sanxian and Japanese shamisen. The plectrum (zexmek), previously rectangular and made of cow’s horn, was changed to a small triangle of thin plastic with sharp edges to ensure swift and agile motion.23 All these changes contributed to the emergence of virtuosity in Uyghur music since the early 1960s. Dawut’s modernist pursuit and the state’s reformist ideology are best epitomized in the single movement concerto Méning rawabim (My rawap), scored for the rawap and an orchestra of mixed instruments. It is a standard virtuosic showpiece today, the first of its kind. The concerto was written in 1963 by Qurban Ibrahim (1922–1998),24 a prolific composer well versed 150

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in the Western idiom. It was premiered the following year by Dawut, who became the first musician to perform on a Uyghur instrument—the rawap— with an orchestral accompaniment. The concerto was named following a modern practice of attaching the firstperson possessive suffix -im/um to the name of a musical instrument. Other notable examples include a much-covered song titled “Satarim” (My satar) (melody by Akimjan Janabakiyev); another rawap solo, “Sayra, Qeshqer rawabim” (Sing, my Kashgar rawap) by Obul Ashim; the album Temburum (My tembur, 2004) of Nurmemet Tursun; and the well-known virtuosic dutar soloist Abduréhim Héyit’s nine-CD set Duttarim (My dutar, 2012), which is also the title of a well-known song and solo for the dutar. Qurban told Dawut that the concerto had been inspired by an Uzbek tune called “Dutarim,” although the flavors (puraq) of the two pieces, according to Dawut, were not similar at all (Buxelchem Bahawudun 2006, 36). In any case, the use of first-person possessive suffixes invites careful listening to these musical works as autobiographical narratives about the instrument and its musicians. Méning rawabim was a collaborative creation: the melody was composed by Qurban Ibrahim and orchestrated (akkordlashturush) by Ma Shizeng (1930– 2014?), a Hui Chinese Muslim (Uy. Tungan). Ma had graduated from Central Music Conservatory in Beijing in 1953 with a degree in piano performance, and, according to official histories, he “responded to the government’s call to develop the country’s northwestern borderland.” After he met Qurban, they went together on a field trip to Merkit, a Dolan town in the southwest of the Uyghur territory. Qurban and Ma were reportedly so impressed by the music of the Dolan rawap that they immediately decided to collaborate on a new composition for the modern rawap based on the tunes collected during the field trip (Ma Chengxiang 2016). The style of Méning rawabim, however, has little in common with Dolan music. The six-minute, single-movement concerto was written in a compound two-part form, with the two principal sections roughly identical in length. The first section is rondo-like and in triple, while the second section is a blissful binary dance in duple. The two sections are connected by a cadenza-like virtuosic solo section created by Dawut. The assertive introduction features a threefold descending diatonic sequence in A minor that announces the main theme of the piece. This opening gesture is momentarily contrasted in the first section, which, marked “Allegretto Affanato,” features alternating tutti and solo sections in a noticeably slower tempo with a somewhat somber, dragging atmosphere. The opening theme returns at the end of the first section, now played fortissimo, leading to the cadenza. Almost two minutes in length (a third of the entire work), the cadenza showcases difficult passages performed in an exceedingly high tessitura on the rawap, utilizing its highest frets. The orchestral tutti

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then returns with a fast binary duple-meter dance marked “Allegro Appassionato.” Set in E minor, the dance outlines an uplifting syncopated long-long-short rhythm played mostly on the plucked strings and the dap, an unmistakable musical gesture of festivity. The formal structure reiterates a clichéd politico-historical narrative—realized in the linear progression of the music—that should be familiar to the audiences of modern Chinese instrumental music. The first section, dark and grave, symbolizes the pre-socialist “old society.” It is to be superseded by the second section, which is uplifting and cheerful, alluding to the “new life” under the Communists after 1949. This interpretation is confirmed by a number of official descriptions as seen in media, liner notes, and concert programs of this work. One of these explains that “through a Uyghur musician’s [experience of] the contrast between the present and the past,” this work “depicts, deeply and meticulously, the sadness, sourness, and sorrow of Uyghur folk artists in the old society and the joy, sweetness, and happiness of the new society” (Wu Jün 1993, 33–36). The cadenza serves, metaphorically, as a musical path that progresses from the undesirable past to the joyful present, linking the old and the new. This connection is achieved by the new “voice” of an instrument, then “improved” and rid of its “obsolete” sound and qualities, that speaks to musical modernity in every aspect. Ma Chengxian (2016, 61), son of Ma Shizeng and himself a composer, describes the concerto as a “milestone,” which for the first time “employed the form and great sound of the Western symphonic orchestra to lift a Uyghur folk instrument up to the palace of art. . . . It is a model of combining the real-life contents of socialism and Uyghur musical style and form . . . an exemplar for Uyghur musical creativity and a milestone of minority music to move beyond Xinjiang and advance to the world, something which remains historically significant and bears important implications today.” Parhat Dawut, son of Dawut Awut and a professional rawap performer in the Muqam Ensemble, emphasized that his father was deeply involved in the compositional process of Méning rawabim, particularly his creation of the cadenza. The cadenza is rarely written out in performance scores, yet it is apparently fixed and almost never improvised today. Nearly all soloists whose recordings and performances I have come across played it almost exactly the same as Dawut’s original version in the 1960s. Dawut remembered how it was created: “At that time, I thought about how to enrich the music and raise its level. For that I added a section in the middle of the music, which I thought was good. I told Qurban Ibrahim about it. He listened to the music repeatedly. ‘Good. The music will be perfect with this,’ he said, happily” (Buxelchem Bahawudun 2006, 36). The European concerto ideal of a virtuosic soloist playing against a large ensemble is absent in traditional Uyghur music, and the cadenza in Méning 152

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rawabim is without doubt the first of its kind. Musicians I have interviewed frequently cited the cadenza as one of the most demanding passages in the modern instrumental repertoire. The tripartite cadenza stays largely in A minor. The first part is explorative, improvisatory, and monotonic (around E). The tempo doubles in the middle part, which, with large leaps, explores the very high register, reaching the higher E, two octaves and a major third above the middle C—probably the highest pitch ever used on the rawap. The melody then descends to the final part with some tuneful gestures, followed by a brief ad lib passage before it turns to the duple dance. All in all, the cadenza invites the listener to hear it as a musical path that bridges not only the two sections of the concerto but also the traditional and the modern, the old and the new. The concerto has been played with ensembles of flexible sizes and instrumentation, anywhere from a small consort of fewer than a dozen instruments to a full-blown eighty-piece symphony orchestra. Attempts have been made to standardize the instrumentations. The original orchestration in 1963 employed a medium-sized mixed ensemble of slightly over a dozen primarily Western instruments. One of the common orchestrations today (Abdurahman n.d.), in contrast, includes more than sixty instruments: 8 ney, 16 rawap, 4 tembur, 2 chang, 4 bass rawap, 2 bass dutar, 2 dap, 1 cymbal, 1 timpani, 16 ghéjek, 6 middle-range ghéjek, 4 celli, and 2 double basses.25 The change reflects a trend in recent decades: Uyghur instruments are increasingly preferred to Western instruments in these “ethnic” orchestras. It also reflects an ongoing need to refine the technique of scoring new and “improved” Uyghur instruments for larger ensembles. Yarmuhemmet Jamaldin is an enthusiastic modernist and vocal critic of the existing orchestration of Méning rawabim, which, according to him, is poorly done in its counterpoint and voice leading, and often played on “poorly reformed” instruments. In response, Yarmuhemmet created his own arrangement using computer software to simulate his ideal instrumental timbres. He further changed Ma’s original orchestration by ­reinforcing the bass line and adding contrapuntal inner parts. I asked if he had ever performed his orchestration of Méning rawabim. “No,” he said. “Orchestras in Xinjiang are not technically ready to play my orchestration. Many musicians still don’t follow dynamic markings and other notated details.” Instead, he was making a plan to perform his orchestration with orchestras outside Xinjiang after he retired (a plan that has never materialized). To Yarmuhemmet and many Uyghur musicians, Méning rawabim is not only a canon but also an experiment of finding a uniquely Uyghur sound in the modern world, through reforming instruments, developing orchestration techniques, incorporating indigenous and foreign styles, and establishing pedagogical approaches. It is a modern music history that is yet to be complete and requires continuous rewriting.

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Dawut enjoyed a brief career as an actor. He was cast as a young Communist soldier named Tashmet (Tashimaiti) in the aforementioned film Guests from the Ice Mountains, seen carrying and playing the rawap throughout the film. The progressivity embodied in him is unmistakable. Dawut was quoted stating that “as the society progresses, musical cultures of all ethnicities should also develop and be innovative in their forms and contents; conservative and traditionalist thoughts would only impede the development of ethnic music” (Song 1987, 20). His exceptional achievements and political compliance have earned him unprecedented national fame that few Uyghur and other non-Han musicians have attained. Dawut appeared in almost every single major official song and dance production from the late 1950s through the mid-1980s (Alimjan Abduqadir 2012, 29–30). He was handpicked as a cultural ambassador to accompany top state officials on numerous trips to Europe and to other Asian countries in the 1960s, and he was among the most favorite choices for musicians to perform for visiting foreign dignitaries. Dawut also served briefly as a member of the political consultative conference (siyasiy meslihet kéngishi; Ch. zhengxie) of the city of Ürümchi. In no small way, Dawut and the concerto he co-created and premiered were staged as musical embodiments of the model “minorities” portrayed in the film Guests from the Ice Mountains: their premodern past was refurbished and transformed, through a Han-led self-reinvention, to become enlightened modern subjects in the new era. At the same time, the “minority” musical modernity realized by Dawut and his music also exemplify a careful balance between styles and elements that are perceived as indigenous and intercultural. The appeal of Dawut’s creativity came as much from his cultural authority as a musician rooted in the tradition. The progressive qualities acquired by and ascribed onto him—professionalism, virtuosity, malleability, and political subservience—were mediated by such credibility as a master musician of a national tradition. Among other modern masters, Dawut was uniquely positioned to bring his national music to the next level and, as he did, present it to the outside world. To many in his audience, being modern is not only not a betrayal but an attribute that underwrites his success. It is a quality that defines his legacy. It is perhaps no surprise that the most remembered person in the history of the rawap is not its assumed inventor, the sixteenth-century Yarkand prince Yüsüp Qadirxan, but Dawut Awut, the virtuosic soloist who successfully transcended the instrument’s local and premodern identity. To many among Dawut’s audience, Méning rawabim is a script of Uyghur musical modernity; it symbolizes the finest of their nation and music. In Dawut’s own words, it is a work that “gained the acclaim and love of the world’s people as a piece of unique, immortal music, for it reflects the soul and voice of the Uyghur people by means of its own authentic language” (Buxelchem Bahawudun 2006, 37). 154

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“Tashway” and Tash Axun Another major contribution of Dawut is a repertoire of orally transmitted traditional rawap pieces that he passed down, some idiomatic to the rawap, others rearranged from folk tunes. At least two or three dozen of this rich repertoire of solo pieces in the Kashgar-based southern tradition have been preserved in recording or transcription. Some of the better-known pieces include “Shadiyane,” “Atush,” “Tashway,” “Yaru,” “Qadir mewlan,” “Bom pede,” and “Gundipay,” to name a few of the best known. Little is known about the extent to which these pieces existed in the past as distinct compositions with fixed lengths and forms as we know them today. Some level of improvisation is also clear in at least a number of them. Dawut is among the handful of rawap musicians whose studio recordings were made into 78 rpm (and later LP) discs in the 1950s and 1960s by China Records (another being Rozek Bashi). Their recorded performances were also transcribed and studied (Wan Tongshu 1986) as demonstrative of the rawap’s traditional style, contributing to the standardization of these pieces in modern times. What Dawut also accomplished is the renewed approach through which he interpreted and reworked a number of these traditional melodies. This section takes a closer look at one of these: “Tashway,” a rawap solo frequently heard in concerts and recordings. A showpiece of many song and dance troupes, “Tashway” has been rearranged also for different instrumental combinations. “Tashway” is the nickname of a late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century ashiq Sufi mendicant named Tash Axun, whose biography is an example of the discrepancy between official appropriation and local hagiography. Modern accounts of Tash Axun’s life stories—which are at best half fictional—may be dated back to a drama by I. Mas(s)imov in the late 1940s. There was subsequently a short novel by Gheyret Abdulla (b. 1952) and a Uyghur-language opera, composed by Ekrem Esan and Qurban Ibrahim in 1984, both titled “Tashway.” More recently, a Chinese-language opera titled Rewapu lian’ge (Romance of the rawap), composed by Han composer Jin Xiang (1935–2015) and based on the life stories of Tash Axun, was produced at the National Opera House in Beijing in 2010. At least two versions of Tash Axun’s biography exist, and they vary greatly. The first of these, as told in Mamut Qasim’s Rawap heqqide sawat (1981, 8–10) and a few other publications, says that he was born to a poor family in Allarku yézisi (village) in Qeshqer konisheher nahiyisi, near Kashgar, in the 1860s or 1870s. Orphaned and begging in the street, Tash Axun went to Andijan, in today’s Uzbekistan, to escape life’s troubles. When he returned to Kashgar, he was framed and falsely accused by the bayi (landlord) and molla (Islamic

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clergy). He was then jailed and died in prison in the late 1890s or early 1900s at the age of about thirty-two or thirty-four. His funeral was attended by tens of thousands of mourners. The second version, as told in Abdukérim Raxman’s Muqam péshiwaliri (Pioneers of muqam) (1995, 107−110) and widely adapted elsewhere, is very different. In this version, Tash Axun, who lived from 1851 to 1937, was a son of Baqi Axun, one of the four wealthiest families in mid-nineteenth-century Kashgar. He was a spoiled kid. Since he was young he had wished to become a tough and courageous man (nochi). One of the conditions of being a nochi at that time was to be able to play the rawap and sing. He then studied with master Tahir, a baker at the Qarqu (Qarqi) Gate of Kashgar, to learn the rawap and baking. This changed his way of life. He then attended a Qur’anic school and opened four bakeries at the four city gates of Kashgar, and he also ran a teahouse. He reportedly attended every big gathering and listened to rawap playing diligently. Soon afterwards, Tash Axun became well known for his rawap skills. Every day early in the morning before the azan call to prayer he would stroll around the streets of the city playing the rawap. He also started composing music and eventually became an ashiq. Later he went to Andijan to study the rawap with a master named Metek Aqsaqal (lit., “Metek the white beard”) and participated in a competition there. Meanwhile, back in Kashgar, Tash Axun’s father was imprisoned. The corruption of the jailers and the moaning of the prisoners reportedly inspired Tash Axun to compose “Gundipay” (Jailer), a rawap solo in the traditional repertoire passed down by Dawut Awut. Later in his life, Tash Axun went on pilgrimage to Mecca (Herem). He stayed and worked as a baker there; he was reportedly the first Uyghur to reside in Mecca. He died at the age of eighty-six, in Mecca, almost three times the age given in the first version. He had composed a few pieces before he left Kashgar, such as “Kélermenmu?” (Will I come back?), “Elwida” (Farewell), and “Toqquz bulaq” (Nine-month spring). “Toqquz bulaq” was later renamed “Tashway” to commemorate the legendary musician. The discrepancies between these two biographies of Tash Axun are noteworthy and remain one of the most interesting questions in Uyghur music history. The first account is most often seen in official biographies of Tash Axun. His unfortunate birth in a poor family (and being orphaned), persecution by the bayi and molla, and premature death are common themes in post-1950s biographical (re)writings. References to Islam—such as Qur’anic school, Sufism, Mecca, and so on—are all downplayed or simply left out. Such secularization of Tash Axun’s biography is explicit in the Chinese-language opera Romance of the Rawap (2010), a secular love story in which Tash Axun elopes with his lover Anargül to Central Asia after her father refuses his marriage proposal. The second version, which is more elaborate and reads like a biographical 156

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novel, aligns more closely with local hagiographical practices. It circulates broadly among local musicians and in less official biographies (see Alimjan Abduqadir 2012, 26–28). Of particular interest here is also Tash Axun’s connections with Central Asia and the Middle East as established in the biography. The first is his music study abroad and participation at a competition there— notions that sound familiar to professional musicians today. The second is his pilgrimage to and ultimate death in Mecca, which, together with other sacred references, resonate with other Eastern Turkic hagiographic writings in modern history. It is worth looking more closely at the rawap solo “Tashway,” a composition attributed to Tash Axun. What most musicians refer to as “Tashway” today is indeed a modern arrangement by Qurban Ibrahim in the 1960s. The arrangement was based on an older tune, also known as “Tashway,” that had circulated in the local context. Set in an upbeat duple meter, this reworked melody is laid out in functional harmony in the minor mode (now fixed at D minor), unfolded in regularized rhythms and phrases with standardized length played with noticeable dynamic contrasts. Set in a ternary form, it includes a series of difficult techniques. Tremolo is used extensively to impersonate sustained legato melodies. In most scores, recordings, and staged performances I have come across—ranging from solos to full orchestral arrangement—the dap is added to accentuate the uplifting duple meter (although in reality some phrases may be heard as framed in triple). Finally, a brief unmetered introduction—fully notated, not improvised—is added, as if to restore a touch of authenticity. This new version has been the basis of a number of instrumentations, including several ensemble versions that can be dated back to the 1960s; a solo for the ghéjek and a small ensemble; and a yangqin dulcimer solo arranged by Hu Yünji (1928–1988) in the 1960s (this last version has been readapted for the Uyghur chang as a solo showpiece in the modern concert repertoire). The older version, which was very likely associated with Sufi rituals, sounded quite different. It features a loose ritornello form with irregular metrical accents, slower tempo, less dynamic contrast, and more straightforward motivic ideas. The transcription in figure 5.2 shows the introduction and the first refrain of the piece, taken from a recorded performance by Dawut Awut. It is marked by frequent metrical changes and syncopations, features that characterize traditional rawap solos. Phrases are of uneven lengths, constructed based on repetitions of very short motives (two to four measures as notated, represented by upper-case letters) played three or four times, each of which is then ornamented, augmented, or diminished (represented by the brackets). The musical utterance is consistent with traditional ways of building melodies: a short phrase is first played, followed by two or three (or more) ways of uttering it, each of which is an elaboration of the initial phrase. The overall structure is

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Figure 5.2  “Kona Tashway” (Old Tashway), for rawap solo, showing the introduction and the first refrain, transcribed, by author, according to performance by Dawut Awut as recorded in the album Méning rawabim (2006). Tempo is approximately MM = 112–126. The notehead x refers to uncertain pitches or strumming on the sympathetic strings on the rawap. Not all strumming actions are notated.

also one that is typical of a number of Central Asian classical traditions: each new phrase explores a higher register and returns to the initial low register before it moves up another level, until the melodic culmination arrives at its peak ewj. The melody then returns slowly to the initial register to conclude the piece. The coda clearly suggests modal change. Somewhat ironically, this old version was then renamed “Kona Tashway” (Old Tashway) in order for it to be distinguished from the new arrangement, which, despite being so very far removed from its original, became the unmarked, normative “Tashway” (rather than being called “Yéngi Tashway,” the “new Tashway”). Qurban’s arrangement (and Dawut’s reinterpretation) has become standard today, while “Kona Tashway” is rarely heard in public performances and almost never taught at music schools. 158

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I have come across the performance of the old version of “Tashway” in a number of local settings in Kashgar and its vicinities. The length and form of the piece appear to be flexible. The widely circulated studio recording of Dawut remained a model of imitation by younger musicians. In their study of Uyghur mazar, Harris and Dawut (2002, 105−106) note that the music of “Tashway” was associated with mourning and “believed to have been played at Tash’s funeral and is thus suited to the mazar context.” Their ethnographic description of a mazar ritual where “Tashway” was played demonstrates the premodern context of some of these rawap solos. Professional musicians who also inherited a family tradition often straddle the traditional and modern worlds and feel the need to negotiate between the two. This is the case for Alimjan Obul, a graduate of the Arts Institute in 2005. Alimjan explained to me that he had learned most of the older rawap pieces from his father back in Khotan before attending the Arts Institute as a rawap major, and after that he had largely left the old repertoire behind. Now a rawap instructor at Shinjang pédagogika inistituti (Xinjiang Normal University) and a rising concert soloist, he only played these older pieces with his father at home and family gatherings. Obul, Alimjan’s father, a retired member of Khotan’s song and dance troupe, explained that “many of these rawap pieces Dawut played were originally songs identified with different towns; ‘Bom pede’ and ‘Yaru’ were from Kashgar; ‘Sepiring’ was from Atush.” He also mastered both the new and old versions of “Tashway,” and he considered the old one more challenging to play.26

The Politics of Virtuosity Dawut was explicitly proud of the fact that foreign audiences had been amazed by how fast he moved his hands on the rawap. He recounted that after a performance (in a foreign country), he was asked, “What kind of hand was your hand? Did you connect electricity to your hand while you played the rawap?” One time, he remembered, in 1976, while he was performing the concerto Méning rawabim for a group of visiting West German officials in Ürümchi, Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, who was in the audience, asked his translator, “Is this person playing his instrument with his hands or with electricity?” Dawut admitted that he was pleased to hear these responses. “My hand is (just) a common hand,” he said, “but when playing the rawap, I work incessantly to acquire the elements that have formed my skills today.” He explained that he had worked hard to acquire techniques beyond those inherited from his father, and he urged young musicians to find the right method and goal in their practice. Dawut maintained that the learning of one’s own national songs and music is not a mere matter of aesthetic choice but

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something that every person should think about with conscience (Buxelchem Bahawudun 2006, 38). Modernity is as much a body praxis as it is a matter of styles, aesthetics, forms, and performing practices. Uyghur virtuosi are often glorified for their somewhat superhuman musical capacities. Nurmemet is said to have practiced long hours until his fingers bled. Dawut’s artistry and contribution are realized today primarily in the context of the technical and stylistic stretch he put on the rawap as well as the untiring, prolonged practicing routine he cultivated— and his “electrified” wrist movement. The same can be said of ghéjek virtuoso Ekrem Ömer (1963–2012), who had been the concertmaster of Naxsha-ussul ömiki until his untimely death in summer 2012. Ekrem is said to have grown thick calluses between his thumbs and index fingers and over all his fingertips due to frequent bleeding after prolonged playing. He is known as a pioneer for applying violin finger exercises on the ghéjek to advance his techniques. In a much-circulated recorded stage performance of “Xinjiang zhi chun” (Spring in Xinjiang), a Chinese appropriated virtuosic piece written in a pseudo-Uyghur style in the mid-1990s, Ekrem is seen playing rapid-fire solo lines with bowing and finger techniques clearly adapted from late nineteenth-century European styles (particularly in the uplifting first and final sections, as well as the cadenza-like passages in the middle section). He is featured with his colorful, quasi-ethnic costumes and his signature blissful smile. Altogether it exhibits a uniquely passionate fusion of playful amusement and hypervirtuosic mastery that remind the audience of Roby Latakos (b. 1965) and other contemporary Romani violinists. This manifests once again the divergence—what I have called sonic schizophrenia—between the aural and the visual of the “minority” bodies: the modernist style is complemented and reconstituted by the visibly “ethnic” body of the virtuoso.27 It is important not to see modernist reform as merely about recreating instruments with a wider dynamic range and more diverse shades of sound, in order to perform a more difficult repertoire—and certainly not simply an emulation of European art music. Musical instruments are also rebuilt to allow for the full exploration of performance as a muscular effort that engages the fingers, wrists, arms, and shoulders, a corporeal force that requires prolonged training and the entire performing body to be incorporated. The virtuosic performance is also both an aural and visual spectacle. It also inspires a sense of awe that fuses the instrument into the enormous strength of the performing body and its stamina. As Rosen (2002, 20) writes about the effect of the nineteenthcentury invention of the cast iron frame for the piano, “the athletic element of performance became a basic attraction with what might be called the exhilaration of violence. The exertion needed to produce the greatest fortissimo makes the pianist feel as if merged with the instrument, participating directly in the 160

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creation of the volume of sound like a string or wind player.” It is this sense of oneness—the melding of the instrument and the body—that constitutes the modernist project. In other words, the reengineering of the instrument is not conceived as differently as the reengineering of the performing body. The decontextualization of traditional music as a result demands that musicians unlearn styles, techniques, and practices that have been passed down from generation to generation, and that they acquire a new set of skills for the creation of a neotraditional sound. Professional musicians frequently find themselves playing one set of pieces at conservatories, official performing troupes, and public concerts, and another set at private gatherings and other domestic settings—a “double life” discussed in chapter 4. The technical and stylistic requirements between the professional and private repertoires are sometimes so different that musicians who came to music schools with previous family training in the traditional style often feel compelled to unlearn older practices and be reacquainted with new expectations. Notation plays a crucial role in this relearning process. It facilitates the objectification of musical knowledge, contributing to a kind of autonomy in instrumental music. To reform-minded musicians, traditional music may now be learned via descriptively notated scores and other means that rely less on oral transmission. No scores of “Kona Tashway” and other pieces in the old rawap repertoire have been published (except for a very basic transcription from the 1960s in an anthology; see Liu 1990, 171–173), but “Tashway,” the new arrangement, is widely available in both cipher and staff notations, including one that I used to learn this piece at the Arts Institute (Alimjan Abduqadir 2004). A quick overview of the scores published for pedagogical use since 2000—which normally include scales, arpeggios, and newly composed pieces intended as finger exercises—will show that the old rawap repertoire is nearly absent in the teaching and learning at music schools today. Interestingly, to many local, non–­ conservatory-trained musicians, the new style is considered easier to grasp, not because it is technically less demanding—indeed, quite the opposite is true—but because of its predictability and transparency to outsiders, something that has made the traditional apprentice-based, orally transmitted learning obsolete. As Muhambetova (1995, 66–83) explains in the case of Soviet Kazakh “national” music, “the musicians who went through all the stages of this Westernized training were on the whole a quite different type of ‘traditional’ musician,” in that the richness of the tradition—complex rhythmic and metrical senses, improvisation, and the “universality” of contextual knowledge—gave way to the uniformity of orchestral professionalism and specialization. Similarly, in the Uyghur case, the traditional approach of being an accomplished musician, with its emphasis on individual creativity, memorized repertoires, and skills of interactive heterophony, has been overwhelmed by a new professionalism that centers

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on objectifying and homogenizing strategies such as rhythmic simplification, synchronized tempo and dynamic contrast, homophonic-derived textures, and sometimes the presence of the conductor and reliance on notation. Muhambetova (71) describes the latter as a “denial of traditional professionalism,” putting “its bearers on the level of amateurs.” On a visit I made to a rehearsal session of a professional performing troupe in Ürümchi in July 2005, the musicians were practicing for an upcoming concert in September that would celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. They were asked to play in sections and individual parts in a recording studio in order to prepare an accompanying tape to be played at the ceremony. The ghéjek soloist and concertmaster, Ekrem Ömer, explained to me that they were going to finger-sync on stage with prerecorded tapes, because some of the sixty-odd performers had already been retired or semiretired and would not be able to play at the technical level required for the pieces. The music director of the recording sessions was a Han who was introduced to the musicians and to me as a famous recording engineer in Beijing. He instructed the Uyghur performers not only on technical recording aspects but also on everything from dynamics to tempo, playing techniques, and even ornamentation styles. He derided, with much arrogance, the Uyghur musicians for what he saw as their “amateurish behaviors,” such as the excessive talking during the recording sessions. Speaking in a haughty tone, he compared the musicians unfavorably to the “much more professional” orchestral performers in Beijing. Although clearly displeased, the Uyghur musicians initially tried to stay quiet, until in one particular session when the player of the double-reed zurney, who had failed to satisfy the director after almost a dozen attempts on one single short musical phrase, confronted him with an annoyed face. The Han director first demanded, in Mandarin, “This piece is about the Tianshan Mountains; I want the weidao [a Chinese term that means “taste, smell, or feeling”; an approximate Uyghur translation is puraq) of early morning on the Tianshan Mountains.” The zurney player replied, clearly displeased, “What kind of weidao is this? It’s not Uyghur ethnic weidao.” A similar disagreement took place between the Han director and the ghéjek soloist Ekrem when they were recording a solo passage on the ghéjek. Ekrem interpreted the melody with idiomatic embellishments in a moderate tempo. Manifestly disappointed, the director instructed that this passage be played with a tightened tempo and much denser notes. Ekrem laughed wryly and played as the director had instructed. What Ekrem eventually did on the ghéjek sounded exactly like a standard virtuosic violin solo, and the director was satisfied. In the broadest sense, the modernist professional style promoted by the Chinese state for its “minorities” may be compared to the ideal of virtuoso espoused by Richard Wagner in his Der Virtuos und der Künstler (The virtuoso 162

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and the artist, 1898 [1840]), in which he argued that the virtuoso, as the “highest merit of the executant artist,” is someone who is engaged in the “pure and perfect reproduction” of the “composer’s intentions,” with “total abstinence from all inventions” (111). The virtuosity preferred by the Chinese state is likewise not so much conceived to be an unbound expression of individuality and artistic freedom, but rather one that is practiced as an exercise of the state’s directives and should therefore be properly contained. The virtuoso’s body, for the state, should thus appear like an instrument for the execution of an idea that is primarily not their own. It is not surprising that these “minority” performing troupes remain some of the most aggressively monitored organizations across China. Uyghur musicians in these troupes have been considered among the most recalcitrant and thus should be tightly controlled. As Bernstein writes about Wagner’s ideal virtuoso, “The proper characteristic of the virtuoso is to have no proper characteristics” (1998, 86). To the state, virtuosity is both desired and dangerous, and thus should be carefully managed. The maneuvering of the virtuosic performing body is also facilitated by the modern rise of instrumental music as a vessel that contains and expresses the authentic “voice” of its creators. As Tomlinson (2003, 39) writes, “The idea of instrumental music as an autonomous, nonmimetic expressive means, together with the emergent formation of modern conception of the discrete musical work, invested new and substantial powers in the written form of the work.” Instrumental works are thought to bear the “truest revelation of the composer’s intent, the unique and full inscription of the composer’s expressive spirit.” The decontextualizing of Uyghur instrumental music explained above has similarly worked toward a reconstitution of meaning often discursively framed as reflecting the “intent” of the composers and, in our case here, the master performers who played major roles in the compositional process (such as Dawut Awut). Uyghur virtuosi are remembered by their audiences primarily because they are innovators—as “authors” rather than “mere reproducers of music” (Cook 1998, 13). The orality embedded in premodern performing practices is now subsumed by this modern notion of instrumental “works,” serving effectively as a text for the creative inscription of meaning. Ultimately, modernity may be seen as presenting an interesting paradox to marginal and especially subjugated cultures: the progressivity as embodied in modernist styles, while arguably less traditional and authentic, is at once a hopeful vehicle for subaltern cultural expressions. In a study of the Kazakh qylqobyz bowed fiddle, Rancier (2014) approaches the instrument as a “national archive,” where layers of meaning are stored, accumulated, and deposited. The instrument’s “archival holdings,” she writes, established the connection to its ancient roots, pre-Soviet nomadic life, and the “sorrowful emotion felt during the traumatic upheaval of the twentieth century.” This is certainly the case with

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a number of high-profile Uyghur instruments examined in this chapter, particularly the rawap and the ghéjek, whose roles as depositories have served as a cultural and sonic foundation for their modernist adventure. In addition, long perceived as primitive and deficient, Uyghur performing arts found in modernist expressions a means of sublimating its marginality to a national collectivity so as to enter the modern world of music traditions. As Chatterjee writes (1986, 30), nationalism “produced a discourse in which, even as it challenged the colonial claim to political domination, it also accepted the very intellectual premises of ‘modernity’ on which colonial domination was based.” When the early modernist poet Lutpulla Mutellip demanded, in the poem that opened chapter 2, that his musician friend “tune the rawap to the music of struggle” (rawabingni küresh muqamigha sazlimish) and “play new tunes” (yéngi muqam-pediler) rather than “useless (paydisiz) old music,” this newness should not be understood as involuntary acceptance of outside influences, let alone erasure of indigenous elements and national heritage. To many, the progressive soundscape pioneered by Uyghur virtuosi also represents a perpetuation of a national modern musical project that predates 1949, and an integral part of the broader Central Asian cultural renaissance in the twentieth century and beyond. Such cosmopolitan consciousness, I suggest, has constituted much of the modern Uyghur music making.

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CHAPTER 6

Sounding Indigenous in the “Original Ecology”

On an unseasonably hot June day, I was with a few local musicians for an

iptar (iftar) fast-breaking evening meal at a family restaurant just outside of Ghulja’s city limits, right on the riverbank of the Ili River. Ramadan had just started. Fasting had been forbidden for state employees, including many professional performers and music teachers at schools. Yet many Uyghur, especially younger men who had grown increasingly pious in the recent decade or two, fasted secretly during the month. It was a little after 7:30 p.m. local time (two hours behind Beijing’s national official time). Some of us started to discuss the exact time to break the fast. “It should be the time when you see the sun setting, no matter where you are,” said a musician in his late sixties, who confessed that he had given up fasting a few years earlier after being diagnosed with diabetes and high blood pressure. “No need to follow the time printed on the calendar,” he added, in a sluggish tone, while unbuttoning his shirt and wiping the sweat from his chest. A younger musician, who had been fasting, checked his mobile phone and learned that iptar would start at 8:17 p.m. on that day. Fruits and hot dishes arrived one after another. The younger musician looked at his watch a few times. It had already been more than seventeen hours since suhur, the early morning meal before fasting, which was about 2:30 a.m. I asked if he felt very hungry and thirsty. “Not too bad for today,” he replied. “I heard that it’s indeed good for health to fast, for thirty days in a year.” He retrieved his mobile phone again and played “Eshway,” an Ili melody famously interpreted on the tembur by Nurmemet Tursun. “When did Nuri’akam start adding all those sounds?” he asked the older musician, who had been a close friend of Nurmemet, referring to the triadic harmony outlined on the tembur as heard on the recording. “Maybe around 1987 or 1988, after he had joined the song and dance troupe,” the older musician replied, somewhat inattentively, 165

while switching on his mobile phone to show us photos of his female fans who had recently added him to their WeChat contacts. We teased him for being so preoccupied with WeChat at his age and indulged him with browsing photos of women online. The younger musician asked me to look out to the river. The water, air, and food here used to be the best in Ili, he said, with a sense of pride. “Look, across the mountains it’s southern Xinjiang,” he joked, in a scornful tone, pointing at the snow-covered mountain range. “The people over there, they’re all the same; we call all of them Qeshqerliq [the Kashgar people].” He stood gazing at the running water. “But now the river is so dirty,” he said, “and, look, the riverbank is so messy now. Fifteen years ago, it was much more tebi’iy [natural].” We took a few selfies with his mobile phone, which was still playing Nurmemet’s music. A little while later, the sun had nearly set. He looked at the watch again. “It’s almost time,” he said. We returned to the table. He recited a brief prayer, after which we started sipping water slowly from our bowls. He closed his eyes and gave a thankful smile. We then started biting a few slices of watermelon, followed by some naan we had picked up from a neighborhood baker on our way to the restaurant. The dinner began. The Ili River, which flows from Tengritagh (the Heavenly Mountains) through Ghulja and the Ili River valley across the border and drains into the Yettisu (lit., “seven rivers”) region in southeastern Kazakhstan, has been a popular theme in Uyghur songs and instrumental music. Rivers (derya or simply su) assume an important poetic role in modern literature. Some of the major rivers in the Uyghur homeland, such as the Tarim in the south and the Ili, appear frequently in poems and lyrics as a metaphor of heritage (miras) and homeland (weten). In no trivial way, the Ili River and its watershed have been the lifeline of the Uyghur. As an outlet that connects the Uyghur territory to broader Central Asia, the Ili River is also a symbol of cross-border movements and alliances. Recently, villagers in southeastern Kazakhstan picked up copies of the Qur’an—wrapped in zippered plastic bags—floating in the lower stream of the Ili. It is believed that they had been thrown into the river by the Muslims in Xinjiang in order to protect the holy book from being confiscated and burned (Holdstock 2019). In modern Uyghur poetry and stories, rivers are frequently cast in the narrative of grief and sorrow, metaphorically connected to national sacrifice (qurbanliq, pida). The famous Ili song “Ah urarmen” (I sigh), for example, sings Köz yéshim derya bolup (My tears become a river). The river water also symbolizes the blood that is shed (tökken qanliri) for national struggle. The early twentieth-century nationalist author Memtili Ependi (1901‒1937) wrote in his famous poem “Biz Uyghurning baliliri” (We, children of the Uyghur) (1930):1 166

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Biz Uyghurning baliliri könglimiz nurluq, Bésip ötken uzaq hayat yolimiz uluq. Köp zamanlar sersan bolduq zalim qolida, Derya-derya qanlar töktuq erk yolida.

We, children of Uyghur; our hearts are bright. We lived long lives; our road is great. For long time we wandered in the hands of the tyrant. We shed rivers of blood in our road to freedom.

The Ili River forms a part of the larger intertextual reference to the natural landscapes in modern Uyghur poetry, plays, and music. The connection between the river and sacrifice is made explicit, for example, in a modern play titled Gülemxan, which tells the story of a fifteen-year-old young woman named Gülemxan—the play’s female protagonist—and her fight for freedom (öz erkinliki üchün qaymay küresh qilip). The play is said to be based on real events that took place in the 1820s in a mehelle neighborhood called Oymanbulaq, near the Ili River. In the play, the yüz bégi (hundred-household beg) is Engge Cholaq, a powerful leader of Oymanbulaq, who is sixty-five. He forces Gülemxan to marry him. Gülemxan declines and runs away with her lover Extem. The yüz bégi then sends officials to chase down Extem and kill him, after which, notably, Gülemxan jumps into the Ili River to commit suicide. In her final solo, Gülemxan sings, “Erksiz yashash bizge ar-nomus” (Life without freedom will bring shame to us), after which she bids farewell to the world. The chorus then sings “Yürektiki sériq sular qangha örüldi” (The yellow water of the river is turned into blood) in the play’s final song.2 The Gülemxan story appears frequently in different forms of oral literature and has been featured prominently in the Ili repertoire of folk singing, specifically in a medley (yürüsh) that bears its title.3 Indeed, many of these references to the Ili River are found in Ili-style songs. A number of these songs follow a realistic approach to portraying the beauty of the river’s natural landscape. A well-known example is “Ili derya boyliri” (Ili riverbank), a modern song written by Ghiyasidin Barat based on a text by Turghan Shawdun. The first couplet of the song reads: Cheksiz ketken munbetlik Ili derya boyliri / Örkesh yasap tinmaydu merwayittek suliri (The vast, fertile banks of the Ili River / Its wave is not quiet, its water like pearls). The stylistic genre known collectively today as Ili xelq naxshiliri (folk songs) is marked by highly elaborate melodies and melancholic subtleties. It has wellestablished expressive means of connecting the natural world to other domains of human experience. Textual and musical imaginaries of natural landscapes abound, referencing mountains, lakes, steppes, rivers, and lakes in texts and images. These songs are often deeply nostalgic of an imagined national past. Another good example here is a modern song titled “Ili boyliri” (Banks of the Ili River), composed by Nurmuhemmet Rozi based on a text by Qasim Sadiq.4

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Ili boyliri

Ili Riverbank

Ejep gülgün Ili boyliri, Zoqi küchlük bahar ayliri. Yurtimizning qizil gülliri, Shéhitlarning tökken qanliri.

Really beautiful, the riverbanks of Ili, Delights of the lush months of spring. Red flowers of our homeland, Shed blood of the martyrs.

Ejep otluq Ili boyliri, Hékmetke bay öngkür-sayliri. Jaranglaydu Sadir naxshisi, Nozugumning yangraq küyliri.

Really bright, the riverbanks of Ili, Caves along the river valley are wisdom and wealth. Sadir’s song is sung, In the resonant melodies of Nuzugum.

Ejep sirliq Ili boyliri, Köz yummaydu hetta tünliri. Oyghitidu tanglarni chillap, Bulbularning changqaq ünliri.

Really mysterious, the riverbanks of Ili, Don’t shut your eyes even at night. Dawns will be awakened By the parched voice of the nightingales.

The poetic images of the Ili riverbanks serve here as an anchor in the three stanzas, each of which has four lines. Each line has nine syllables and is rhymed throughout. The song follows a rather typical design found in many modern Ili songs. It is written in a sour-sounding modal scale that features two fluctuating pitches on the sharpened second and flattened seventh steps. The melody of each stanza is arch-shaped, moving from the lowest register in the first to the highest in the last. It is driven by a syncopated, somewhat limping rhythm framed in a quadruple meter: D · T DT | D · T DT | (D and T refer to the dumm and takk sounds produced, respectively, on the center and rim of the frame drum dap). The rural place reinvented here is the remnant of a bygone era, where martyrs such as Sadir (Palwan) and Nuzugum—legendary nineteenth-century protagonists who resisted against the Manchu/Qing regime5—fought and died for the Uyghur nation. Connecting these historical figures to the natural landscapes of the Ili riverbanks, the song provides a powerful allegory that speaks to most Uyghur today. To many who listen to these songs through a nationalist frame, celebrating the beauty of nature (and preserving it) is often not a different commitment from safeguarding the nation and its legacy. It is as much about reclaiming the land and its cultural memory as they are being dispossessed and erased. This song has been recorded and publicly performed by several singers. One of the best known of them is Abduweli Dawut (b. 1953), a Ghulja-based master folk singer of the Ili tradition, who included the song on his 2006 album Ayding axsham (Evening of moonlight). It is a little over five minutes long, accompanied by the staple Ili trio of the tembur, dutar, and satar. The music video starts with a visit by the singer to the mazar of Sadir Palwan (located in a suburb of Ghulja). Scenes of waterfalls, riverbanks, streams, mountains, and steppes are 168

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abundant in the music video. The camera pans back and forth between the natural features and the singer, who is seen strolling, singing, and sometimes playing instruments—a common filming strategy in many Uyghur pop and folk videos. These scenes are juxtaposed with close shots of the singer standing on the Ili riverbank, frowning as he overlooks the flowing water. Abduweli’s deep guttural voice is marked also by its soaring timbre and profound intensity, qualities that are highly acclaimed by many in his audience in Ili and beyond. His vocal style epitomizes what Turghan Shawudun (1986, 2) describes as the refinement (nepislik) of Ili folk songs: surging (jeshqunluq), resonant (yangraqliq), mournful (mungluq), and courageous (merdaniliq). Meanwhile, his singing has invited mixed reception elsewhere; a number of Ürümchi-based musicians and scholars have described his voice as similar to “animal roars,” alluding to a premodern sense of rurality that characterizes Uyghur folk. A musicologist compared the Ili vocal style to “wolf singing.” Ili songs and instrumental music are not for dancing (unlike the southern style), he maintained, because the melodies are soaring and tense.6 On the contrary, musicians in Ili are explicitly proud of their own music tradition, often relationally constructed as superior to that of Kashgar and the south. This Ili sense of cultural superiority is realized in a kind of elitist disdain for southern Uyghur cultures that range from language accents and cooking styles to architectures and even personalities. An Ürümchi-born young woman of Ghulja origin once commented, in fluent and authentically accented Mandarin Chinese, “To me, the southerners are tebie tu [particularly vulgar/earthy].” Many Ili Uyghur consider the Uyghur language as spoken in Ghulja as standard, and according to one, it sounds “more beautiful than the language in Kashgar.” A similar comment was made by a Ghulja-born social scientist, who described that the southerners get agitated easily, often resorting to fighting over very minor disputes. A businessman in Ghulja commented, a few weeks after the Ürümchi violence in July 2009, “I believe the rioters were mostly southerners from Kashgar, Khotan, and other southern towns. They came to the large cities from the south, but they don’t have jobs here. Most of them are of low quality and have received bad influences from Afghanistan and Pakistan.” Trying to be differentiated against the “uneducated” south, he maintained, Ili was influenced by Russia and is therefore more Western.7 Admittedly, these biases from the Ili elites sometimes sounded embarrassingly similar to the stereotyped representation of the “Uyghur threat” as concocted by Han settlers. Once when I asked Weli’akam—as the master singer Abduweli Dawut is known among his fans and disciples—to explain his understanding of the differences between Ili folk songs and other Uyghur styles, he pointed at a shabby mud-brick house on a small suburban street, and he explained that the Kashgar singing style is like that. He maintained that muqam singing should ideally be

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accompanied not by the satar, the quintessential instrument in the southern tradition, but rather by the tembur, the principal northern-style plucked lute favored by the Ili masters in muqam (as heard in the recordings of Rozi Tembur). This comment was echoed widely among other Ili musicians, notably with the Ghulja-born musicologist and educator Tursunjan Létip, who, as explained in chapter 3, was explicitly critical of the muqam reconstruction project, which, he argued, had too heavily relied on the southern-style muqam songs collected in the early 1950s, among other problems and unprofessionalisms he identified. Suffice it to say that, to many Ili musicians, the Ili style represents—and should be used to represent—the sophisticated façade of traditional Uyghur music in modern times. Ili musicians also pride themselves on being the pioneers of Uyghur cultural modernity. Yarmuhemmet Jamaldin, for example, was explicitly proud of the fact that the Western-style instrumentation, ensemble format, and composing techniques were first brought to Ili from Russia via influences from Almaty in Kazakhstan. Many musicians in Kashgar, he maintained, “don’t even read notation.”8 Ili musicians consider the refined, delicate melody of traditional Ilistyle singing and instrumental music aesthetically superior to the “upfront” and “coarse” Kashgar style from the south. The Ili-style of dutar playing, which makes use of multiple plucking techniques and combinations of downward and upward strokes, is similarly considered by many Ili musicians to be more sophisticated than the southern style, which, as a reputed Ili singer put it, “simply strums the strings.”9 The extent to which these comments are true aside, the refinement associated with the Ili style remains a major source of pride among its practitioners and audience. It speaks to the intricate and complex understanding of “folk” as entangled in a spectrum of local and national identities as they respond to modern influences.

“Minority Folk Music” in Modern China The intertwined senses of rurality and superiority associated with Ili folk singing may be understood in part through the musical place inhabited by the concept of “folk” in China’s post-1949 “minority” performing arts. In Mao Tse-tung’s classic indoctrination (McDougall 1980), the value of literature and arts lies in their capacity to incorporate the expression of the broad masses composed of workers, peasants, and soldiers. Artists and youths, including those in Xinjiang, were sent en masse during political campaigns in the 1960s and 1970s to the remote countryside and non-Han borderlands to live among the peasants and workers. Rurality emerged to become a favorite and popular aesthetic trope often invoked in a wide range of socialist expression in both 170

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Han and non-Han arts and musical genres. A glimpse through the catalogs of the propaganda songs created during the first three decades after the founding of the People’s Republic to represent the life of the “minorities” would bring us to such titles of “Uyghur songs” as “The Village Girl” and “My Friends Are in the Country,”10 as well as programmatic references to mountains, rivers, and rural landscapes in lyrics, music, and textual descriptions. The image of untroubled “minorities” singing and dancing in the countryside concocted for propaganda needs served as a renewed frame that elaborated on the motif of music-making “minority” subjects, as explained in chapter 1. Partly as a consequence of this, traditional performing arts, regardless of their history and origin, are often considered, indiscriminately, as “folk” and represented as “coming from the people” in post-1949 official representations. Harris (2008, 41) notes that the classical muqam is often designated a “‘folk classical’ music (khalq kilasik), both ‘high culture’ and ‘of the people,’” as a strategy to “protect the Twelve Muqam from future extremes of left-wing politics.” Organized trips to the countryside to “conduct fieldwork” are commonplace for performers and composers in urban performing troupes to learn from village musicians and get inspired by the purportedly more authentic styles and performing practices preserved there. It is also usual to see certain regional genres, notably those of the Dolan, being characterized as village, rural music, performed primarily by peasants. In short, the music of the non-Han people is frequently listened to in the realm of nature through connections with the rural place and its folk imaginaries. The “folk” designation is rarely unproblematic for some. I visited Shirmuhemmet Nuraxun, then a recently retired professor of tembur at the Arts Institute, to consult with him on the repertoire of Ili-style instrumental music, of which he is a recognized performer and educator. He leafed through a well-worn copy of tembur notation he had edited and compiled a few years ago (Shirmuhemmet Nuraxun and Mijit Yunus 2003), to show me the Ili songs he transcribed and adapted on the tembur. I noticed that the term Ili xelq naxshisi (Ili folk songs), originally printed next to the title of several pieces, had been consistently crossed out. Some had been replaced with names of their composers, in his exquisite handwriting, while others were left blank. I asked why he had done that. “Each of these tunes must’ve been written by a composer at first, and later on, successors added new things to them,” he explained passionately. “How’s it possible that these are all folk?” I asked if he had been obligated to use the term xelq naxshisi while editing the scores. He sighed and did not reply.11 To professional musicians like Shirmuhemmet, the indiscriminate “folk” designation devalues and trivializes traditional art. Meanwhile, to many local musicians, the term xelq and the rural sensibilities invoked often have very different meanings—and are unrelated to the

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“folk” designation imposed on non-Han music traditions in official discourses. It references a multitude of modern local and national identities. Smith (2007, 118–122) observes that affordable cassette tapes have facilitated the dissemination of the “new folk” songs—recorded contemporary folk songs composed by professional musicians using traditional style and accompaniment, sometimes with nationalist messages—from urban centers to the countryside via Uyghur migrant workers. These cassettes were “played (or the song performed) in the rural home before an audience of relatives, neighbours and friends, and the images and ideas within were reproduced in rural settings” (122). This style of “new folk,” best exemplified by the recorded songs of the legendary singers Ömerjan Alim and Köresh Kusen (1959–2006), also makes extensive use of aural and visual elements that invoke a distinctively country soundscape. The singing style of “new folk,” Smith explains, features “subtle tone shifts of the melodic line, free melismatic ornamentation and . . . a tendency to employ ululations (an inflection that draws on howls and/or cries to give the tone a ‘lift’).” In addition, these songs are “sung almost exclusively within a minor (and modally heptatonic) tonal structure,” which, with the melancholic vocal timbre, “evoke fragility and a sense of mourning, and at other times quivering rage,” embodying a sense of “mingled grief and frustration.” This is substantiated by the intimate and rather introverted quality of the dutar—the quintessential and often sole accompanying instrument of Uyghur folk across different regional traditions—whose timbre contrasts effectively with those of other Uyghur instruments, such as the courtly satar bowed lute and the progressive, uplifting rawap plucked lute as discussed in chapter 5. Overall, the new genre of folk and its grief-stricken soundscape have worked to interrogate the post-1950s official modernist aesthetics as well as the “excess of ‘happiness’ in official performances” (Harris 2002, 273). The music videos of these “new folk” songs offer multiple levels of poetic associations. These music videos were sold separately on inexpensive VCDs, which, despite the poor audiovisual quality of the compressed video files, were hugely popular among Uyghur audiences during the late 1990s and early 2000s.12 They offered a new medium and dimension for visual narratives in music. A quick scan of the music videos on two of Abduweli Dawut’s best-selling VCDs (2006a, 2006b) reveals that a majority of the tracks are filled with scenes of natural landscapes of the Uyghur homeland: rivers, lakes, woods, steppes, mountains, and wildlife, set against songs that are explicitly sorrowful and nostalgic in both textual and musical content. References to a bygone past were also common: ancient architectures, deceased family members, and young couples dating in the countryside, sometimes appearing blurred in black and white with slow motion.13 These “new folk” songs may sometimes be stylistically less distinctive or specific to a local tradition as they attempt to appeal to a 172

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broader national audience. Yet the folk sensibility being sought here is often firmly rooted in local places, reinventing the local and the indigenous as remnants of a dispossessed nation and to fashion a voice that embodies its maintenance. The intersection of the rural past and the urban present is manifested also in ways that identify the rural as national essence. The musicological search for primordial prototypes of muqam melodies and texts in remote locations among village, “folk” musicians, as discussed in chapter 3, has served to authenticate the folk as the origin of the national genre. Similar associations between the musical countryside and national essence were made by many pop musicians who claimed that they made regular “field trips” to villages and the countryside to get inspired by rural music and incorporate “ethnic” elements into pop songs. Such practice certainly has had wide resonance in new folk movements across the world. As Schechter (2002, 392) observes in Chile’s nueva canción movement, “many of its pioneering artists had done their own fieldwork, traveling widely through the Chilean countryside to hear and document principally rural traditions in music and music-related customs.” Icons of rurality evoked in modern Uyghur songs register a subaltern sense of modernity. It is where the origin of the lost national style may be salvaged and where the fashioning of an alternate expression of modernity is conceivable. The trope of rurality may thus be understood as integral, rather than antithetical, to the construction of modern national cultures.

Folk Canons A primary means of such construction is the canonization of folk genres. Similar to the muqam project described in chapter 3, the lesser-known local music genres also became targets of modern efforts of documentation, arrangement, and standardization, albeit often in smaller scales. A number of these, such as the canonization of folk singing and instrumental music in Qumul to become what is known, rather misleadingly, as Qumul muqam today, received generous support from local governments. The same is true for several other local performing arts across Xinjiang. In Ili, local musicians and scholars have worked to canonize a rich repertoire of songs and instrumental music that are distinctive to Ili and the bordering Yettisu district in southeastern Kazakhstan. The performance of this repertoire of so-called Ili folk songs is marked, among other things, by the practice of yürüsh, which refers to the banding together of songs that are modally or thematically related, or both, into medleys or sequences. In theory, a yürüsh may contain anywhere from three or four to nine or ten songs, although it is rare to hear more than half a dozen in

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performances and recordings. Musicians have established some extent of conventional sequences over history. Yet, as a matter of fact, these sequences often serve primarily as frameworks and are sometimes only loosely followed in actual performances. Musicians usually make spontaneous decisions about which and how many songs to include in a yürüsh, their orders (tertip), modal relations, and length, according to specific contexts, often shortly before a performance. Songs may be shortened or skipped. There are also individual preferences (shexsiy xahishi) and practices of different schools or lineages, some of which, in the past, were associated with neighborhood (mehelle) performing groups. A well-known set of Ili folk songs is the so-called historical songs (tarixiy naxshilar). It consists of texts and melodies believed to have originated in the nineteenth century or earlier. Some of the lyrics reference specific historical events or figures of the Ili Uyghur—the so-called Taranchi—against the “cruel Manchu government” from the 1760s to the 1880s (Turghan Sawudun 1986, 2). The melodies and texts of most of these songs are often of unknown authorship, despite that musicians sometimes attribute the texts of some of the songs listed as Sadir naxshisi (Sadir’s songs) to Sadir Palwan (1798–1871). One frequently performed medley includes five of these historical songs: “Wanxulu,”14 “Köchköch” (Migration), “Alwang” (Conscription), “Östeng” (Irrigation canals), and “Sépil” (City wall). All the songs describe the experience of forced migration, labor (hashar), and other hardships endured by the Ili Uyghur. The text of one of these, “Östeng,” for example, describes the suffering (külpet) of Uyghur labor building and repairing over a dozen irrigation canals during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in Ili (Memtimin Hoshur 2006, 23–25). Östeng

Irrigation Canal

Östengning tégi qattiq, Chapsa ketmen ötmeydu. Zalim tungchisi begler, Béshimizdin ketmeydu.

The base of the canal is hard, It can’t be dug through. The cruel interpreter of the begs Is not leaving us alone.

Östengning tégi laydur, Dessise lighildaydu. Zalimlar chiqip kelse, Yürekler jighildaydu.

The base of the canal is mud, Stepping on it is shaky. When the tyrants come, (Our) hearts pound.

In the performance by the master singer Abduweli Jarullayof (1910–1998), as recorded in Jian Qihua’s seminal research in the early 1960s and a set of studio recordings in the late 1970s, “Östeng” appears as the first in a medley of seven other songs grouped under Östeng naxshisi yürüshi, in which only “Wangxulu” from the five historical songs listed above was included. The other songs are scattered in different medleys (see Memtimin Hoshur 2006, 39–46). 174

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Figure 6.1  “Östeng,” an Ili folk song, first quatrain, transcribed by author based on a performance by Abduweli Dawut in September 2016. The first pitch of the original performance is around F#.

Yet in actual performances the medley in which a certain song appears may vary greatly, depending on the preferences of the musicians and their lineages or schools. Generally speaking, songs included in a yürüsh are “connected to one another naturally, and should be similar in their focuses, types, and characters” (Memtimin Hoshur 2006, 319). Most of these yürüsh also follow an arch-shaped design. The melody reaches the highest register, or ewj, somewhere in the middle of the sequence. In this set of “historical songs,” the climax is heard in the middle of the third song, “Alwang,” after which the melody descends back to its initial range. The first four songs are sung in a moderate tempo in a quadruple meter. A short instrumental interlude played after the fourth song, “Östeng,” signals metrical contraction, with the last song, “Sépil,” tightened to a duple meter and sung a little faster. Finally, the musicians played the instrumental piece—the merghul from Chebbiyat’s first dastan—to end the yürüsh. The ways in which songs are modally connected may be illustrated by a yürüsh called Xanleylun, which is also the title of an independent song included in the yürüsh—sometimes referred to as “Kichik Xanleylun” (the “small Xanleylun”) in order to distinguish it from other songs in the medley. “Leylun” is a female name; xan is a common affix added to female names. Yet “Xanleylun,” as both a song and a medley, should not be confused with the songs “Leylun” and “Qeshqer Xanleylun,” both of which are popular in the Ili repertoire. In one commonly heard version, the medley Xanleylun has four songs, often sung in the following order: “Kichik (small) Xanleylun”; “Chong (large) Xanleylun”; “Xanleylun”; and “Gülmeshuq.” Table 6.1 shows the modal details of the sequence. The melodies of individual songs and the overall medley follow the

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Table 6.1  The Song Sequence of the Medley Xanleylun and Their Modal Relations Order

Songs

Modal Scales and Transpositions

1 2 3

Kichik Xanleylun Chong Xanleylun Xanleylun

4

Gülmeshuq

Mixolydian pentatonic on C Mixolydian pentatonic on C (tonic: F), reaching the high A C-tetrachord (C–E–F–G), ascending G-tetrachord (G–B–C–E), and descending G-tetrachord (C–Bb–A–G) C-tetrachord (C–E–F–G) and F-tetrachord (F–A–B–C) [no B-natural]

arch-shape design and feature abundant use of escape tones (usually in thirds) (see figure 6.2). Assuming that the first pitch of the song is C (which may be understood as the fifth step in an F tonality, or “sol”), the first song starts in the C Mixolydian pentatonic mode (or in “F major” but starting on the fifth step of the scale). The second song is in the same mode but with the tonic shifted a fourth up to F, and it explores the higher register, reaching the high A. The third song explores three tetrachords of different configurations on, respectively, C, G-ascending (with B-natural), and G-descending (with B-flat). The last song starts similarly to the third, but it proceeds to an F-tetrachord (with B-flat) and ends in a more or less F tonality (or C Mixolydian). Every song returns to the low C before proceeding to the next. Local scholars trace the origin of Ili yürüsh to the mid-nineteenth century. Turghan Sawudun refers to an unpublished manuscript titled Éniq melumatlarni bilen yazdim ([A book] written with precise knowledge) by the damolla (the high mullah) Nadirxan (1938–1964), of Penjim, a town about fifteen kilometers northeast of Ghulja. Nadirxan attributed the earliest attempt of collecting (toplishish) and arranging (retlish) Ili songs to the nineteenth-century musician Toxti Dutarchi (1817–1868), who had also transmitted the sequence of the Sadir songs. He also mentioned the master singer and dap player Aq Béliq (lit., “white fish”; 1844–1943), who had been known for accompanying folk singing on the dap, as well as setting the poems “Jede baytal” (Brown mare) and “Samawar” (Samovar) by Sayit Muhemmet (1820–1881) to music. Turghan considers these pioneering efforts of “creating medleys” (yürüshleshtürüsh). In the early twentieth century, members of the so-called Kök könglekler (Blue Collars) ensemble also reportedly arranged and ordered songs into medleys that informed some of the modern-day repertoire, including, famously, Kocha naxshisi (Street songs), Leylun, and Waderixa, among others. Some suggest that the medley format started around the 1930s with the activities of the cultural enlightenment associations (sana’inepise) as discussed in chapter 2. According to Musajan Rozi, the traditional repertoire of Ili folk songs—or the “classical Ili 176

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Figure 6.2  Transcription of the beginning and selected phrases of the four songs that form the yürüsh Xanleylun, based on a recorded performance in On ikki yürüsh Ili Uyghur xelq naxshiliri (2008), showing the progression of modes (and tetrachords) in the sequence. Transcribed by author.15

folk songs” (klassik Ili xelq naxshiliri)—had no more than sixty songs, and they were grouped into nine yürüsh (Memtimin Hoshur 2006, 320, quoting Batur Ershidinov and Hüsenjan Jami). The efforts to order and connect songs intensified in the mid-1950s with the work of Rozi Tembur and Zikri Elpetta (who taught music classes at the Ili theater), as well as the field recordings made by Jian Qihua on the performance of Abduweli Jarullayof in 1962 (with the transcription published in the late 1970s and early 1980s). These works came in part from local musicians and scholars as a response to the perceived trivialization and diminished role of Ili traditional music in the modern official projects and representations. Historians have attempted to establish the connection between the great tradition of On ikki muqam and Ili singing, arguing that “the long history of songs and instrumental music of Ili and the Yettisu area has played an important role in the birth of On ikki muqam” (Memtimin Hoshur 2006, 64–65; see also Ghiyasidin Barat and Abdukérim Osman 1995). The reconstruction was based initially on a set of studio recordings of Abduweli Jarullayof made at Shinjang xelq radi’o istansisi (Xinjiang People’s Radio Station) in 1976, which were then transcribed and arranged into twelve song cycles and published in Ili xelq naxshiliri (1986). In the transcription, all medleys are numbered, and there are altogether twelve medleys in the “complete” repertoire of Ili songs. This version of “Ili folk songs”

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Table 6.2  Twelve Yürüsh Medleys of Ili Folk Songs Order

Titles of the Medleys

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Östeng (Irrigation canals) Gülemxan (Person’s name) Orma naxshisi (Harvest songs) Kocha naxshisi (Street songs) Xanleylun (Person’s name) Derding yaman (Deep grief) Ah yarimey (Ah, my love) Hey-hey nadan (Hey fool) Gül qisqan méning yarim (My flower-wearing love) Waderixa (Person’s name) Örgiley (Pleasure) Leylun (Person’s name)

10 11 12

5. Xanleylun (1) Kichik Xanleylun (2) Chong Xanleylun (3) Xanleylun (4) Gülmeshuq (5) Noderkam naxshisi (6) Kichik Aylixan (7) Kichik Altunum (8) Gülyar

The twelve yürüsh medleys of Ili folk songs, based on the recording of Abduweli Jarullayof (1910– 1998) at Shinjang xelq radio istansisi (Xinjiang people’s radio station) in 1976, as published in the transcription Ili xelq naxshiliri (Ili folk songs) (1986).

then became somewhat canonic. Here the medley Xanleylun, which contains eight songs, is numbered fifth. Table 6.2 shows the twelve medleys in the canon and the eight songs that form the medley Xanleylun. In local practices, it is common to start a yürüsh with an instrumental prelude muqedimme and end it with an instrumental postlude merghul. The preludes are usually brief (rarely longer than five minutes or so in the Ili practice), whereas the postludes may be rather extensive. Both muqedimme and merghul may be taken from muqam or any other existing instrumental pieces. As explained earlier, the decision about which pieces to use is often a spontaneous one. In addition, all instrumental works have the potential to function as a merghul. In a performance of the yürüsh Leylun by Abduweli Dawut and Yakub Ababekri I attended in late 2016, for example, four songs were performed: (1) “Leylun 1” (or “Kichik Leylun”); (2) “Leylun 2” (or “Chong Leylun”); (3) “Nadan”; and (4) “Yar séning déding.” The musicians decided, a few minutes before the concert, to use the muqedimme of Ruxsari, a “new muqam” composed in the 1930s by Zikri Elpetta, as a prelude, and to end the medley with a merghul from a dastan song (the first) of the same muqam. On the contrary, the standardized versions—some of them based on Abduweli Jarullayof’s ethnographic (1962) and studio (1976) recordings—look quite different. In this version, Leylun is the twelfth medley, in which neither “Nadan” nor “Yar séning déding” was present. In the monograph Uyghur on ikki muqami 178

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we Ili xelq nashiliri (Uyghur twelve muqam and Ili folk songs) (Ghiyasidin Barat and Abdukérim Osman 1995), Leylun was listed as the second medley, where both the songs “Nadan” and “Yar séning déding” were included, together with six other songs, preceded by a muqedimme from muqam Chebbiyat, not Ruxsari. More changes were made in On ikki yürüsh Ili Uyghur xelq naxshiliri (Twelve medleys of Uyghur folk songs) (2008), a four-CD anthology that includes modern recordings of the twelve “complete” yürüsh. The songs in this set are rather substantially reordered to reflect what the chief editor Yarmuhemmet Jamaldin, himself a musician, considers the modal and melodic link between the corresponding yürüsh and muqam. Yarmuhemmet pointed out that the close relationship between muqam and folk songs was unique to Ili, where it was common to play melodies from muqam and folk songs side by side—a practice rarely seen in other Uyghur traditions. He speculated that Ili folk songs were descended from muqam or historically related to it in some ways. This explains, to him and many other local musicians, the complexity of its musical form, its arch-shaped design, and the modal relations. Both muqam and Ili songs have twelve suites because, he maintained, the number “twelve” naturally evolved in history, and like muqam, songs in a particular Ili yürüsh should also be modally connected. “There were already twelve yürüsh in Abduweli’s recordings in the 1960s,” he added, arguing that the number “twelve” is not a modern creation. The songs were reordered in his audio anthology to “reflect their modal relations.” In his sequence, Xanleylun became the first set among the twelve yürüsh, because, according to Yarmuhemmet, the mode of the songs in the Xanleylun suite corresponds to that of Rak muqam (which is the first in On ikki muqam).16 Modern attempts to canonize the Ili repertoire of Uyghur folk singing have introduced not only standardized sequences and pieces but also a certain level of classicization of the music. To local musicians and scholars, the canonization works to reclaim a national tradition by highlighting how the Ili repertoire has always been relevant and superior (vis-à-vis the southern styles). By connecting the otherwise regional muqam and folk music to the national On ikki muqam, the canonization gives the trope of rurality and its imaginaries in Ili folk music a national shape.

Intangible Cultural Heritage and the “Original Ecology” Style In late summer of 2009, Weli’akam received a phone call from a local official, informing him that a crew from a television station in Beijing would soon come to Ghulja to film his singing and interview him for a documentary about

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Table 6.3  Major Printed Works, Notations, and Audiovisual Anthologies of Ili Folk Songs since the Early 1960s Years

Notations, Recordings, and Research

Notes

1962

Field recording, Abduweli Jarullayof (1910–1998) Studio recording by Abduweli Jarullayof Xinjiang yili Weiwu’er min’ge (Ili Uyghur folk songs of Xinjiang) Ili naxshiliri (Ili songs) Ili xelq naxshiliri (Ili folk songs)

By Jian Qihua; unpublished

1976 1978

1979 1986

1995

1995

2006

2008

2008

Uyghur on ikki muqamning Ili wariyanti (Ili variant of Uyghur twelve muqam) Uyghur on ikki muqami we Ili xelq naxshiliri (Uyghur twelve muqam and Ili folk songs) Ili xelq naxshilirining tarixiy bayani (Historical explanation of Ili folk songs) On ikki yürüsh Ili Uyghur xelq naxshiliri (Twelve cycles of Ili Uyghur folk songs) Ili naxshilirining bayani (Explanation of Ili songs)

Shinjang xelq radi’o istansisi (Xinjiang People’s Radio); unpublished Transcription of the field recordings Abduweli Jarullayof (1962); cipher notation; lyrics only in Chinese translation Uyghur text printed in Latin alphabets Transcription of Abduweli Jarullayof’s 1976 recording; cipher notation, lyrics in Arabic-scripted Uyghur; edited by Turghan Sawudun Monograph by Memtimin Hoshur

Monograph by Ghiyasidin Barat and Abdukérim Osman Monograph by Memtimin Hoshur

4-CD set; based on recordings made in 2003 at Shinjang xelq radi’o istansisi 10-DVD set; including recordings from the mid-twentieth century and more recent ones; categorized by themes

“minority” music performed in the style of yuan shengtai (lit. “original ecology”), a Chinese neologism about which Weli’akam, who spoke less than survival Mandarin, did not have the faintest idea. Unlike many professional musicians in his generation, he never attended any music school and does not read notation, and he has never been employed at any professional performing troupes. In official discourses, during much of the second half of the twentieth century, oral transmission was “unscientific” and its practitioners were musically “illiterate.” As explained in the last chapter, the dutar, a quintessential 180

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instrument that accompanies folk singing, has been received in the modern era as primarily a domestic and somewhat amateurish instrument for its soft timbre and “simple” techniques—unfit for professional, concert hall practices. Likewise, the locally revered Ili folk singing, which Weli’akam masters, is often absent in the celebratory soundscape in official performances, which have mostly desired the exoticism of appropriated “minority” music or the modernist repertoire. In some sense, Uyghur folk singing is a residue; it inhabits the hinterland of the state-promoted versions of “minority” performing arts. One morning when I visited Weli’akam in his house, he took me right to his tapestried chong öyi (family room) and showed me, with much pride, a certificate and a plate that the government had recently awarded him. His name was printed, in Chinese and Kazakh (in Arabo-Persian script)—the official languages of the Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture, where Ghulja and most Uyghur towns in the Ili valley are located today—on the shiny-silver metal plate now hung on a wall in his courtyard, which recognized him as “an inheritor of Uyghur folk singing” of Ili and his house as a “teaching spot” (ögitish orni) of Uyghur folk songs. He had earlier, in 2010, been named by the Autonomous Region similarly as a “representative inheritor of the intangible cultural heritage of Uyghur folk songs” (gheyriy maddiy medeniyet mirasi Uyghur xelq nasxhilirining tipik warisi)—another new term that he tried hard to comprehend. He appeared—rather proudly and enthusiastically—as a chief judge on the popular televised singing contest Yéngi nawa (New nawa) aired weekly on Ürümchi Television Station. His name appears frequently in both Uyghur- and Chinese-language media as a musician of “original ecology” styled singing, and he would go on to become a spokesperson of Ili folk singing. To his surprise, he received a small monthly subsidy for being an “inheritor” and was obliged to perform at official shows and other activities as requested by the officials. The early twenty-first century is marked by a discursive and aesthetic turn in China’s “minority” performing arts. The pseudo-colonial representational strategy and its reformist aesthetics, as explained in previous chapters, are slowly giving way to what Stokes (2004, 49) calls “an increasing tendency toward the presentational and the mimetic,” which has come to “seek the ‘real presence’ of the Other rather than a represented abstraction.” This is duly represented in China by the great enthusiasm and academic fascination for the idea of intangible cultural heritage, an official system of proclaiming and protecting cultural heritage developed since the early 2000s and modeled after the UNESCO initiatives, implemented on the municipal, provincial, and national levels across the entire country.17 Related to this is the ongoing craze for “original ecology” (yuan shengtai) styles across the country. The notion of “original ecology” has its root in the late 1980s as a part of the liberalization of cultural expressions following the end of the Cultural Revolution. It was also fueled by a

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strong scholarly appeal to salvage and preserve seemingly vanishing musical traditions, an underlying theme that has characterized much of Chinese music scholarship during the second half of the twentieth century. Many have understood the movement as a dialectic response to excessive urbanization, reformist endeavors, and wide dissemination of foreign popular styles, which altogether have threatened the conservation of traditional styles and genres and contributed to their demise (Qiao 2006). In all, concerns over the disappearance of music traditions as a result of homogenization and decontextualization have brought about a heightened sense of cultural preservation. According to musicologist Fan Zuyin (2007, 94–96), the term yuan shengtai was first applied to musical performance as one of the criteria for a folk song singing contest held in 2001, in association with the opening of a new tourist site in Zhejiang, in which contestants were required to sing in their mother tongues. This approach was soon picked up by many other singing contests across the country and eventually became a stylistic category. The term yuan shengtai was then officially used in the subsequent season of the folk song singing contest held in August 2004 in the province of Shanxi. The neologism was then turned into a cultural discourse around 2010 in a wide range of other genres and performing contexts. It became a sensation across China, widely deployed in media, businesses, and the tourist industry to cater to the expanding consumerist interest in products and services marketed in ecological languages. Contests and festivals tagged “original ecology” blossomed from small towns to large cities all around the country, often with substantial official input and commercial sponsorship. All these events signaled an aesthetic turn that was premised on rediscovering and embracing stylistic attributes undesired in earlier reformist projects and official performances. Built on the fear of cultural homogenization and the demise of local idiosyncrasies, the “original ecology” style celebrates a variety of loosely defined premodern and folk practices often understood in an environmentalist frame, such as uncontaminated musical species and original, natural performing habitats. Broadly speaking, the term “original ecology,” a favorite buzzword in tourism and the music industry in China today, is used to designate a wide range of loosely defined genres that have previously come under categories such as folk, traditional, national, and ethnic. As a stylistic label, it takes up an environmentalist-preservationist frame that celebrates musical species uncontaminated by modernity and performed in natural, original habitats. Rees (2016, 58) offers a useful summary of the term’s definition and scope: 1. The term “original ecology folk song” draws inspiration from scientific and environmental concepts. It has wider implications than the phrase “traditional folk song”—it emphasizes the environment in which the 182

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singing naturally occurs, as well as traditional singing style, dialect, subject-matter, and so on. Invention and use of the term are implicitly tied to rising concern for intangible cultural heritage preservation, and to a recognition that absolutist value judgments derived from the norms of European classical music cannot be applied indiscriminately to other traditions. 2. “Original ecology folk song” may be equated with “folk style” and “authenticity,” and while some commentators note the historical connections between different styles, it is generally characterized as being the opposite of “national singing style,” “conservatory style,” “stage folk songs,” and “created” works. The rise of the “original ecology” style has been met with a mixture of skepticism and more optimistic critiques. Proponents of the movement, among them many in the scholarly communities who have been critical of reformist aesthetics, explain the emergence of the movement as heralding a proactive, hopeful narrative that advances the long-standing scholarly quest for preserving traditional, authentic performing styles and practices, as well as a response to excessive urbanization and disappearing traditions, a sense of alienation and powerlessness increasingly shared among the growing Chinese middle-class urbanites (see, for example, Qiao 2006). On the other hand, the designation is oxymoronic, in the sense that the modern preservationist setting is almost by definition antithetical to its original habitat, which is either already engendered or completely lost. In a sense, the term is more a discursive trope than referring to actual styles or practices. Many cast doubts on the showcasing of indigenous styles in the format of singing contests and point to the impracticality of applying a single set of criteria to rank the performances of vastly different styles and genres coming from a wide range of incompatible linguistic, geographical, and cultural differences. Others criticize the abuse of the term to promote performances that are in fact staged and excessively choreographed (for example, Tang 2008). Performances branded “original ecology” have ranged from staged, pseudo-minority shows to highly critical reconstructed presentations of traditional music. The outcomes are sometimes realized as decontextualized imitations that resemble little of the “original ecology” of the art.

The Case of Dolan Music A wide range of non-Han singing genres are enlisted in this new category of “original ecology,” including Mongolian urtin duu long song and khöömii overtone singing, polyphonic singing of the Dong known as da’ge (grand songs),

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and many others. The highest-profile candidate of Uyghur “original ecology” genres over the past two decades is indisputably a music tradition of the Dolan people, who traditionally reside along the Yarkand River valley on the southwestern edge of the Taklamakan Desert, in oasis towns such as Mekit, Maralbéshi, Awat, and Aqsu. The Dolan are generally considered a sub-ethnicity of the Uyghur, and they speak a language that is often regarded as a close dialect of standard Uyghur today. Their traditional music, which includes a variety of sung and instrumental folk genres and the classical muqam, is marked by highly explicit heterophony constituted by layers of contrasting timbres and improvisatory impulses, which altogether is distinctive from other Uyghur styles. The Dolan repertoires of muqam are typically shorter compared to other Uyghur varieties. A muqam suite normally lasts for around ten minutes or less. It starts with a brief unmetered muqedimme, followed by a few metrically varied songs and instrumental pieces, each featuring a distinctive rhythmic mode, such as chékitme (a 6-beat meter), senem (a 4-beat meter), and sérilma (a 5-beat meter). Likewise, Dolan musical instruments are distinguished from their Uyghur counterparts by the extensive use of sympathetic strings, such as the Dolan version of the plucked lute rawap and the spike fiddle ghéjek, which are often considered prototypical of Uyghur instruments. The trapezoidal plucked zither qanun, a major Dolan instrument, is rarely seen in other Uyghur music today. Many of these instruments, styles, and genres were previously considered too primitive even to be included in the state’s modernization project in the 1950s, so they remained largely untouched throughout most of the last century. Despite the fact that Dolan music was collected and studied by Wan Tongshu and other musicologists dispatched to Xinjiang in the 1950s, it remained outside the purview of the modernist reform.18 In contrast, the raw, rustic Dolan soundscape was received very differently at the turn of the new century—as a “minority” genre that symbolized the desired remnant of primordial, uncontaminated authenticity under the “original ecology” movement. It was brought under the national spotlight in 2004 when staged performances of Dolan musicians were televised on China’s Central Television (CCTV) on a program called “Folk Singing Contest of the Western Regions” (Xibu min’ge dianshi dasai). A promotional video describes the Dolan as playing music that “assembles the primordial power of simplicity and wilderness.” The next year, in 2005, the National Competitions for Original Ecology Folk Songs of Ethnic Minorities (Quanguo shaoshu minzu yuan shengtai min’ge dasai) were inaugurated in Gansu. The official coverage of a local television station describes that “original ecology songs” are about “equality among humans, and peaceful relations between human beings and nature.” Similar to other contests, songs should be “sung in indigenous minority languages” in order to exhibit the “original values and flavors” of minority “original ecology” music.19 184

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Figure 6.3  Dolan musicians performing at the Tanz- und Folkfest (TFF) in Rudolstadt, Germany, showing three main melodic instruments (left to right): the Dolan rawap, the qanun, and the Dolan ghéjek (July 2012; photo by author).

Dolan musicians were entered in 2006 as candidates at a program called the CCTV National Television Award Contest for Youth Singers (Quanguo qingnian geshou dianshi dajiang sai). Started in 1984 as a biennial singing competition that incorporates various levels and styles of singing for both Han and non-Han contestants, the contest introduced for the first time a stylistic category called “original ecology” (yuan shengtai) in its twelfth season in 2006. This effectively ended China’s tripartite division of vocal styles into “national” (minzu), “bel canto” (meisheng), and “popular” (tongsu), the so-called three singing styles (san zhong changfa), which were eventually abolished in 2014. In essence, it means that the label of minzu style—which blends vaguely national Chinese styles into what is essentially bel canto vocal projection, with rearranged melodies and texts accompanied by European instrumentation and harmony, and sung by professionally trained performers in Mandarin—became inadequate to include a variety of purportedly “untouched” singing styles that had previously been considered unfit for staged performance but were then welcomed for their authenticity. Dolan musicians contested again in 2008 and 2010, and they won awards in both years. Some of their performances, however, call into question the idea of

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authenticity. In the 2010 contest (the fourteenth season), a group of young Dolan musicians and dancers were picked to represent the Uyghur in the category of “original ecology.” Dressed in colorful uniforms, the musicians performed a traditional piece titled Sim bayawan, one of the nine or ten muqam suites identified with the Dolan. Bayawan (lit., “desert”) is the Dolan musical term for the genre, equivalent to muqam. Like the majority of other televised shows on CCTV, the soundtrack had been prerecorded. The instruments were held, rather oddly, by a strap around the neck or waist of the male performers, who were standing in the back row. The instrumentation, which consisted of three ghéjek spike fiddles on the right side of the stage and three rawap plucked lutes on the left, with one qanun plucked zither in the middle of the front row, was oddly symmetrical. Additionally, the shout-singing—the most mesmerizing quality of the Dolan “original ecology” soundscape—of the young female vocalists, who played the dap framed drum in a highly choreographed manner, appeared to be synchronized and somewhat mechanical. The spontaneity, in other words, was carefully rehearsed. The pounding rhythm, another defining trait of Dolan music, was also reified here to achieve a sense of synchronicity, clearly at odd with practices of improvisation among older generations of musicians. Nonetheless, this group went all the way into the final round of the contest and ended up winning the bronze prize (the second runner-up) of the “original ecology” category. On the other hand, the idea of performing in the “original ecology” style is not always comprehensible to musicians in professional circles. I recall a conversation that took place over a dinner in spring 2005 in Ürümchi, between the Uyghur director of a professional performing troupe, who was himself a professionally trained percussionist, and a visiting Han musicologist who was in residence at a local higher music institution. The Uyghur director said to the Han musicologist that his troupe had recently received a generous grant from the Cultural Bureau for their performance and research. The Han musicologist, who spoke in a commanding tone as if he was invited to offer comment on the performance of the troupe, urged the Uyghur director to reevaluate their performing styles (assumed to be excessively progressive) by introducing practices of improvisation as among Dolan performances. The Uyghur director, who had otherwise kept a rather low profile throughout the dinner, was evidently perplexed by this particular comment. He frowned as he responded with a reluctant smile, “Isn’t improvisation simply that all voices and instruments sing and play together in chaos?” He continued, “I’m afraid this wouldn’t be very feasible for our ensemble.” The Han musicologist went on to give the Uyghur director a small lecture on the idea of improvisation and demanded a rehearsal recording after the ensemble made improvements. After the meeting, the Han musicologist commented to me that Uyghur musicians in these professional troupes 186

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could not properly understand the importance of playing traditional music in the original and authentic style, and they needed to be better informed.20 A few months later, in summer 2005, the professional troupe invited four Dolan musicians from Merkit to Ürümchi to teach its musicians Dolan singing and instrumental music, in order to prepare for a large-scale, official concert in September that celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. I attended two of these rehearsals in summer 2005. In one of these, the Dolan musicians taught a song, orally, line by line, to the vocalists of the troupe. The vocalists worked hard to follow a transcribed notation and showed amusing expressions at phrases or notes that were difficult to follow. A leading Dolan musician was clearly displeased at an occasion after the professional vocalists failed to imitate a short phrase accurately after no fewer than two dozen attempts. To many musicians in the troupe, it was an eye-opening experience. A vocalist I talked to afterwards said that Dolan singing was difficult and exhausting, and she had never encountered anything similar in her conservatory training. Another vocalist of the troupe, after this initial encounter, went on several trips to the Dolan areas to make field recordings and eventually incorporated elements of Dolan music into a number of traditional and pop songs he sang.21 Initially an academic fascination, the “original ecology” movement represents a primarily market-oriented and policy-driven reassessment of over half a century of reformist aesthetics and its clichéd singing-and-dancing motif in “minority” performing arts, by introducing sound ideals and performing practices that look back to the past, imagined or otherwise, not merely as raw materials to be processed but as exemplars and authoritative sources for imitation in contemporary performances. The conservationist narrative implicated in this new soundscape appeals at once to the academics, urban consumers, and tourists, as well as the broader transnational audience. These televised national or regional folk singing contests, which have received some of the highest ratings across China, remain among the major venues where the “original ecology” styles are showcased and introduced to the broader Chinese market. To many in the audience who are used to the post-1950s modernist soundscape, the stylistic changes are not negligible. The refined, sanitized timbre produced on the “scientifically improved” musical instruments since the 1950s ceases to be the only preference. Instrumental textures derived from European functional harmonic progression are generally avoided. Sympathetic strings on musical instruments are now welcome, not removed. Improvisation is largely considered fashionable, not unscientific, and the inability of the musicians to read notation—alongside other perceived amateurism—is now embraced as evidence of authenticity rather than dismissed as primitive or unscientific. Folk songs are now sung in native languages, which are largely unintelligible to the majority of the Chinese audience, not in Mandarin.

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It is important to also note that this new aesthetic is built not on established logics and tastes but rather on negating styles and practices “contaminated” by modernist influences. The professional music training as internalized in modern techniques, repertoires, and aesthetics needs to be undone in order for musicians to perform in ways that are considered “original ecology.” The incomprehensibility of the lyrics and styles is itself an authenticity to cultural outsiders. The “originally ecology” style is ultimately defined not by what it is but rather by what it is not. In some sense, the popularity of the “original ecology” styled singing represents a triumph of a long-standing scholarly effort, which has lamented the demise of authentic styles and performing context for traditional music in modern China. This echoes a primarily Chinese-language scholarly approach that has looked at “minority” performing arts—and their musicians, as “noble savages”—through their assumed connection with premodern forms of human societies and cultures, what Salemink (2008, 275) calls the notion of ethnic minorities as “contemporary predecessors.” The soaring voice and the improvisatory impulses found in Dolan music contrast sharply with the more controlled and refined styles of other Uyghur singing and instrumental genres. Its perceived musical wilderness and connection to the natural world have invited (primarily Han) musicologists to speculate on Dolan’s connection with “hunting cultures” in prehistoric human societies. Dolan performing arts, these scholars argue, retain features of nomadism that mark it distinct from other sedentary oasis traditions in Uyghur music (see Mao Jizeng 2006; Zhou Ji 2004). It is a remnant of an uncontaminated tradition that has been lost in modernization, these scholars maintain, and therefore it should be safeguarded and preserved in its original form. Musical ethnographies and field recordings have accordingly been produced since the late 1980s to salvage these “dying traditions” and to inform “stylistically faithful” performance.22 What connects the various traditional non-Han musical genres across China in the early twenty-first century is thus a process that may be called the ecologization of traditional music. It operates through the language of primordial authenticity and the discourse of preservation, in order to keep indigenous music relevant and recognized in the national (and global) music marketplace.

Folk Music as World Music It should be noted that the “original ecology” label is not specific to genres or styles. Rather, it has been applied to both Han and non-Han traditions as far as they are perceived as fulfilling, rather loosely and vaguely, some or all of the conditions of being ancient, indigenous, and authentic, especially in 188

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media and commercial usage. The Dolan style was initially recognized as such for its marked stylistic differences from modern Uyghur and other non-Han genres. To many local musicians, government officials, and other cultural brokers, the transnational success of these premodern soundscapes serves as an opportunity for other genres to reinvent themselves for the national and global marketplace. This is the case for other Uyghur genres that are otherwise stylistically remote from Dolan and other styles initially associated with the “original ecology” movement. In a recent collection titled Arzu (Wish), released by the Uyghur label Dil küyi (2015), for example, a Chinese tagline printed on the spine of the three-disc box set praises the artist Senuber Tursun, who sings and composes music in traditional Ili styles, as an “internationalized original ecology singer” (guojihua yuan shengtai gezhe). It alludes to a marketing strategy of this otherwise entirely Uyghur album that caters to its potential non-Uyghur audience. The same is true for a number of other Uyghur artists, albums, and online performances. The perceived authenticity and “ecologist” appeal of these musics and musicians are at the center of an intercultural circuit, where Uyghur musicians are increasingly engaged with discourses of musical globalism as well as the changing middle-class Chinese preferences. The “original ecology” movement represents both a continuation of and a departure from earlier modes of Uyghur intercultural musical encounters. Uyghur music did not find its way into the postmodern global circulation of world indigenous sounds on a noticeable scale until the final decade of the last century, when it was heard in the world music marketplace alongside other vernacular genres around the world through audiovisual recordings, music festivals, and scholarly publications. The most heard Uyghur soundscape in the world music market today departs significantly from the reformist and appropriated styles that have dominated the official staged “minority” shows in post1950s China. The ethnographic recordings of Dolan music made in the 1980s by musicologists Jean During and Sabine Trebinjac and released on the twodisc set Turkestan Chinois/Xinjiang: Musiques Ouïgoures (1990), for example, were among the earliest to bring global attention to this otherwise little-known tradition. These field and studio recordings, mostly produced by record labels outside China, complemented the official soundscapes of both the Chinese propaganda songs and the reconstructed classical muqam by offering living genres and styles heard primarily in private or semi-private (sometimes also sacred) settings. Others are live recordings made at overseas music festivals or concert tours performed by traveling Uyghur musicians who, while not exactly amateurs, have minimal affiliation with professional performing troupes and styles. Songs derived from classical muqam are often played in solo or small ensemble

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settings and appear almost invariably as individual numbers rather than suites performed in their entirety. In some sense, Uyghur music as it circulated in the global world music marketplace had put in place a sonic model that prescribed the emergence of the “original ecology” style in the early twenty-first century. Self-consciously or otherwise, it operated in an oppositional discourse, one that celebrated styles and practices that were rejected in state-supported and/or national-constructivist performances.23 The performance of authenticity is sometimes less coherent than intended. I recall a performance at the 2012 Tanz- und Folkfest (TFF) Rudolstadt, which featured a group of well-traveled and sought-after Dolan musicians from Merkit. At an outdoor session I attended, the group performed, among other more traditional folk and muqam pieces, a medley of three melodies in the format of a trio that consists of two female vocalists accompanied by a male performer playing the Dolan version of the rawap plucked lute. At least two of the three songs are clearly not of Dolan origin, including “Oynasun,” originally a melody from the eastern oasis town Turpan, popularized in the early 2000s by a hugely famous pop interpretation of the all-women group Shahrizade. The Dolan performance at TFF Rudolstadt somewhat mimicked this livelier pop version, which was clearly unfamiliar to the rawap performer. He tried hard to follow the singing by plucking basic, rather unfitting drone patterns, in lieu of heterophony or other idiomatic accompanying approaches. A few dance numbers—played on prerecorded music—were clearly not Dolan in origin, including a teze song from On ikki muqam. Such stylistic incoherence was remarkable amid discourses of authenticity that loomed so large in Dolan performance inside and outside China.24 Another case that illustrates the stylistic and discursive ambiguities as traditional Uyghur music encounters the global world music industry is a muchreviewed CD-DVD set titled Borderlands: Wu Man and Master Musicians from the Silk Route, released in 2012 as the last of the ten albums under Smithsonian Folkways and Aga Khan Music Initiative’s Music of Central Asia series. This album is different from most other titles in the series in one major way: the featured artist, Wu Man (b. 1963), a Chinese American pipa virtuoso and founding member of the Silk Road Ensemble, is admittedly not a bearer of the traditions featured on the album, which comprises Central Asian and Uyghur music. The project sets out, as the liner notes describe, to explore and revitalize “connections between Chinese and Central Asian music” (12). The involvement of the pipa is framed in a clichéd culturalist discourse: the pipa as an intercultural instrument was first introduced to China via the historical Silk Road over fifteen hundred years ago and was later assimilated into subsequent Chinese genres and styles (10–12). The contents of the album, however, clearly suggest that Uyghur music is in reality the mainstay, making it the de facto Uyghur volume of the Folkways series. 190

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Of the fourteen tracks on the album, ten are Uyghur and the remaining four come from Tajik, Kazakh, and Hui Chinese Muslim traditions. The pipa is featured in slightly over half of the pieces, most joined by one or two indigenous instruments as performed by some of the finest musicians in the traditions, including, in the Uyghur pieces, musicologist Abdulla Mechnun, the renowned singer-songwriter Senuber Tursun, and her younger brother Hesenjan Tursun, a very fine instrumentalist on the satar bowed lute. In these pieces, the pipa assumes a role that diverges from the repertoire of post-1950s “minority”-themed exotic compositions created for this and other Han instruments. Instead of fabricating Uyghur styles with modern Chinese melodies tinted with stereotyped “minority” colors and gestures, here, Wu Man learns, on the pipa, to play the Uyghur pieces quite faithfully as they are played on Uyghur instruments. Although not mentioned in the project, this is reminiscent of the extensive learning, transcription, and performance of traditional Uyghur music by the Xinjiang-based pipa performer Wang Jingmei (b. 1940) since the late 1970s.25 Here, in the album Borderlands, the pipa accentuates rhythms, plays countermelodies, and leads solos. Its bright timbre blends quite effortlessly into the deep resonance of the dutar and the satar (effectively substituting the role of the tembur in the higher register), in a musical framework that resembles little of the Orientalist repertoire of the pipa and other Chinese instruments. The interpretation of Uyghur music on the pipa here sends an important message against more than half a century of musical exoticism in modern China. It should also caution against any casual analysis of intercultural collaboration under the clichéd binarism of “Chinese-Western fusion” and other pseudo-scholarly concepts of creativity and competence. Audio tracks from this album circulate widely in digital formats back at home among Uyghur listeners. I recall an olturash gathering I joined in Ghulja around the time of Noruz (Nowruz), in March 2013, during which a participant played, from his mobile phone, a track from the album Borderlands titled “Hanleylun” (or “Xanleylun”), featuring Wu Man on the pipa, Hesenjan Tursun on the satar, and Senuber Tursun on the dutar and voice. Hesenjan, who was present at the olturash, commended Wu Man on her learning of the Uyghur pieces line by line on the pipa. He had been surprised, he told us, to hear the pipa fitting so well with the dutar and the satar. The rest of the olturash participants listened to the recording repeatedly—played on a mobile phone—with great enthusiasm, and they burst into laughter when they heard the melodic fill-ins on the pipa played between vocal phrases—for instance, toward the end of the first line when the voice sustains the vowel -ul over the word bulbul (nightingale). Meanwhile, the crossover was also considered by some musicians to be at least a viable model for intercultural collaboration. In June 2016, also in Ghulja,

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I was with Weli’akam at his home discussing the repertoire for his upcoming Hong Kong performance, which I organized and coordinated. He asked if I could find a pipa performer to play with him in Hong Kong. I asked why the pipa was needed at the concert, which otherwise solely featured a repertoire from the Ili tradition of Uyghur music. He said it would sound good to have one or two Uyghur pieces accompanied also by a pipa, “just like what Senuber did.”26

Indigeneity and Heritage In early summer 2016, I was with Weli’akam at his house in Ghulja, gathering the documents needed to obtain permissions and the visa required for him to travel to Hong Kong for an upcoming performance tour. The red tape required for a Uyghur to travel abroad was highly frustrating and unpredictable. It did not help for him to be a self-employed “folk musician” who was not affiliated with any performing troupes, institutions, or businesses. We were told that approvals would be required starting from the level of neighborhood/subdistrict administration, then district police station, all the way to the Cultural Bureau of Ghulja’s city government, and probably also the county’s party officials. On our way to meet the head [idare bashliqi] of Ili’s Cultural Bureau, a middle-aged Uyghur official who had apparently been quite unpopular among local artists, we were accompanied by a staff dispatched from the office of Intangible Cultural Heritage. Sufficiently annoyed by the never-ending procedures and paperwork, I asked the staff, an ethnic Manchu, why her office, which was under the city’s Cultural Bureau, needed to be involved in approving visa applications. Sounding a little apologetic, she explained, in perfect Mandarin (the only language she could speak, I later learned), “you know, regardless of what, Weli da’ge [big brother] is our . . . how to say it . . . regardless, he’s our ‘ethnic person,’ and you know he’s also a person of the society [shehui renshi, meaning he’s not affiliated with a “work unit”], and you know . . . terrorism is rampant these days.” I was somewhat irked, although not entirely surprised, by her association of terrorism with the Uyghur (and especially with Weli’akam), and I raised my voice a bit: “But then why does his application to travel abroad need to be approved by the office of Intangible Cultural Heritage? We’ve already had the permission from the police station.” After thinking it over for a short while, very carefully, she started to explain that Weli’akam had been proclaimed a bearer of intangible cultural heritage on the Autonomous Region level, and now her office was working to file an application to make him (along with two other Ili artists, a composer and a storyteller) a bearer of intangible cultural heritage on the national level, which would presumably be a higher level of 192

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recognition and prestige. Given the perceived “political risk” associated with international trips, the Cultural Bureau certainly would not want any trouble in the process of promoting him from a provincial-level bearer to a national bearer of this distinctively local cultural heritage. Yet there was a second message: for these proclaimed cultural bearers, it is important to report all major performing activities to the office of Intangible Cultural Heritage because these activities belong to and should be regulated by the office. In other words, Uyghur and other non-Han musicians identified as inheritors of “original ecology” styles are assets of—and owned by—the bureaucratic system, and the office of Intangible Cultural Heritage functions effectively as a renewed system of control.

Epilogue The intangible cultural heritage project and its associated “original ecology” aesthetics represent China’s shifting strategies, modes, and tastes of consuming “minority” performing arts in the new century. It reflects an aesthetic turn that corresponds closely to the stylistic preferences of the global marketplace of world music. To many who acquired this new aesthetic preference, the clichéd singing and dancing model and its mid-century reformist aesthetics became obsolete, inadequate to sustain the curiosity of the rising urban middle-class consumers and academics. Performing arts now subsumed under the “original ecology” frame offer a refreshing canvas of commodities that allows non-Han performing arts to remain, in some sense, incomprehensible and unfamiliar, qualities that appeal to Han consumers. The “original ecology” movement points to the opposite of over half a century of representational tactics that seek to gaze at the non-Han peoples through a primarily modernist Chinese perspective. Uyghur and other non-Han performing arts, especially in their presumably primordial forms and styles, are among the most convenient objects to go to when such aesthetic purity is desired. Meanwhile, China’s expression of its own authentic national self is also increasingly dependent on the inclusion of traditional arts of the non-Han peoples, which have been the mainstay of the numerous “original ecology” singing and dancing contests, awards, and showcases held all over the country. Two of China’s four UNESCO-proclaimed intangible cultural heritage entries are from the “minorities”: Uyghur muqam and Mongolian urtin-duu (both proclaimed in 2005). It is also notable that the other two entries, qin seven-string zither and kunqu operatic singing, represent the most refined of Han musical and theatrical forms, contrasting sharply with the assumed rawness found in the music of the Dolan, which, rather than the standardized On ikki muqam

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performed on “improved” instruments, formed the main part of the materials China submitted for the UNESCO proclamation of Uyghur muqam. In other words, non-Han performing arts continued to be constructed upon a sense of primitivism, which, despite being somewhat positively received under the “original ecology” frame, remained problematic if they looked and sounded excessively similar to Han traditions. Similar to Baranovitch’s analysis (2003, 81) of the rediscovery of “minorities” in the 1990s in Chinese cultural expressions as a result of what he calls the “disillusionment with the primitiveness of the Han self,” Uyghur music framed in the “original ecology” discourse today is “remote enough not to hurt [Han’s claims to modernity], but close enough to be considered Chinese.” To assert authentic, indigenous Chineseness for the global music marketplace in the new century, non-Han genres and styles allegedly “uncontaminated” by outside influences remain some of the most favorite candidates. In this sense, the mimetic aesthetics championed by the “original ecology” movement served less as a corrective; it was less about repealing “minority” stereotypes or redressing earlier tactics of appropriation. Exoticism, despite being operated on a different hierarchy, remains firmly in place. The notion of “original ecology” is more a discursive trope than actual styles or practices. Its realization is also highly manipulated by official preferences and contingent upon representational needs. The global market flow of the authenticist, “untouched” soundscape has resonated with if not also informed the rise of the “original ecology” movement in China, which speaks as much to the preference of non-Han musicians to better connect their music with global networks of indigenous styles as it is a reaction of their audience at home to domestic problems of excessive development. The threat of stylistic homogenization looms large as non-Han artists struggle as the political and cultural Other in modern China. It is true that, for a few years up until 2017, Uyghur musicians such as Senuber Tursun and the rock singer Perhat Xaliq (Parhat Halik) (b. 1982), among very few others, had attracted substantial international attention. Yet many were still barred from moving freely at home, let alone traveling abroad. For those very lucky few who received the permission to perform outside China, many remained under extremely tight control and surveillance. In their homelands, Uyghur and nonHan musicians often had little or no voice in how these intercultural collaborations—which, to be clear, have never been reciprocal—should sound and look like. It is deeply ironic that Uyghur musicians were being told—once again, after over half a century of state-administered reformist ideology in performing arts—by the incoming Han “experts,” as benevolent helpers and enlighteners, about the right ways to perform and listen to their own music. Such deprivation of agency and its colonial implication invite comparison with the asymmetrical power structure in the world music industry (Whitmore 2020) 194

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and other intercultural collaborations, or what Robinson (2020) calls “inclusionary music and performance.” The “original ecology” aesthetic is consequently defined not by what it is but rather by what it is not; its musical ideals are upheld by negating the practices and styles produced at the conservatories and professional performing troupes. In a sense, they are recognized only when they appear unfamiliar and incomprehensible. It is these fragmented and particularized experiences with the intercultural that constituted the global profile of Uyghur music in the early twenty-first century. Responses to the movement among Uyghur musicians and audiences have varied, often contingent upon the discursive context. Local cadres see this as yet another opportunity to capitalize on traditional art and boost their achievements. The title of “heritage bearer” also serves as a form of prestigious public recognition that brings pride and a sense of dignity to local musicians. While the idea of performing in “original ecology” style did not initially make much sense to many professional musicians, it is fair to say that, against the heavyhanded censorship, policing, and persecution, the movement has at least been welcomed by some as a chance to showcase and safeguard traditional performing arts in ways that are least damaging. That Uyghur songs may be legitimately sung to non-Uyghur audiences in the Uyghur language is also felt by many as a temporary relief from the intensified policies to eliminate the use of indigenous languages in almost all public spheres. The renewed understanding of “heritage” has arguably also allowed a greater extent of participation by local musicians, offering them an avenue to connect their music with the transnational networks of world indigenous sounds. Yet, despite optimistic analyses and speculations, the sanctioned expression of Uyghur performing arts remains tightly regulated by the state and aligns closely with the changing preferences of mainstream Chinese audiences. It would be at best inaccurate and unhelpful to look at the “original ecology” movement as an outcome of yet another wave of global influences that overwhelm and transcend local politics. As the Uyghur continue to be dispossessed of their heritage, musicians ask crucial questions about what it means to be indigenous as they struggle to reclaim their musical place.



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Conclusion

Héytem Hüseyin (b. 1944), a Uyghur actor who played the railroad switch-

man Li Yüxé (pinyin: Li Yühe), the leading male role in Qizil chiragh, the Uyghur-language adaptation of the Chinese “revolutionary model opera” Hongdeng ji (The Red Lantern) in the early 1970s, always had a pleasant, unassuming smile on his face even when we were talking about what he had experienced during the most tumultuous years of the Cultural Revolution. His unique sense of modesty and optimism was rare among Uyghur celebrities of his rank—and certainly not common for a much-respected former president of the Federation of Literary and Art Circles (Edebiyat-sen’etchiler birleshmisi), a state-affiliated cultural establishment for literary and performing arts. When I asked Héytem about the musical styles of Qizil chiragh, he explained how his fellow musicians had put in a lot of effort to adapt elements from the muqam songs in Mushawrek, Chebbiyat, and Rak while composing the arias. He then picked up a dutar, which had been hanging on the wall of the living room, getting the strings tuned to sing the opera’s unmetered opening song “Qizil chiragh qolumda karaymen her terepke” (A red lantern in my hand, I look around; scene 1, no. 2) and the first aria “Yoqsullarning perzenti baldu ishqa yaraydu” (Poor people’s children learn their duties early; scene 1, no. 4).

Qizil chiragh qolumda karaymen her terepke

A Red Lantern in My Hand, I Look Around

Qizil chiragh qolumda karaymen her terepke, Yuqiridin bir kishi ewetiptu Longten’ge, Belgiligen waqitni sa’et yette yerimge,

A red lantern in my hand, I look around,

Nöwetiki poyizni küteymen mushu yerde.

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The superior sent someone to Longten. The meeting time was set at half past seven, The next train should be the one I’m waiting for.

Yoqsullarning perzenti, baldu ishqa yaraydu

Poor People’s Children Learn Their Duties Early

Biligide séwiti shaxar térer mal satar,

She collects cinders in her basket and peddles goods, And does everything—fetching water, chopping firewood. She alone takes care of all the works at home and outside. Poor people’s children learn their duties early. The seedlings (trees) planted will produce the fruit, The blooming flower buds match the sown seeds.

Hemme ishqa pishqan u su toshup otun yarar. Öy we tala ishliri uninggila qaraydu, Yoqsullarning perzenti, baldu ishqa yaraydu. Qoysa qandaq köchetni (derexni) shundaq bolar méwisi, Urughigha yarisha échilar gül-ghunchisi.

The Uyghur-language production of The Red Lantern during the “Great Cultural Revolution” (Medeniyet zor inqilabi) bore significant meaning for many Uyghur, especially the musicians who were involved in the project, many of whom had, in the late 1960s, been labeled jin-sheytan (demon, Satan) and suffered serious abuse at the hands of the Red Guards (Qizil qoghdichuchilar)— paramilitarized university and secondary school students who had been mobilized by the Communist Party to carry out attacks on Mao’s “class enemies.” Héytem remembered hearing a group of renowned musicians, such as Pasha Isha, Hüsenjan Jami, Qurban Ibrahim, Iskender Seypulla (1937‒2009), and Ghiyasidin Barat, being coerced to sing the notorious “Song of Monsters and Demons” (a.k.a. “Howling Song”), a torture song forced upon alleged “reactionary academic authorities” and “capitalist roaders” during the “struggle sessions” for public humiliation. These musicians, Héytem witnessed, had sung the song at the top of their voices in both Uyghur and Chinese languages until the Red Guards allowed them to stop. According to other testimonies (Wang Youqin 2001), those who did not sing satisfactorily were beaten and further tortured. The text of one Uyghur version of the song, as Héytem remembered it, is translated below.1 Men bir jin-sheytanmen; Men bolsam xelqning düshmini. Gunahkarmen; gunahkarmen; gunahkarmen; Xelq méni dessep yanjisun! Ebjiqimini chiqarsun!

I’m a monster and demon; I’m an enemy of the people. I’m a sinner; I’m a sinner; I’m a sinner. I should be trampled and smashed by the people. Pull the tattered me out!

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substantial. Many who had survived the worst cruelty still found it unbearable to remember its details. Mosques were destroyed; religious texts and other books were burned; musicians and artists were put into reeducation camps for emgek bilen özgertish (“change with labor”; Ch. lao gai). At least two senior Uyghur musicians I have talked to—one of whom had been labeled “a member of the black gang” in the late 1960s and suffered grave torture—sobbed or burst into tears every time they recalled the torment they had experienced.2 The trauma remained deeply ingrained. Half a century later, in the late 2010s, the terror seemed to have returned. As described in chapter 1, testimonies of former inmates and staff members of the mass internment camps established since 2017 revealed the coerced singing of propaganda “red” songs and reciting of political slogans. Those who failed to comply or meet the expectations were put through further mental and physical torture. Many reportedly went mad or committed suicide. Uyghur sacred sites were destroyed; a huge number of Uyghur-language books and other publications were banned, confiscated, pulled off the shelves in bookstores and libraries, and publicly burned. Forced labor as a means of reeducation—which, to be clear, had never been abolished after the late 1970s—returned in full force to discipline the Uyghur and other Muslims. Even more horrifying is the fact that many Uyghur intellectuals and artists were being punished for “crimes” that, a few years earlier, had been perfectly legal or even officially promoted activities. All these atrocities have invited many to compare the ongoing mass incarceration and “reeducation” campaign to the Cultural Revolution (Nury Turkel 2021; Shih 2018). To return to the late 1960s, public performance of traditional music of any kind was almost entirely prohibited from 1966 to 1969. A musician recalled being condemned as “anti-revolutionary” after playing the traditional Ili instrumental piece “Ejem” on the tembur.3 Likewise, a schoolteacher remembered witnessing, in Ghulja, how one of her acquaintances had been seized by the Red Guards after playing the concerto Méning rawabim on the rawap.4 A major policy change took place at the turn of the 1970s: the state began to endorse and aggressively propagate the notion of “transplanting” (özleshtürüp ishlen; Ch. yizhi) “model” Chinese plays into non-Han languages and dramatic genres, as a major “weapon” to “unite the thoughts of people of all ethnicities” (Héytem Hüseyin and Ablimit Sadiq 1975, 62–63), to further the dissemination of “revolutionary messages,” and to advance the principles and practices of socialist realism in “minority” performing arts. Before that, during much of the late 1950s and 1960s, Uyghur theatrical works such as the dramas Küresh yoli (The battle’s path; Ch. Zhandou de licheng) (1959) and Xelq kommunisi yaxshi (The people’s commune is good; Ch. Renmin gongshe hao) (1965), both created based on traditional Uyghur music 198

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elements, had all been performed in Chinese. In contrast, in the early 1970s, Qizil chiragh was played and sung entirely in Uyghur, with musical materials drawn extensively from muqam and other traditional Uyghur music, scored for a mixed orchestra of Uyghur and European musical instruments. The production of Qizil chiragh was no small feat for the involved Uyghur artists, many of whom had, a few years earlier, suffered serious abuses during the most violent phase of the Cultural Revolution. Many came to look at the production as a long-awaited opportunity to restore some basic maintenance of their national tradition: singing in the Uyghur language, through indigenous musical idioms, served as a consolation—or, as Clark (2008, 76) writes, “a welcome relief from a steady diet of Han, Peking-opera inspired, or orthodox exhortatory modern songs that were the usual fare in public performance in the Chinese heartland.” In this context, Qizil chiragh is rarely received by Uyghur musicians as simply a “transplant,” and certainly not an unwanted musical kitsch that was devoid of artistry and creative integrity. The adaptation, which was created by Ghiyasidin Barat and Zikri Elpetta, among a few other big names in modern Uyghur music history, offered a platform for Uyghur artists to experiment with revitalizing their national musical and theatrical traditions after years of suspension. Elsewhere I write about the musical creativity in a number of scenes of the opera and argue that the Uyghur adaptation offered a remarkably fresh interpretation of the Chinese “model” by incorporating a variety of tonal and metrical procedures that were absent in the original Peking opera (Wong 2015, 147–165). A technical and aesthetic marvel, Qizil chiragh represents a perpetuation of the mid-century modernist style and its new narrative capacities as they are proudly upheld by contemporary musicians. Toward the end of one of our interviews, Héytem summed up what he felt about the opera: “It’d be a real Uyghur opera had we employed Uyghur expressions, costumes, and stage setting, and had the story taken place not in the northeast but in Xinjiang.” This statement powerfully captures the ambivalence and complex sentiments toward much of modern Uyghur performing arts today. Today, half a century after the opera was created, a number of arias from the opera are still heard in both private and public settings, most interpreted differently in one way or another.5 When Héytem demonstrated for me the two opening songs, as described in the beginning of this chapter, he sang them approximately a fourth lower (at around D#) than in the original recording (at around G#). This lowered “key” was heard in other local or pop reinterpretations6 and is certainly closer to the normative male vocal range of traditional Uyghur songs. A few other notable changes were made. For instance, Héytem altered the melody to accommodate a much narrower range, replaced large leaps with stepwise phrases, and incorporated some idiomatic ornaments (see figure 7.1). He also sang it in a much warmer timbre to a simple accompanying pattern on the Conclusion

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Figure 7.1  Transcription of two versions of the first line of the opening song “Qizil chiragh qolumda karaymen her terepke” of the model opera Qizil chiragh, both sung by Héytem Hüseyin: (a) an official recording from the 1970s; (b) a private performance in 2013. Transcribed by author.

dutar. Overall, his reinterpretation was rid of the inflated expressivity as heard in “model operas” and propaganda “red” songs as they were recorded in the 1970s and are publicly performed in official shows today. In a sense, Uyghur musicians have taken these songs and made them their own. This book has looked at the late twentieth century and beyond as a unique historical moment in which Uyghur music is implicated in at least two diverging yet interrelated discourses. The first bears traces of a colonial representational strategy that has taken root during much of the twentieth century, as the Chinese state seeks to assimilate Uyghur and other non-Han peoples and cultures into a newly conceptualized multiethnic Chinese nation. China’s representation of its internal Others, as Schein (2000, 102) puts it, has been “implicated in a complex mimesis that both struggled with being the Orient to Europe’s modernity and in turn echoed Europe’s othering modalities in its own colonizing discourse.” In music and other performing arts, this is realized in the manufacture of a repertoire of stereotyped expressions that promote “minority” exoticism and its “motif of music-making minorities”—an “othering modality” that characterizes much of the post-1949 Chinese encounters with Uyghur music. Until fairly recently in the rise of China’s so-called Second Generation Ethnic Policy—which rolled back preferential policies for the “minorities” and promoted a kind of “melting pot” principle (see Roche and Leibold 2020)—the staging of “minority” differences through means of ascribing ethnicity had remained a primary tool to sustain the legitimacy of the 200

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Chinese state. A second and related discourse is the espousal of nineteenthcentury European art music procedures—textual homogeneity, virtuosity, synchronized expressions, conservatory training, and professionalization, among others—as the modus operandi of concertized performances, as universal and ideal aesthetics to be installed on non-Han traditional music on their way to becoming modern. All these have brought Uyghur music in modern China into the realm of Soviet expressivity that resonates broadly across Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and East Asia, including China’s own Han traditional music. As explained, the interface of these two seemingly conflicting discourses was realized in a kind of schizophrenia in modern performance: as music instruments, techniques, and styles were rebuilt to sound increasingly progressive and, in a sense, nontraditional, the performing bodies—of the musicians and their instruments—were shaped and decorated to look more and more “ethnic.” Throughout the book I have suggested that modernist styles and procedures in Uyghur music may be understood as a means of subaltern empowerment. Being Uyghur and being modern—to borrow Kun’s words in a study on James Baldwin’s black and queer identities—are “not mutually exclusive terms to be kept separate and policed, but are instead sustaining modalities of existence commonly experienced and lived through one another—contingent and overlapping coordinates in an always shifting map of a self-in-the-making” (Kun 2005, 89). For many Uyghur musicians, being modern is an inclusive concept, one that is less bound and not necessarily opposite to what we commonly call “tradition.” Qualities, techniques, and styles associated with modernity are also rarely perceived as subordinate, limiting, or mere imitation of outside influences. What the modernist aesthetics and practices in Uyghur musical life enabled, I argue, is a kind of minoritized aural consciousness, a coping tactic fostered in response to the dual discourses of “minority” exoticism and modernist reformism, which have contextualized and framed much of Uyghur musical life in the late twentieth century and beyond. Such sensitivity is both social and aesthetic; it manifests as an acute aural awareness of being listened to—a kind of aural gaze that defines much of the public and private spheres of music making—and of the obligation to meet, respond to, and sometimes also challenge these requisites imposed on the Uyghur. It also entails a critical aural practice, one that listens against and beyond the dominant frames, tropes, and narratives. In many ways, this is comparable to part of what Balance refers to as the practice of “disobedient listening” in a study on how Filipino musicians challenge the “preoccupations with authenticity” and the “dominant discourses that continuously constrain and narrow our understanding of the sonic and musical in Filipino America” (Balance 2016, 4, 21–26). Styles, practices, and sound formations described in this book as “modern” have afforded a similar kind of listening space for Uyghur musicians and audiences to “listen against” Conclusion

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and to “rehearse other types of politics and affiliations than those merely based on the promises and demands of visibility” (5). The performing and listening strategies adopted by the musical lives portrayed in this book as they encounter modernity under a colonial context, as I hope is made clear, have been of neither rejection nor submission, nor an urge to choose between the two. Rather, it is the cultivation of a unique sense of deftness that has allowed musicians to move across the various localizing strategies and intercultural practices, and among the different realms of Uyghur musical life in modern China. It reorganizes the existing hierarchies and reformulates their meanings as the subaltern experiences of ethnicity, race, and nationhood are indexed in music. Between self-stereotyping and caricatures, between cultural enlightenment and modernist mimesis, and between indigeneity and intercultural aspirations, Uyghur music has been performed and listened to through a broad range of often conflicting and complex aesthetic preferences that resist easy interpretation. It is such complexity and ambivalence that define what it means to be a Uyghur musician navigating and grappling with all the grim realities of life in modern China, a cultural subtext about being resilient, unswerving, and resourceful that I believe has much to offer to the subjugated peoples of the world.

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NOTES

Epigraph 1. Muhemmetjan Rashidin wrote “Tughulmighanlargha” in early summer of 1993 in Ghulja. The poem was first published in his poetry collection Ömür ilhamliri (Inspiration of life) (2000, 112–113). The translation here is based on a slightly revised version published in another collection of his, titled Hayat dégen mana shu (This is life) (2005, 142). There are eleven couplets (the initial version had twelve), each of which ends with the poetic cadence chidisang kelgin, which means “come (to the world) if you can endure.” Each line contains thirteen syllables, most subdivided into a four-four-five structure. The poem was set to a modern song of the same title by musician Yakupjan Ababekri (b. 1976). The lyrics adapted seven out of the poem’s eleven couplets. An earlier version of this translation appeared in Wong (2019b, 60–63). Muhemmetjan Rashidin (1940–2021) was born in Ghulja Nahiye (county) of Ili. Upon finishing college in Ürümchi in the late 1950s, he returned to Ili, serving administrative positions in Chapchal and later as a middle school teacher in his hometown Onyar yéza (village). He suffered severe persecution and prolonged imprisonment during the Cultural Revolution and did not resume teaching until the 1980s. Muhemmetjan’s poetry is marked by a subtle sense of simplicity. His numerous poems, stories, and commentaries have appeared in almost every major Uyghur literary journal and magazine over the past few decades. Several of his most beloved poems have been set to music by contemporary Uyghur musicians. Other notable examples include “Sen yoq” (Without you) by Abduréhim Héyit (b. 1962) and “Ademler ulugh” (People are great) by Senuber Tursun (b. 1971). His poetry is the subject of Ekrem Abdumijit and Muhemmetjan Eysa’s monograph Sheydaliqtin sha’irliqqiche: Muhemmetjan Rashidinning ijadiyet hayati we ijadiyet alahidilikliri heqqide (From infatuation to poetry: On the creative life and characteristics of Muhemmetjan Rashidin) (2010). Chapter 1:  Ethnography and Music Scholarship 1. This is commonly believed to be the first “Uyghur song” adapted to the Chinese language, according to Liu Shuhuan (2000, 11–14), one of Wang Luobin’s biographers. The lyrics, written by Wang himself, exist in several slightly different versions. The translation here is taken from a version often heard in the recordings of Uyghur tenor Kérim (1940–2020). The song was initially named “Machefu zhi lian” (Love of a carter), written after Wang had

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reportedly heard the singing of a Uyghur cart driver (note that it has no relationship with the Shaanxi folk tune that shares the same title). The Uyghur melody from which Wang’s song is believed to originate is titled “Qemberxan,” which is commonly heard in Uyghur performances today. Wang changed all its upbeat phrasal entrances to downbeat, according to Liu (13). See Harris (2005a, 396–400) for a brief discussion of the representational politics around this song. 2. The first staged performance of On ikki muqam in Hong Kong took place in October 1988 at the Festival of Asian Arts. It featured Chebbiyat, one of the twelve muqam suites, in its entirety. Hüsenjan Jami, Dawut Awut, and a few other big names were among the performers. The concert I attended was their third tour in Hong Kong, in February 2000, which featured a trio of concerts that included excerpts from muqam suites Sigah, Iraq, Rak, Bayat, Ejem, and Penjigah. 3. Local scholars commonly identify a little over half a dozen regional cultures in the Uyghur territory. Rudelson (1997, 24) quotes from folklorist Nizamdin Yüsüyün to identify seven main divisions: “Dolans, Lopliks, Abdals (Äynu), Keriyaliks, Kashgarliks, Eastern Uyghurs (in Turpan and Hami), and the Kuldjaliks or Taranchis (in Ili).” 4. The national Uyghur music collectivity came partly also as an outcome of the ethnic classification and labeling in modern China (see Rees 2000, 17–19), as well as a reaction to the intensified interaction with Han and other non-Uyghur genres. See Anwar Rahman (2005, 37–40) for a brief history of the emergence of the term “Uyghur” and its political connotation. See Rudelson (1997, 97–120) for a study on local Uyghur self-identifications among urban intellectuals and rural peasants. 5. An official media report, titled “Zhu Gang budui xinbing li you shi ming Weiwu’er zu piaoliang meizhi” (There are ten pretty Uyghur girls among the new arrivals of Hong Kong’s People’s Liberation Army) (January 9, 2013), for example, describes the Uyghur female military officials serving the People’s Liberation Army in Hong Kong as possessing the “fine gene of good-at-singing-and-dancing,” dancing to the song “Dabancheng de guniang” with Han officials. https://photo.sina.cn/album_8_35101_20021.htm (accessed August 30, 2020). The Han, on the other hand, continue to be represented as opposite to such inborn musicality. In a high-profile “family portraits” album titled Harmonious China: A Sketch of China’s 56 Ethnicities (2009), for example, musical instruments are showcased in most of the fifty-six official nationalities with the notable exception of the Han and a small number of others. 6. See, for example, the best-selling album Oynasun (Let’s play) by Shehrizade Ansambili (2004). Some of their songs have been regularly played as soundtracks at tourist sites in Xinjiang and covered by other musicians at officially staged performances since c. 2005. 7. On more than a few occasions, mostly in unlicensed “black” taxis, the Uyghur drivers, invariably male, refused to accept the fare at the end of the ride and instead stuck out their hand to shake mine—a gesture of trust and brotherhood often displayed after seeing a non–Uyghur-looking person, like myself, who conversed with them in Uyghur and was sympathetic to their cause. I always thanked them for the offer and put the money in their pockets. 8. This conversation, which took place in June 2005 on a taxi ride in Ürümchi, was among the numerous other similarly racist ones I have had with Han residents in various parts of Xinjiang since the early 2000s. Han taxi drivers regularly asked Han passengers not to roll down the windows while passing through Uyghur neighborhoods, and Uyghur and some non-Han passengers were constantly denied service by Han taxis. The explicitly racist undertones, despite commonly understood to be politically incorrect, were often expressed unapologetically, and almost always with impunity. A business owner once

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recounted to me that it was a headache to hire Uyghur employees, because “if you gave them, say, a daily wage of ten yuan today, they wouldn’t come back tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, until they’d spent all ten yuan and they’d come back to work . . . and while working, they’d leave their duties to pray—five times a day. People of that ethnicity simply don’t have the work ethic” (June 2013, Ürümchi). Another Han taxi driver was even more blatantly racist when she tried to preach about why the Uyghur are a “lower species” of humans. “The Uyghur brains are simpler than ours,” she said (September 2009, Kashgar). These racist comments have also been reported in the media. The Economist quotes a Chinese official named Tang Liji of Ürümchi’s East-West Economic Research Institute on his view about “creating the right kind of jobs” for the Uyghur: “‘Because of their lifestyle, asking them to go into big industrial production, onto the production line: they’re probably not suited to that,’ says Mr. Tang, who is Han Chinese. Better, he suggests, to develop something like, well, basketball. That, Mr. Tang says, might work in the same way that America’s National Basketball Association creates ‘more job opportunities for blacks.’” (“Let Them Shoot Hoops: China’s Turbulent West Is Unlikely to Be Calmed by Plans for Economic Development,” July 30, 2011). 9. This conversation took place in summer 2009 in southern Ürümchi. 10. In many comparable ways, this also exemplifies what Shimakawa (2002) calls the “national abjection” in the racialization of Asian Americans in U.S. culture. In her analysis of the musical Miss Saigon (1989), Shimakawa argues that the Asian American body, while already an integral part of the American nation, is perceived as a source of contamination and therefore must be “radically jettisoned” in order to safeguard the integrity of U.S. Americanness. 11. The impact of the nuclear tests is documented in the video Death on the Silk Road (2001). See also Alexis-Martin (2019) for a study of China’s nuclear warfare and uranium mining programs in Xinjiang, which the author calls the “nuclear imperialism-necropolitics nexus.” 12. This conversation took place in person in December 2018; location unspecified. 13. The push to abolish China’s pluralist ethnic policy began to gain momentum in academia and beyond c. 2005, enthusiastically promoted by sociologist Ma Rong (b. 1950) of Peking University and economist Hu Angang (b. 1953) of Tsinghua University, both of whom served effectively as the state’s policy gurus during much of the past two decades. In Ma Rong’s own words, “the ‘political colors’ that favor ‘nation’ (minzu) in relation to status, prestige, advantages in the judiciary system or distribution of welfare benefits should be weakened,” and China’s fifty-six minzu should be “de-politicized” (Ma Rong 2017). 14. See also Harris (2020b, 168–220) for what she calls the “sonic territorialization of Xinjiang” and an analysis of the eradication of “noise” in Xinjiang, particularly the measures to “cleanse Uyghur society of Muslim noise.” 15. This version is included in the album Xibu youhuo (Temptations from the western territories) (1998) (disc 2, track 7), in which Kérim sings both the Chinese and Uyghur versions of the song. 16. See also Byler (2018) for a study on low-income young male Uyghur migrants in Ürümchi under settler colonialism and economic development, especially on how these migrants relied on “vocalizing the rhythms of native music,” Byler writes, as a “key way of reterritorializing the space of the city.” 17. See Millward (2009) for an overview of the Ürümchi violence in 2009. 18. See some of these accounts in Denyer (2018) and Lipes (2020). Gulbahar Haitiwaji’s memoir How I Survived a Chinese “Reeducation” Camp: A Uyghur Woman’s Story (2022) describes her experience during her two and a half years as an inmate in one of these camps.



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19. See a report in the Guardian on the musical film The Wings of Songs. “China Launches Musical in Bid to Counter Uyghur Abuse Allegations,” April 3, 2021, https://www.theguardian .com/world/2021/apr/03/china-launches-musical-in-bid-to-counter-uyghur-abuse-allegations. 20. The reconstruction of Uyghur muqam has been the subject of two monographs (Harris 2008; Light 2008) and a dissertation (Anderson 2019). 21. Seypidin Ezizi (1983) also wrote a tarixiy diramma (historical drama) titled Amanisaxan. For more on Seypidin’s involvement in the muqam project, see Seypidin Ezizi (1992) and Anderson (2019, 173–179). 22. A number of photographs of Turdi Axun taken in the 1950s, including this one, are reproduced in the collected volume Muqam ustazi: Turdi Axun aka (edited by Muxtar Mamut Muhemmidi 2012). 23. Interviews with Wan Tongshu (Xiamen, February 2010 and July 2016); see also Wan Tongshu (1997, 37–47). 24. Refer to Abliz Osman (2003) for a biography on Nim Shéhit; for a selection of his poetry and other writings, see Ershidin Tatliq (1995). 25. Several versions of the original Turdi Axun recordings have been made available in recent years, including, notably, Junggo Uyghur on ikki muqami: Tunji ün’alghu nusxisi (China’s Uyghur twelve muqam: The original recordings) (2012), before which few outside the immediate musical and scholarly circles today had easy access to the recordings (kept at Xinjiang Cultural Bureau in Ürümchi). Senior members of the Muqam Ensemble also kept scattered excerpts of the recordings dubbed on cassette tapes obtained at the time when they first learned to sing the muqam songs from these recordings; some of these dubbed recordings were privately circulated. At least two excerpts of the original recordings have been released on compact discs. The first is a three-and-a-half-minute excerpt of the introductory muqedimme of Ushshaq, included on an accompanying CD of the pictography Zhongguo Xinjiang Weiwu’er mukamu: Yueqi tuxiang, yinxiang jicui (Chinese Xinjiang Uyghur muqam: Instrument pictures and audio collections) (2007). The second is a nearly fortyminute compilation of songs from Nawa—which includes muqedimme, teze, nuskha, and kichik seliqe—included on the accompanying CD of Zhongguo Xinjiang Weiwu’er mukamu yinyue (Chinese Xinjiang Uyghur muqam music) (2008) by Zhou Ji. 26. Light (2008, 218) quotes from Qawul Axun, son of Turdi Axun, who maintained that his father had played only sixteen hours of muqam as recorded on the phonograph recordings released in 1955 on a limited edition. Liu Feng (1987 [1951]), 27–28), a member of the research team, notes that there were altogether nineteen hours of recording. 27. Light notes that three unpublished mimeographed compilations of muqam existed in the early 1980s for teaching and performance purposes. See Light (2008, 215–260) for a study on the editing and publishing of muqam text; Abdushükür Turdi (2009) for a useful account on the original Turdi Axun text; and Muhemmet Zunun (1995) and Wan Tongshu (1997) for more about the project and its publications. 28. See Muxtar Mamut Muhemmidi (2012) for more about Turdi Axun. 29. For some well-known case studies, see Guan Yewei (1997); Huang Xiangpeng (1997); Jin Jianmin (1997); and Wang Zengwan (1985). 30. One of the best known of these is a daqu titled “Yizhou” (which was a prefecture of the Tang empire in present-day Iwirghol of the Hami Prefecture, near Qumul). Research has accordingly been conducted to trace the connections between the local muqam traditions and textual history of the music of “Yizhou,” including a brief pipa notation included in the Dunhuang manuscript (see Wan Anchao 2010). The connection between scholarship and politics is made abundantly clear when a Han scholar declares that “muqam research is of

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great significance to safeguarding the integrity of our motherland and the unity of ethnicities” (Li Jilian et al. 2005, 5). 31. Wan Tongshu notes that many details in the TV drama were inaccurate. He is particularly displeased that the drama misrepresents and glosses over the hardship he endured during the research in Xinjiang (interview, July 2016, Xiamen). 32. See, for example, the essays included in Tian Qing (2009). 33. English is often the third or even fourth language for many Uyghur students. This conversation with two professors of Uyghur music took place in June 2013 in Ürümchi. 34. For a study on the meshrep tradition and its recent appropriations, see Harris (2020a). 35. This conversation took place in May 2005 in a village home in Turpan. This anecdote also circulated among professional musicians in Ürümchi around that same time. 36. This piece of news reporting originally appeared in the state media Yili ribao (Ili daily) and was posted on the online news portal Tianshan wang (http://www.tianshannet .com, September 13, 2010). A revised report was published in the digital magazine Kan Xinjiang (Seeing Xinjiang) (2010). I had declined requests to be interviewed. They published the report anyway; a number of details included in the report were either inaccurate or simply fabricated. 37. This incident took place in March 2013 in a small village in Ghulja Nahiye (county). 38. This took place in the early summer of 2005 in Ürümchi. 39. This incident took place in 2018 in Ghulja in the musician’s teaching studio. 40. The term min kao han was sometimes also used to mock fellow Uyghur who were ignorant of their culture and heritage. The differences between min kao han and min kao min were effectively eliminated in recent years as schools were required to switch to allChinese teaching since around late 2017; see Byler (2019a). 41. The event was posted on this webpage: http://forum.uyghuramerican.org/forum/ archive/index.php/t-22344.html (October 5, 2010). It is indeed common for many Uyghur to reference Wang Luobin when drawing attention to perceived Chinese appropriation and exploitation of their culture. See a report on a Han fashion designer on Radio Free Asia for another example: “Uyghur medeniyet saheside yene bir ‘Wang Lobing’ yétishti” (There is another Wang Luobin in the field of Uyghur culture), April 3, 2007, http://www.rfa.org/ uyghur/programmilar/medeniyet-senet/keyim-kechek-20070403.html. 42. For example, a comment posted by a Uyghur on Weibo, China’s microblogging site, warned Uyghur Internet users against a Han blogger’s critical standpoints against China’s policy: “[This person] appears to be speaking for us, but he’s indeed an ishpiyon [spy]. Please protect ourselves and don’t post any progressive comment after him. . . . He’s fanning the flames” (March 2, 2013). 43. This incident took place in May 2005 in the Dawan neighborhood in southern Ürümchi. 44. This incident took place in July 2005 in a village of the Turpan Prefecture. 45. This took place in Hong Kong in August 2005. 46. This comment was recounted to me in March 2013 in Ürümchi. I was able to conduct multiple interviews with him after our common friend had assured him that I was reliable. 47. Uyghur musicians traveling with officially organized tours to overseas countries or inland Chinese cities were frequently not offered halal food during the trips, as I witnessed or was directly told about on at least three occasions, twice in Hong Kong (2009 and 2010) and once in Germany (2012), where halal options were obviously abundant. Instead, they had been told by their “leaders” to pack enough instant noodles, naan, and other food items, such as milk powder and sometimes also dried lamb meat, in their suitcases and microwave them at hotels.



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Chapter 2:  The Modern Sound of “Minority” Music 1. The first attempt to create music notation in Central Asia can be dated to the late nineteenth century in Khiva, where musicians developed a tablature for the tanbur and the performance of alti-yarim maqām in Khiva and broader Khorezm (see Matyakubov and Powers 1990, 29–35; Sumits and Levin 2016, 324–325). There are altogether seventeen known copies of these notations, most of them from the early twentieth century. 2. The tracks released in the 1950s on 78 rpm vinyl discs were primarily studio recordings of solo instrumental music by some of the local masters. A good number of these tracks were released again on LPs by China Records in the 1960s and 1970s for the broader Chinese and overseas audiences. These were among some of the earliest recordings of Uyghur music heard by the outside world. 3. I have not come across any of these recordings. 4. See the album Before the Revolution: A 1909 Recording Expedition in the Caucasus and Central Asia by the Gramophone Company (Topic Records, 2002). 5. Memtimin Hoshur (2014, 34–35) notes that this photo was kept by Inayet Aka in Ghulja and provided by Abduweli Jarullayof. The back of the photo included details about every person in the photo and the year it was taken. 6. Memtimin Hoshur (2014, 33) notes that, according to Tursun Qahari, the photo was taken in 1912 in Yarkent by Russian photographer Maratkof Teripi (quoting Tursun Qahari 1999). 7. A Uyghur national music theater (milliy musika tiyatiri), the first of its kind, was formed by Qurbanhaji in Ghulja in the mid-1910s. Eighteen individuals, all men, from the group were photographed after their third concert in Ghulja on December 18. A four-string ghéjek, which appeared like a Mongolian fiddle khuuchir, was seen in the photograph. Memtimin Hoshur (2014, 32–33), quoting Tursun Qahari (1999, “Nadir süretler” [Rare photographs] in Ili kechlik géziti, April 17), notes that a duplicate of this photo was provided to Tursun by Zikri Elpetta’s wife Selime in 1987, and the names of the musicians and the origin of this photo were listed on the back. According to Tursun, this photograph was taken by a Tatar photographer named Ekmel Semetuf, who was in Ghulja at that time. 8. Klimeš (2015, 169–170) suggests that the association had already emerged in 1933 under Soviet guidance. Abdukérim Rahman and Ma Deyuan (2011, 280) also noted that a new school with twenty classrooms started in Kashgar in mid-1933, at the time when Kashgar’s Education Bureau was also established. 9. The fourteen nationalities were the Uyghur, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Tajik, Uzbek, Tatar, Mongol, Dungan, Sibe, Solon, Manchu, White Russian, Taranchi, and Han. Note that the Taranchi (lit., “peasant”), the Uyghur in the Ili valley and Russian/Soviet Turkestan, were considered a separate nationality at that time and would later be subsumed into the Uyghur. 10. According to Sherip Xushtar (1982, 85–88), from 1934 to 1944, there were 183 primary schools (with 180,035 students), 740 evening schools (with 133,344 students), and several secondary schools and teachers’ colleges established under UMAU. 11. Western instruments and music were not a rarity at least among the cultural elites in that period. The Youth Singing and Dancing Troupe of Xinjiang, formed in the late 1940s by the Propaganda Office of the Xinjiang government, had a brass military band. A photo from 1947 shows a brass band of the UMAU of Chöchek (Ch. Tacheng) (Xinjiang Wenhua 2, 7). 12. The studio is the predecessor of today’s Tengritagh kino studiyesi (Film Studio; Ch. Tianshan tianying zhipianchang).

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13. This is likely referring to the barbershop of Mexsut Axun as mentioned in a few sources on Lutpulla (see, for example, Jiamu 1987, 36–37). 14. This photo is printed in the magazine Xinjiang Wenhua (1947/1, 12). 15. Guo Qinfang (1948, 9). See Jacob (2008) for a thorough study on Tianshan Pictorial as an implementation of Governor Zhang Zhizhong’s “minority” policies. The magazine was published in Shanghai and Nanking (Nanjing) from 1947 to 1948. Its significance lies in the fact that, Jacob writes, the representation of the “colorfully exotic performances of the Xinjiang Youth Song and Dance Troupe . . . departs significantly from these earlier models by virtue of representing one of the earliest instances of the Chinese nation-state itself attempting to employ large-scale distributive mass propaganda media to actively reiterate and reinterpret among a large and diverse audience established modes of ethnic representation previously in currency only among a limited subsection of elite and official society” (547–548). 16. Chen moved to Taiwan shortly before the Communist takeover and became a leading figure of the “anti-Communist literary movement” in the 1950s and beyond. 17. It should be noted, however, that many anti-Manchu sentiments during the early decades of the Qing era in the mid-seventeenth century were framed in racial terms among the intellectuals and revolutionaries, who characterized the Manchu as barbaric aliens, inept and morally deficient, “an inferior ‘race’ responsible for the disastrous policies that had led to the decline of the country.” It also signified the emergence of the notion of the Han as a race (see Dikötter 2015 [1992], 17–20, 61). 18. See also Mullaney (2010) for a detailed study of the history of China’s ethnic classification system. 19. The idea of what Gladney calls ethnogenesis is disputed in more recent scholarship on Uyghur history and identity; see Bovingdon (2010, 27–28) for a brief discussion. See also Klimeš (2015, 60–119) on the emergence of nascent Uyghur nationalism in the early twentieth century, as a thread that brought together such protonational identities as Muslim and indigenous Turkic. 20. These numbers have been disputed. Overseas Uyghur organizations, notably the Uyghur American Association, have long suggested that the Uyghur population is in reality two or three times the official numbers. More recently, doubts have been raised about the 2020 census, which allegedly ignores the decline in the Uyghur population since 2017 (as a result of suppressed Uyghur births) in order to counter genocide allegations (Mihray Adilim and Alim Seytoff 2021). 21. Dao Lang’s rock fusion and his reception among the Chinese audience, according to Smith-Finley (2016), similarly sponsor a kind of “Chinese civilising mission.” See also BellérHann (2014) for China’s socialist development projects in Xinjiang. 22. A much-propagandized portrait shows Qurban Tulum shaking hands with Mao and reportedly greeting him by saying “Salaam Mao zhuxi.” The song was popularized again c. 2002 through a rock interpretation by Dao Lang. The line “Riye xiangnian Mao zhuxi” (Missing Chairman Mao every night and day) is also the title of an ink painting (1976) by Huang Zhou (1925–1997), which portrays Qurban playing the rawap on a donkey’s back. The story was made into a film in 2003: Qurban taghining Béyjinggha sepiri (Uncle Qurban’s trip to Beijing) (Ch. Ku’erban dashu shang Beijing). 23. Abdulla Hamut, a native of Kucha, started his tenure at Shinjang naxsha-ussul ömiki in 1956 as a ghéjek soloist and was featured in many recordings interpreting traditional melodies in modernist styles and techniques. See Héytem Hüseyin (2006) for more on Abdulla.



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Chapter 3: Muqam: Between National Heritage and Local Practices 1. The actual musical contents and procedures vary greatly across these Central Asian and Middle Eastern genres. It would be inaccurate to assume that, for example, Oshshaq in Uyghur muqam is analogous to Ushshaq or Ushaq in other maqām genres. Uzbek-Tajik shashmaqām (six maqām) of the Bukhara court, alti yarim maqām (six-and-a-half maqām) of Khiva, and chahar maqām (four maqām) of Kokand are usually considered the closest siblings of Uyghur muqam; see Levin and Sultanova (2002) and Merchant (2015) for more on shashmaqām. 2. See During and Trebinjac (1991); Méhmanjan Rozi and Turghan Shawdun (1995); Abdukérim Raxman (1995); Sulayman Imin (1995); Nurmuhemmet Sayit (1995); Abdushukur Muhemmet Imin (1997); Zhou Ji (2005); Harris (2008); Light (2008); Batur Barat (2014); Wang Jianzhao (2017); and Anderson (2019). 3. Uyghur muqam was listed in the third round of UNESCO’s proclamation in 2005 as one of the forty-two entries of “intangible cultural heritage.” In the same round Mongolian urtin duu “long song” was also listed (jointly by China and Mongolia). It was the first time China was represented by non-Han genres for the UNESCO proclamations; earlier, in the first (2001) and second (2003) rounds, China listed, respectively, the music of kunqu operatic singing and the qin seven-string zither as its entries. 4. Interview, June 2005, Ürümchi. 5. Different views exist on which is the better edition and what makes it better. Zhou Ji (2005, 103–105) considers the second edition most ideal, because the accompanying notations correspond closely to the recordings. This comment is refuted by the ghéjek and satar professor Abdukérim Osman, a key member in both the recording and notation projects for the third edition, who considers the second edition imprecise and incomplete (various interviews with Zhou Ji and Abdukérim Osman, 2004, 2005, 2009). 6. These research projects have resulted in the publication of the notation and audiovisuals of Qumul muqam (1994), Dolan muqam (1996), Turpan muqam (1999), and two editions of On ikki muqam (1993, 1997) and accompanying audiovisuals (1993, 2001). 7. Abdukérim Raxman (1995), for example, lists Fārābī as the first of his list of the “forerunners” (péshiwalliri) of muqam, and he includes an imaginary portrait of Fārābī (by painter Tashpolat Hashim) in the volume. This is based on the commonly held belief that Fārābī was born in Otrar in present-day Kazakhstan of the Qarakhanid Khanate (840–1212), which is considered by many an integral part of Uyghur national history. 8. There were scattered references to musicians and musical instruments in the many histories and tezkire biographical dictionaries authored, translated, or copied during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Not much is known about the author of Tewarikh-i musiqiyun, which was compiled at the request of Ali Shir Hakim Beg of Khotan. Sumits (2016, 127) notes that “he was a poet, perhaps a singer, and a literati and historian who was comfortable reading Chaghatay, Persian, and Arabic.” Refer to Muhemed Barat Teshnayi’s Muqamchilar bostani: Möjizi (2003) for a historical romance on the author. The manuscript was accidentally discovered in Khotan in 1956 during a scholarly field trip and was reprinted in 1959. Light (2008, 153–169) suggests that the manuscript was copied “at the latest” in 1919/1920; see Molla Ismetulla binni Molla Németulla Mojiz (1982) for a Uyghur translation by Xemit Tömür and Enwer Baytur and Sumits (2016, 127–200) for a critical introduction and English translation. 9. As documented in the text, Amanisaxan was born into the family of a woodman named Muhemmet (Mahmut). She was talented in calligraphy and art. The year when Amanisaxan was thirteen, Abdureshid (1533–1570), the sultan of Yarkand, disguised

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himself as a civilian by putting on casual clothing and traveled with his officials and escorts through the Tarim River to the desert, with the purpose of investigating any inappropriate policy implementation by local officials. One night he stopped by Muhemmet’s home and asked for lodging. Inside, the sultan saw a tembur and requested a performance. Muhemmet replied that the tembur was not his but his daughter’s; then he asked Amanisaxan to play several pieces on the tembur for the guests. Amanisaxan played excerpts from muqam Penjigah with the lyrics written by herself. Mesmerized by her musical talents, the sultan went to his officials and escorts, put on his royal turban, and returned to Muhemmet with forty men, ten sheep, some tea, and some silk. He then revealed his real identity and asked for Muhemmet’s permission to marry his daughter. After they were married, Amanisaxan completed several books at the Yarkand court on the themes of morality, poetry, and human virtue. She also created a muqam called Ishret Enggiz (Molla Ismetulla binni Molla Németulla Mojiz 1982 [1854/1855]). Local scholars believe that Amanisaxan worked with the court musician Yüsüp Qadirxan in collecting, arranging, and editing muqam from scattered sources, and that she edited the texts of muqam by replacing the purportedly incomprehensible Arabic and Persian texts with poems written by contemporary poets (such as Newa’i) in the Chaghatay language. She is also thought to have added dastan and meshrep (the second and third “movements”) to the existing chong neghme to form a “complete” muqam suite. She died in childbirth at thirty-four. For a study on the modern construction of Amanisaxan as a national legend, see Anderson (2012). 10. See Light (2008, 231–238) for a detailed analysis of Meshreb’s ghazal. 11. The only exception is Chebbiyat (Chap-Bayat), which Czekanowska (1983, 100, 108) notes may be accidentally included as it is “not connected at all with the tonal-melodic concept of muqam.” 12. There have been disputes about the ordering, and adjustments have been made. The order of Mushawrek and Segah, which had been the third and eleventh, respectively, in earlier editions, was reversed in the late 1990s, based on the understanding that se is three in Persian and, accordingly, Segah must be the third muqam. Local musicologists consider it a mistake made either by Turdi Axun or the members of the research team in the 1950s. Wan Tongshu (1960, 18) notes that Iraq was also called Hoseyn and Sigah also called Saga. 13. The terms sigah, chargah, and penjigah suggest Persian origin, likely referring to, respectively, the third, fourth, and fifth steps of the scale. The term rak is believed to be analogous to the Hindustani rag, meaning “mode,” with a derivative meaning of “natural” or “pure.” The terms chebbiyat, bayat, and iraq are possibly names of different tribes, while ejem may refer specifically to Turkic or non-Arab people. The terms özhal and oshshaq may mean “descend” and “excited, heighten,” respectively, suggesting the musical details and emotional contents. Etymological connections of other muqam titles, such as nawa and mushawrek, are not immediately clear (Abdushükür Muhemmet Imin 1997, 372–384; Light 2008, 42–46). 14. Multiple interviews from August 2003 and February–June 2005 in Ürümchi. See also Light (2008, 200–206) for Ömer Axun’s understanding of modal scales in muqam and performing practices. For machine-based pitch analyses, see Wang Wenjing (2006, 90–98), whose findings are presented in a number of publications, such as Zhou Ji (2005, 114–147). 15. Czekanowska (2002, 998–999) offers a summary of the “ethos” of some muqam, as studied in Alibakieva (1988); Trebinjac (1989); During and Trebinjac (1991): Rak is serious, joyful, and reflective; Ejem, Nawa, and Iraq are “very serious and are dedicated to older people”; Chebbiyat, Mushawrek, Penjigah, and Bayat are “joyful, optimistic, and dedicated to young people.” Some of these are more specific: Rak for single women; Chebbiyat for



Notes to Pages 64–65

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young married women; Penjigah for young single men; Mushawrek for young married men; Oshshaq and Chahargah for orphans and sad people; Nawa for “unsworn lovers”; Segah for hermits. See also Light (2008, 197). 16. Interview, May 2005, Ürümchi. 17. Some believe that the figure “twelve” can be traced back to the theory of equal temperament in ancient Chinese and European music histories and therefore suggests that the twelve modal scales in Uyghur muqam are theoretically “rational” and universally comparable (Abdushükür Muhemmet Imin 1985, 36–41). 18. For a short biography of Tursunjan Létip, see Méhmanjan Rozi and Turghan Shawdun (1995, 523–534). 19. Light’s interview with Ömer Axun also suggested that there were more than twelve muqam in the mid-twentieth century (2008, 42, also n31). 20. The text of abiy chesme was first published in Qurban Barat (1986, 279–306) as an appendix, “Abu chesme muqami.” 21. Ruxsari includes muqedimme, a dap neghme, and six dastan songs. Its muqedimme and some of the dastan songs remain popular among musicians in Ili and southeast Kazakhstan today. For a published score (in cipher notation) of Ruxsari, see Zikri Elpetta (1983). For more on Ruxsari, see also Maxmut Zeydi (2006, 21–26). 22. Notwithstanding his optimism, he ran into trouble with the authority and was once arrested for singing this work. He was reluctant to talk further about the incident. 23. Multiple interviews with Tursunjan Létip in Ürümchi in 2005, 2009, and 2013. Refer also to his article “Uyghur muqamliri peqet ‘on ikki’ mu” (Are there only twelve Uyghur muqam?) (2002) for some of these viewpoints and his critiques on the modern Uyghur language reform. 24. See also Batur Ershidinov’s On ikki muqam (1987) and Alibakieva’s On ikki muqam (1988). 25. Dautcher’s ethnography on Uyghur masculine identity (2009, 143–167) offers detailed description of male olturash in Ghulja based on his fieldwork in the early 1990s. A number of his findings and contexts differ from what I experienced in the 2000s and 2010s in the Ili valley. The female counterpart of the male olturash is sometimes known as qatar chay (lit., “rows tea”); see Rena Ekrem (2017) for a study on this topic. 26. This ghazal is included in an edited selection of Huweyda’s poetry (Jappar Emet 1989), which is a little different from Muxtar’s version sung as Penjigah’s muqedimme at the olturash. The version I transliterated and translated here is based on Jappar Emet (1989). 27. Interview with Abduweli Dawut, December 2018, Ghulja. This view is confirmed by a number of senior musicians I spoke to since c. 2004. 28. However, it does not mean that keys are arbitrary. In a different performance in which I was involved in mid-2017, also in Ili, when a musician tried to play the piece a whole tone lower—from around G (as is conventional in most performances and recordings of that piece) to around F—a couple of other musicians frowned and complained that “awaz chiqmidi” (the sound did not come out). 29. The strings used on most Uyghur instruments are numbered according to their thicknesses (the smaller the number, the thicker), yet individual preferences are common in the local context. On the satar, for example, the melodic string is normally #28. The twelve sympathetic strings, from the thickest, are two #28s, two #29s, two #30s, two #31s, two #32s, and two #33s. The satar in Kashgar and other southern towns are tuned somewhat differently, with different string sizes. Each of the three thinnest sympathetic strings is held with a small nonmovable bridge (xerek) to prevent the strings from collapsing. Most satar built today

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would add a few more movable xerek. Ablimit, an instrument maker who owns a small workshop in Ghulja, created a special xerek system to hold the six thinnest strings (interview, December 2018). 30. See Ömer Muhemmet (2014, 69–78) for a discussion of the tuning on the dutar. 31. Chahargah is a good example here: while Ömer Axun maintains that Chahargah is played with one consistent mode (küy) throughout the entire suite (Light 2007, 202–203), Harris finds no complete consistence among the three versions of muqedimme of Chahargah she transcribed and analyzed (2008, 82–83). According to Zhou Ji (2005, 120), Chahargah makes use of these pitch-steps (in cipher notation): 3 ̣ 4 ̣ 5 ̣ 5 ̣ + 6 ̣ b7̣ 7̣ 1 2 2+ 3 (+ refers to a “half-sharp” quarter-/microtonal inflection), or, if 3 ̣ is E, then E, F, G, G-half-sharp, A, B-flat, B, c, d, d-half-sharp, and e. Without the quarter-/microtonal inflections, the ­Chahargah mode (as outlined here) would sound similar to a Phrygian dominant mode or maqām hijāz in Arab music. 32. See more in Reichl (2019, 45–63); Rahile Dawut and Anderson (2016, 406–420). For an anthology of dastan epics in Ili and Ghulja, see Ghulja xelq dastanliri (n.d., probably 1980s, by Ghulja sheherlik xelq éghiz edebiyati ishxanisi). Refer to Abduweli Kérim’s monograph (2005) on Abduréhim Nizari’s dastan. 33. It is thus somewhat misleading to understand merghul as interludes (as is common in local scholarship today). 34. For an anthology of qoshaq collected in Ghulja, refer to Ghulja xelq qoshaqliri (1980s?). 35. The versions of the narrative genre dastan as recorded are slightly different; refer to Uyghur xelq dastanliri (1981, 290–291) and Uyghur xelq dastanliri, vol. 2 (1986, 283–284). 36. The audience would also respond with expressions such as karamet (wonderful, amazing) or woy-woy at emotionally intense moments of a performance, as an expression of musically learned responses that are common in local gatherings. Such interactions are one of the major distinctions between private and public performances. 37. Only three dastan songs were included on the VCD, and all were abbreviated. Each song is given a title that refers to the legend from which its text is presumably derived. The first dastan is Tahir Zöhre; the second dastan is skipped; the third dastan is Shah Seneubere Gül Periezat; the fourth dastan is Rabiyee Sen’din; and the fifth dastan is skipped. 38. Refer to Musajan Rozi: The Korla Diaries (2015) for a collection of interviews, photographs, and audio recordings of Musajan Rozi. 39. Local muqam genres found in the various oasis towns in the Turpan Depression, for example, demonstrate notable musical connections with the core corpus of On ikki muqam. A field recording of the muqam Iraq I made in mid-2005 in Lükchün, Pichan County, for example, is highly comparable to the Iraq of Kashgar’s On ikki repertoire, despite the fact that their melodies are generally more upfront, less elaborate; individual songs are also shorter and sometimes show more repetitions in the text. 40. Refer to Ghazi Emet (1989) for this and other major oil paintings of the master artist. Chapter 4: Singing Muqam in Uyghur Pop 1. See an analysis of Uyghur wedding videos in Harris and Dawut (2020). 2. Shir’eli’s production team created and sold this music video as a part of the album. It is worth noting that many online music videos of Uyghur songs were created by fans, including some of the greatest hits by Abdulla Abduréhim. The song “Untalmidim” (I couldn’t forget), for example, received nearly half a dozen homemade music videos, offering a variety of visual narratives for the song.



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3. Harris (2002, 277) mentions that Abdulla’s band Taklamakan released a Chinese album titled Laizi shamo de sheng (Sounds from the great desert) in the 1990s, and this album made Abdulla well known in Taiwan. 4. See Harris (2002, 275–276) for a brief description of Abdulla’s early experiment of setting Dolan muqam in a rock format. 5. A member of another state performing troupe, who had once been on the same stage with Abdulla at a private gig in Ili, offered another explanation of their attachment with these state troupes. “We’re required to report all our outside gigs to the troupes to which we belong. I recently went to Ili to sing at a concert. I left for a few days and didn’t report it. The leader of my troupe found out about it and was furious. Abdulla was also at that same concert. He was paid over 2,000 yuan for singing one song; I was only paid about 500 yuan also for singing one song. The troupe wanted us to stay because they might take a portion of our outside income.” Interview, June 2005. 6. Abdulla was not the only singer to sample Dolan rhythms and instrumental timbres in pop songs. For another well-liked example, listen to Eysabeg Mamut’s “Seher alliyi” in his album Otung yaman (2006). Eysabeg is a native of Atush, a major Dolan town. 7. Uyghur musician Erkin Abdulla (b. 1978) also challenged Dao Lang’s claim to ownership and representation of Dolan culture; see Anderson and Byler (2019, 22) for a short description. 8. These songs include “Chebbiyat jula,” “Nawa meshrep,” “Rak 2-dastan,” “Nawa 2-dastan,” “Dolan Ushahaq pediliri 1, 2, 3,” “Rak seliqe,” “Ozhal dastan,” “Chebbiyat dastan,” “Mushawrek jula,” “Mushawrek dastan,” “Chebbiyat jula,” and “Ejem peshreu” (demo tape; not released). 9. Multiple conversations in 2004 and 2005, Ürümchi. 10. Part of this meshrep song as performed by Abdulla Mechnun is discussed in Harris (2008, 63–64). It is a slightly different version from the one covered by Shir’eli. 11. Shir’eli added even more trills and other ornaments to the melody, particularly in the higher register, in a few live performances I attended, particularly one on June 3, 2016, in Ürümchi at an official concert at the Arts Institute to “promote” muqam to the students. 12. The song comes from the version Shir’eli learned at the music school, as published in the 1993 version of Uyghur on ikki muqam (see chapter 3). The melody is labeled “Ikkinchi meshrep” (The second meshrep song) but the text, which is attributed to Meshreb (Bābārahim Mashrab, 1653?–1711), is labeled “Tötinchi meshrep” (The fourth meshrep song). This song is also used in the version published in 1997 (and the audiovisual recording in 2001) with some alterations. 13. These are place-names in the larger Khotan area. 14. Ishshek is a weight unit that is no longer used today. It is estimated to be equivalent to about four or five kilograms. 15. The breath pattern used for producing the vocal rhythm is called pas anfas, which means “guarded breath,” often practiced by members of the Naqshbandi order of Sufism in zikr ceremonies performed in remembrance of God. It is achieved by uttering the word “Allah” while inhaling and the word “hu” while exhaling, resulting in a steady vocal rhythm of “Allah-hu” in every breath. Refer to trance 2 (1995) for a field recording of Naqshbandi Sufi ritual made in the 1980s by During in an undisclosed location in Xinjiang; also see the liner notes (During 1995, 7–19) for an introduction to the Naqshbandi Sufis and their ritual music. 16. This is heard from about 31’30’’ on the second CD of Chahargah (2001). 17. Shir’eli’s commitment to sampling Sufi soundscape in pop is confirmed by another muqam song that he recorded (but never released): the Peshru song from Ejem. The muqam song is originally in a moderately slow, quadruple meter. The Sufi vocal rhythm is heard

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clearly throughout the song as a background ostinato, recreating the ambience of the zikr ritual against electric guitar, drum machine, and other synthesized sounds. 18. See Rahile Dawut (2001, 73–80) for a study on the use of percussion at Ordam Mazar. 19. The original source of the report is unclear. 20. See Harris (2018) for a brief account of Ablajan and his arrest. Other high-profile Uyghur musicians who have been detained (some released; others under house arrest or still in detention at the time of writing) include Memetjan Abduqadir, Zahirshah Ablimit, Senuber Tursun, Reshide Dawut, Zulpiqar Köresh, Abduréhim Héyit, Ablikim Kalkun, and Peride Mamut. See Xinjiang Victims Database (https://shahit.biz/) and various reports on Radio Free Asia (https://www.rfa.org/) for more about these and many others victims of the mass incarceration. Chapter  5:  Modernist Reform and Uyghur Instrumental Music 1. Communication on social media, August 2020. 2. Interview, September 2009, Ghulja. 3. Interview, September 2009, Ürümchi, and a few other conversations. 4. Poet Tursunjan Emet has been arrested a number of times since then and was recently put into a “reeducation” camp (see Amnesty International 2002 and Tursunjan Emet’s entry in the Xinjiang Victims Database [https://www.shahit.biz/eng/#4361]). 5. Interview, September 2009, Ürümchi. 6. Musicians usually favor the more durable steel strings used by the hammered dulcimer chang or the Chinese yangqin. Today’s standard sizes (from the melodic/outermost to the innermost) are: c (#34 or #35); G (#28); d (#29); A (#27); e (#30); B (#28); f# (#30). 7. The standardized thickness for the outer double-course strings (d) is #34 and the middle double-course (G or A) is #32 for this rawap type today. 8. Interview, June 2009, Ürümchi. 9. Interview, July 2009, Ürümchi. 10. See Abduqeyyum Mijit (2013, 51) for a brief discussion of the variety of inlaid patterns decorating Uyghur instruments today. 11. Interviews with Exmetjan (2005, Ürümchi) and Tursuntay Qadir (2009, 2013, 2017, Ghulja). 12. Interview, July 2005, Ürümchi. 13. Qurban Seley (b. 1946), a retired professor of ghéjek and xushtar, noted that the timbre of the tenor xushtar is not satisfactory. Some professional performing groups today have switched to using the cello when a lower-registered string instrument is needed (interview, May 2005, Ürümchi). 14. Interview, June 2005, Ürümchi. 15. A separate pedagogical score for the xushtar, compiled by Qurban Seley, had been published in 2002. But this notation was largely abandoned in recent years, and most of the pieces were incorporated into Abdukérim Osman (2012). 16. Interview, Lükchün, July 2005. 17. A recording of Chebbiyat’s “Jula merghul,” performed by Abduréhim Niyaz, features this technique (see the accompanying CDs of Zhongguo Xinjiang Weiwu’er mukamu yishu 2008). 18. Interview with Exmetjan, May 2017, Ghulja. Also see Güljemile Qadir (1996) for a chang notation and curriculum compiled for use at music schools.



Notes to Pages 125–146

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19. Interview, June 2005, Ürümchi. 20. “Shadiyana” is the title of two separate but possibly related pieces: the rawap solo being discussed here is typically distinguished from the one played on the zurney and naghra. See Rahile Dawut and Aynur Kadir (2016) for a brief discussion of “Shadiyana” in the context of the ordam shrine festival. See Pettarjan Abdulla (1980, 17–18) for a transcription of the rawap solo. 21. Rozek Bashi is remembered as a master musician who specialized in qoshaq, a narrative genre usually accompanied by the rawap. He is also one of the early modernists who created the solo rawap tradition by rearranging folk tunes for concert performance. Rozek became a member of several state performing troupes after 1949, and he reportedly performed the solo “Atush”—which he created—for soldiers in North Korea in 1953 (Zhou et al. 1996, 2256–2257). 22. Interview with Parhat Dawut, June 2009, Ürümchi; see also Abdusami Abdurahman (2001). 23. Interview, June 2009, Ürümchi; see also Abdusami Abdurahman (2001, 63–65); Nusret Wajidi (2009, 19–22); Song Bonian (1987); and Zhou Ji et al. (1996, 2273) for more on Dawut Awut. 24. Qurban Ibrahim was born in Atush. There are several versions of his year of birth. Here I use Héytem Hüseyin’s (2007, 10). 25. This was based on an unpublished score I obtained in 2009. The score has been circulated widely among the various professional ensembles and music schools. 26. Interviews with Alimjan and Obul (June 2013). I first learned to play “Tashway,” the new version, from Alimjan at the Arts Institute at the conclusion of my yearlong study in 2005. After I finished learning the piece, somewhat self-confidently, I asked if I might also learn the old version. Alimjan took my instrument and played through the entire piece for me, and he appeared hesitant. “No,” he said, “it would be too difficult for you.” His answer caught me by surprise, as it had appeared to me that the new version was the more challenging one. Most of my fellow students—all Uyghur—at the institute majoring in the rawap had been taught only the new version and included it in their final recital. It was also the version that was often arranged for virtuosic solo or concert-style staged performances. Alimjan’s answer appeared to suggest an alternative understanding of technicality. The rapid runs, tremolos, broad range, dramatic tempo, and dynamic contrasts in the new version might appear to be difficult, yet it was the nuances in the old version that he considered harder for an outsider like me to grasp. 27. “Spring in Xinjiang” (Shinjangda bahar, Ch. Xinjiang zhi chun) was first written in 1956 for the violin by Chinese composers Ma Yaoxian (b. 1938) and Li Zhonghan (b. 1933), allegedly with elements from Uyghur music. It was later adapted for the ghéjek and made into a standard piece in its repertoire. The cadenza played on the ghéjek today was created by Abliz Qurban. See Abdukéhim Osman (2008, 162–166) for a ghéjek notation. Chapter  6:  Sounding Indigenous in the “Original Ecology” 1. The poem is taken from Memtili ependi shé’irliri (The poems of Memtili Ependi), ed. Ibrahim Alip Tékin (2000, 12). It was written in Istanbul in 1930. For more about Memtili Ependi, see Mirehmet Séyit and Yalqun Rozi (1997). 2. The modern five-act play was created by Jappar Qasim (b. 1949) in 1997. It has a somewhat different ending from some earlier versions. Here, Gülemxan returned to her village of Oymanbulaq after the evil official Shangyo had died.

216

Notes to Pages 147–167

3. There are four songs in Gülemxan in Jian Qihua’s seminal transcription (1998): (1) “Gülemxan 1”; (2) “Gülemxan 2”; (3) “Sépil naxshisi”; and (4) “Köch-köch.” Memtimin Hoshur (2006) includes more songs, adding “Derdu Hüseyin” and three “Sadir’s songs”— numerically titled “Sadir 1,” “Sadir 2,” and “Sadir 3.” In Ghiyasidin Barat and Abdukérim Osman’s expanded versions (1995), “Gülemxan” is listed as the sixth of the twelve yürüsh. It starts with a muqedimme taken from Ozhal, which is followed by “Gülemxan 1,” “Gülemxan 2,” “Östeng,” “Köch-köch,” “Sépil,” “Derdi Hüseyin,” and the three “Sadir’s songs.” 4. Neither of these songs should be confused with “Ili he’pan” (Banks of Ili River), a modern Chinese instrumental piece written for the zheng zither by Cheng Gongliang (1940‒2015). 5. For a study on the Nuzugum legend, see Abramson (2012); for Sadir Palwan, see Freeman (2021). 6. Interview, July 8, 2005, Ürümchi. 7. These conversations took place between mid-2005 and late 2009 in Ürümchi and Ghulja. 8. Interview, July 2009, Ürümchi. 9. Interview, July 2009, Ürümchi; see also Kee (2011) for a detailed analysis of dutar strokes. 10. These songs are included on the album Vocal Music of Contemporary China, vol. 2: The National Minorities (Folkways, 1980), which collected eighteen of these “minority” propaganda songs released in the 1950s on 78 rpm vinyl discs by China Record Company. 11. Interview, April 2010, Ürümchi. 12. Various singers and producers indicated that in about 2005 they had sold more copies of VCDs than audio CDs—which were usually released simultaneously—and partly as a result of that, the price of VCDs had often been marked down slightly. This began to change at the end of the decade and into the early 2010s as DVDs became more popular. 13. Even modernized interpretations of traditional tunes are often framed in the visual presentation of natural landscapes of the Uyghur homeland in music videos. See examples of Nurmemet Tursun from his albums Kün we tün (Day and night) (2003), in which most instrumental melodies played on traditional Uyghur instruments are harmonized with a synthesized accompaniment. See also his two other albums, Ejep yiller (Those good years) (2001) and Temburum (My tembur) (2006). 14. The meaning of “Wangxulu” is unclear. Some suggest that it is a Uyghur pronunciation of the Chinese term Wang houliu (lit., “flowing backward”). Most musicians I have talked to understand it also as a song about oppression. Memtimin Hoshur (2006, 36) states that the song describes the hardship endured by the approximately fifteen hundred Taranchi who, for several months a year during the flood season, were enlisted to do the hard work at the river. 15. At least two different sets of lyrics for Xanleylun exist. Abduweli Jarullayof’s versions (1962, 1976) are completely different from the more popular versions today. Lyrics are not included here. 16. Interviews, July 2009 and liner notes (2008). 17. An extensive list of national intangible cultural heritage entries has been compiled, with hundreds of officially recognized bearers. See China’s Intangible Cultural Heritage webpage at http://www.ihchina.cn/ (accessed August 1, 2018). Also see Rees (2012). 18. For selections of field and studio recorded performances of Dolan music, see the following three audio recordings: Turkestan Chinois/Xinjiang: Musiques Ouïgoures (1990), Turkestan Chinois: Le muqam des Dolan (2006), and The Uyghur Muqam (2008).



Notes to Pages 167–184

217

19. Quotations came from the website of Gansu television station at http://www.gstv.com .cn/news/folder45/2015-10-29/78422.html (accessed August 1, 2018; no longer available). 20. The meeting took place on April 13, 2015, at Üzüm Restaurant on Yan’an yoli in Ürümchi. The year of the meeting was printed erroneously in a previous publication (Wong 2017, 218, 224n4) in which this anecdote was also told. There is also a typo for the rehearsal I described in the same publication, which took place in 2005, not 2015 (Wong 2017, 218, 224n5). 21. Interviews, observation, and field recording took place in June 2005 at a rehearsal room of Shinjang muqam ansambili in Ürümchi and subsequent meetings in June and July 2005. 22. See, for example, Uyghur Dolan muqami (1996) and Daolang mukamu de shengtai yu xingtai yanjiu (Research on the context and content of Dolan muqam) (2004). Many of the printed and audiovisual publications were the result of high-profile government state funding, leading to the “successful application” for Uyghur muqam to be listed as one of the “Masterpieces of Human Oral and Intangible Heritage” in UNESCO’s third batch of proclamations in 2005, where the Dolan styles and examples were disproportionately highlighted and promoted to represent Uyghur muqam. 23. This was facilitated by the substantial scholarly involvement of Uyghur music in the intangible cultural heritage movement, the most notable being that of the late Han musicologist Zhou Ji (1943–2008), who was a strong proponent of “original ecology” styles of Uyghur music performance. See Tian (2009) for a volume of collected essays published in honor of Zhou’s research on Uyghur music and contribution to its preservation. 24. I was unable to conduct interviews with the Dolan musicians at the festival in Rudolstadt. Similar to many other traveling Uyghur artists, the group was headed by a Han Chinese director (who spoke no Uyghur) dispatched from the Cultural Bureau and a younger, bilingual Uyghur assistant. The director did his best to prevent the musicians from meeting outsiders (including myself). The musicians were brought to the performing venue moments before their sessions and were escorted back to their hotel once their duties had concluded. A request made by a small group of European Uyghur, who had traveled to Rudolstadt to see the show, to have dinner with the musicians was rejected by the director. 25. See Yi zai Xinjiang: Wang Jingmei de pipa yinyue dang’an (Been there already: Wang Jinmei’s pipa archive of Xinjiang) (2016). 26. This conversation took place in June 2016 in Ghulja. Chapter 7:  Conclusion 1. The original Chinese song is titled “Hao ge” (Howling song), also known as “Niugui shesheng dui duige” (Song of the team of ox demons and snake spirits). Written by Zhou Weizhi (1916–2014), reportedly under compulsion, it was used by the Red Guards to humiliate imprisoned artists, intellectuals, and the so-called Black Gang members, who were coerced to sing the song repeatedly as a kind of mental torture (see more about the song in Zhou Qiyue, n.d.). The lyrics and melody (in cipher notation) of one Chinese version of the song are reproduced in Wang Youqin (2001). The song was translated from Chinese into Uyghur by playwright Memet Tatliq, then the vice chair of Xinjiang’s Cultural Bureau, who had lately been branded a member of the Black Gang. No melodic transcription of the Uyghur version survived. Interview, March 2013, Ürümchi; see also Héytem Hüseyin (2007), 225–232. 2. Interviews, Ürümchi (2005, 2009) and Ghulja Nahiye (2017).

218

Notes to Pages 184–198

3. Interview, June 2005, Ürümchi. 4. Interview, March 2013, Ghulja. 5. Some of the songs were also adapted for pedagogical use at music schools. See, for example, a compilation of Uyghur vocal pieces by Seyyare Abbasowa (2007), which includes several songs from Qizil chiragh, among other propaganda songs in the 1960s and 1970s. 6. One version features a male voice singing, with a synthesized pop arrangement, over the original film footage from the 1970s. It was sung in the “key” of G. The video of this version circulated widely on the Internet in the early 2010s but has since then disappeared. Some of the original studio recordings in the 1970s were released on two vinyl discs in Selections from the Uighur Opera—The Red Lantern (1976).



Notes to Pages 198–199

219

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INDEX

Page numbers in bold refer to the principal treatment of a subject and/or figures. Abdulla Abduréhim, 102, 107, 109–110, 112–114, 128, 213n2; Ai yi cheng hui, 111; “Dolan meshrébi,” 115–118; “Hayat longqisi,” 124; “Janane,” 107; Qara tupraq, 107, 113; Shérin chüsh, 110, 113; Tenha söygü, 109–110, 114; “Untalmidim,” 110, 213n2; Xiyaldiki söygü, 114; “Yol bergin,” 110–111 Abdulla Hamut, 56, 209n23 Abdulla Mechnun, 72, 191, 214n10 Abduréhim Héyit, 143, 151, 203, 215n20 Abdurehim Nizari, 85, 90, 213n31 Abduweli Dawut, 131, 168–170, 172–173, 175, 178, 179–181, 191–193, 212n27; Ayding axsham, 168; “Gülüm ketti,” 131 Abduweli Jarullayof, 38, 174–175, 177–180, 208n5, 217n15 Abduxaliq Uyghur, 41 abject, 5–13, 57, 205n10 Ablajan Awut Ayup, 127, 215n20; “Meshrep nawasi,” 127 Ablet Ablikim, 113, 115 alcohol, 28–29, 41, 76–78, 97, 106, 130 Alimjan Abduqadir, ix, 136, 138, 154, 157, 161 Altishari, 6 Amanisaxan, Melike, 18, 63, 73, 79, 206n21, 210n9 anti-Japanese songs, 41 Aqsu (Aksu), 6, 9, 37–39, 40, 42, 184

arrests, ix, 11, 27, 127, 130, 212n22, 215n20 (chap. 4), 215n4 ashiq, 71, 107, 122, 125, 137, 155–156 assimilation, 5, 10, 12, 18, 31, 47, 48, 50–51, 133, 200 “Atush” (composition), 137, 155, 159, 216n21 Atush (place-name), 6, 36, 159, 214n6, 216n24 autonomy, minority: under Sheng Shicai, 35–36; under the CCP, 47–48, 50 Awat, 6, 184   Bawudun Musabayev, 36 bayawan. See muqam, Dolan version of Bezeklik Buddhist cave temples, 141 Boz yigit, 40   canonization, 148–149, 153; of Ili folk songs, 173–179; of muqam, 18, 59, 61, 64, 74, 98, 99, 101 censorship, 103, 118, 195 Chaghatay (East Turki language), xi, 6, 16, 42, 79, 210n8, 211n9 Chaghatayid (khanate), 38, 47, 63, 66 chang (dulcimer), 5, 34, 37, 54, 145–146, 148, 153, 157, 215n6, 215n18 (chap. 5) Chen Chi-Ying (Chen Jiying), 42–44, 209n16 China, People’s Republic of (PRC), 1, 20, 47, 48, 171

241

Chinese Communist Party (CCP), 14, 28, 36, 45, 46, 47, 49, 54, 134, 197 Chöchek, 39, 208n11 chong neghme, 67–68, 70–75, 211n9 chong pede (tuning), 82 civilization: Chinese, 19; Uyghur, 6, 61 civilizing project, 31, 45–46, 52, 132 cultural enlightenment, 2, 7, 19, 31, 41, 51, 52, 54, 120, 132, 202 cultural loss, 61, 65–66, 85, 98, 139 Cultural Revolution, 51, 62, 74, 136, 140, 181, 196–200, 203 curfew, 12–14, 133   “Daban cheng de gu’niang,” 4, 12, 204n5 Dao Lang, 8, 117, 209n21, 209n22, 214n7 dap, 70, 85, 108, 115, 120, 121, 152, 153, 157, 174; large-size, 125; neghme, 212n21; performers of, 176, 186 daqu, 19, 206n30 dastan: as a musical form, 64, 67, 69–71, 73, 74, 75, 84–96, 99, 105, 119, 122, 137, 142, 147–148, 175, 178, 211n9, 212n21, 213n37, 214n8; as a narrative epic, 38, 71, 85, 139, 147, 213n32, 213n35 dastgāh, 60, 79 Dawut Awut, 56, 129, 137, 138, 150–152, 154, 155, 159–160, 163, 204n2, 216n23; interpretation of “Tashway,” 156–159 decontextualization, 52, 53, 161, 163, 182, 183 Dilber Yunus, 104 Dil küyi, 102 Dolan muqam. See muqam, Dolan version of dombra (plucked lute), 50 Döng Köwrük (Erdaoqiao), 9 Dunhuang manuscript, 206n30 dutar, 6, 74, 76, 78, 81, 100, 131, 137, 143, 145, 180–181, 191, 196, 200, 217n9; Ili style of, 168, 170, 172; modern styles of, 146, 151, 153; seen in films, 135; seen in images, 34, 37; tuning of, 82, 213n30   East Turkestan Republic: first (1933–1934), 36, 40; second (1944–1949), 15, 32, 44 Ejem: as a muqam, 63, 64, 65, 66, 75, 80, 148, 204n2, 211n15, 214n8, 214n17; as an Ili composition, 147, 198; meaning of, 211n13

242

Index

Ekrem Ömer, 56, 148, 160, 162 ethnicity (nationality/millet/minzu), 1, 9, 15, 22, 25, 27, 116, 118, 126, 127, 146, 202; classification of, 35–36, 40, 46, 204n4, 209n18; in modern China, 45, 47; representation of, 134, 139, 201, 204n5. See also second-generation ethnic policy, ethnogenesis ethnogenesis, 7, 100, 204n4, 209n19 ethnography, 15, 25, 26, 27, 67 ewj, 81, 83, 84, 93, 109, 158, 175 exoticism, 57 Eysabeg: Otung yaman, 214n6   Fārābī, 63, 210n7 fieldwork. See ethnography films, “minority,” 14, 38–39, 52, 111, 119, 133–135, 154, 206n19, 209n22, 219n6   genocide, 12, 209n20 ghazal, 6, 64, 79–80, 86–88, 96, 211n10, 212n26 Ghazi Emet: Muqam (painting), 100, 213n40 ghéjek, 6, 19, 51, 184, 185, 186, 209n23, 210n5, 215n13; modern styles of, 52, 54, 56, 121, 139–143, 145, 146, 148, 153, 157, 160, 162, 164, 216n27; seen in images, 34, 37, 100, 208n7; uses in pop, 105, 108, 109, 114, 123 Ghérip-Senem, 37, 38, 88, 90, 93, 94, 96 Ghiyasidin Barat, 143, 167, 180, 197, 199, 217n3 Gülemxan, 167, 178, 216n2, 217n3 “Gundipay,” 137, 155, 156   Hakim beg, 34, 210n8 halal, 28–29, 207n47 Han paternalism, 19–20, 46, 48, 194 hapiz, 107–108 Hesenjan Tursun, 191 Héytem Hüseyin, 196–200, 209n23, 216n24, 218n1 Héytgah (Id Kah) mosque, 13, 109 Hong Kong, 3, 4, 22, 26, 27, 28, 44, 77, 106, 192, 204n2, 204n5, 207n45, 207n47 Hoshur Axun, 15, 16, 20 hui bu, 18

Hüsenjan Jami, 34, 144, 177, 197, 204n2 Hüseyn Musabayev, 36 Huweyda, Xoja’nezer Ghayib’nezer, 79–80, 88–89, 212n26   Ili folk singing, 34, 169, 170, 171, 173–181 Ili River, 165, 166–167, 168, 169, 217n4 improvisation, 6, 81, 143, 147, 148, 155, 161, 186, 187 indigeneity, 2, 58, 192–193, 202 Iparxan, Khoja (Xiang Fei), 12 iptar (iftar), 165 Isa Yusuf Alptekin, 44 Ishret enggiz, 63, 72, 73, 211 ishshek, 123, 214n14 Iskender Seypulla, 197 iskripka, 37, 76, 139, 140, 142–143 Islam, 3, 8, 12, 19, 28, 36, 40, 42, 48, 155, 156   Jadidist education movement, 36 Jalam Baywechche, 34 Jami Aka, 34, 144 Jappar Qasim, 216n2 Jean During, 65, 189, 210n2, 211n15, 214n15 Jian Qihua, 75, 89, 174, 180, 217n3   Kashgar old town, 13, 49, 108 Kazakhstan, 6, 22, 33, 34, 35, 47, 51, 55, 107, 119, 166, 170, 173, 210n7, 212n12 Kérim (singer), 12, 203n1, 205n15 khöömii, 183 Khotan, 6, 19, 49, 67, 112, 123, 137, 159, 169, 210n8, 214n13 kichik pede (tuning), 82 Köresh Kusen, 172 Kucha, 6, 17, 39, 209n23 Kuomintang (KMT), 18, 31, 44, 45, 46 Küresh yoli, 198   Lei Zhenbang, 134 Lenin, Vladimir, 40 Leyli-Mejnun, 37 Liang Ch’i-Ch’ao (Liang Qichao), 46 living fossils (huo huashi), 19 Lop Nur, 10 Lükchün, 145, 213n39, 215n16 Lutpulla Mutellip, 30, 38–39, 41, 164, 209n13

Macartney, Catherine Borland, 32 “Machefu zhi lian,” 203n1 makam, Turkish, 60, 79 Mao Tse-tung (Mao Zedong), 20, 28, 48, 49–50, 170, 197, 209n22 maqām, 60, 64, 79, 115, 123, 210n1, 213n31 Maralbéshi, 6, 12, 184 Margilan, 34 masculinity, 12, 22, 75, 212n25 Ma Shizeng, 151, 152 mass incarceration and “reeducation” camps, 11, 24, 50, 97, 127, 198, 215n4, 215n20 mazar, 80, 159, 168, 215n18 (chap. 4) mehelle, 37, 167, 174 Mehmud Sulayman, 106–107; Méning yultuzum, 107; Salam dostlar, 106 Memet Tatliq, 218n1 Memtili Ependi, 166, 216n1 Memtimin Hoshur, 33, 35, 37, 144, 208nn5–7, 217n3, 217n14 merghul, 19, 63, 69–71, 75, 84, 85, 86, 87–92, 146, 147, 175, 178, 213n33, 215n17; as modern solos, 142, 147–148 Merkit, 6, 12, 151, 187, 190 Meshreb (Bābārahim Mashrab), 64, 79, 88, 211n10, 214n12 meshrep: as a communal event, 21, 53, 112, 113, 116–118, 127; as a musical form, 67, 69, 70, 71, 74, 75, 99, 105, 119, 120, 122–125, 207n34, 211n9, 214n8, 214n10, 214n12 min kao han, 25, 207n40 minorization, xi–xii, 1, 2, 8, 31, 50, 132, 201 modernity, 48, 52–59, 62, 98, 132, 133, 152, 154, 173, 182, 192, 200; colonial, 53, 163–164; “minority” and subaltern sense of, 44, 45, 46, 48, 53, 160, 170; musical, 2, 30, 31, 98, 102, 118, 119, 120–121, 126, 127, 201, 202 Möjizi, Molla Ismetula binni Molla Németulla, 63, 64, 66, 79, 99, 210n8; Tewarikh-i (Tewarixiy) musiqiyun, 63 Möminjan Ablikim, 113 morin khuur (horsehead fiddle), 50 mosques, 13, 198 Muhemmetjan (composer), 42–44 Muhemmetjan Rashidin, v, 203 multiculturalism, 2, 5, 11, 19, 31, 45, 50, 52, 98, 105

Index

243

“Munajat,” 40, 143 muqam: Dolan version of, 113–114, 116, 186, 214n4, 218n22; Ili, 75–97, 180; On ikki muqam, 4, 18, 60–100, 105, 147, 177, 179, 190, 193, 204n2, 212n23, 213n39; Qumul, 173; Turpan, 21, 213n39; xaraktér (character) of, 65–66, 82, 85. See also canonization muqedimme, 64, 67–69, 79–84, 85, 87–92, 93, 98, 115, 178–179, 184, 206n25, 212n21, 212n26, 213n31, 217n3 Musajan Rozi, 38, 96, 176, 213n38 Muz taghqa kelgen méhman (Bingshan shang de laike; Guests from the ice mountains), 111, 133, 154   naghra, 13, 100, 216n20 nanyin (nanguan), 19 nationalism, 138, 164; Chinese, 44, 46, 57; pan-Turkic, 36; Uyghur, 56, 57, 96, 209n19 Nawa (record label), 102, 113 Naxi, 19 naxun, 130, 144 Newa’i (Ali-shir Navā’ī), 6, 63, 66, 79, 87, 211n9 new folk, 111, 172–173 Nim Shéhit, 16, 206n24 noise, 8, 9–10, 17, 51, 205n14 nueva canción, 173 Nurmuhemmet (Nurmemet) Tursun, 56, 129–132, 143, 151, 160, 165, 166, 217n13 Nuzugum, 168, 217n5   olturash, 27–29, 74–78, 80, 83, 86, 96–97, 103, 105, 191, 202nn25–26 Ömerjan Alim, 111, 172 On ikki muqam (Twelve muqam). See muqam Opéra ömiki, 111, 112, 114, 130, 143 “Oqughuchilar marshi,” 41 original ecology (yuan shengtai), 179–190, 193–195, 218n23 Örkesh Dölet (Wu’er Kaixi), 4–5 Osmanjan, 136, 138, 150 “Östeng,” 174–175, 178, 217n3   Parhat Dawut, 138, 152, 216n22 pas anfas, 214n15 People’s Liberation Army, 12, 204n5 Pettarjan Abdulla, 138

244

Index

Pichan, 7, 21, 213n39 pop music, 52, 101, 104, 105, 106, 111, 112, 121, 126, 127, 128, 173 population, 9, 10, 48, 208, 209n20 Production and Construction Corps (Shengcan jianshe bingtuan), 48 propaganda, 13, 23, 36, 47, 51, 132, 208n11; films and music, 3, 14, 111, 112, 133, 171, 189, 198, 200, 209n15, 217n10, 219n5 puraq, 38, 65, 106, 128, 151, 162   “Qadir mewlan,” 137, 155 qanun, 100, 115, 146, 184, 185, 186 Qarakhanid, 210n7 Qawul Axun, 206n26 qeej, 50 “Qemberxan” (song title), 204n1 Qemberxan Emet (choreographer), 40 Qianlong, Emperor, 12 qin, 193, 210n3 Qing (Manchu) empire, 45, 47, 168, 209n17 Qorghas, 74 qoshaq, 85–86, 90, 94, 137, 139, 213n34, 216n21 quartertones (charek), 84, 85, 134, 213n31 Qumul Rebellion, 41 Qur’an, the, 36, 42 49, 156, 166 Qurban Ibrahim, 150–151, 152, 155, 157, 158, 197, 216n24; Méning rawabim, 150–153, 154, 159, 198 Qurban Seley, 215n13, 215n15 Qurban Tulum, 49–50, 209n22   race and racism, 8–10, 22, 27, 45, 46, 56, 126–127, 202, 204n8 rāg, 64 Ramadan, 48, 75, 97, 165 rawap, 5, 6, 19, 100, 105, 144–145, 146, 198, 216nn20–21, 216n26; Dolan, 100, 114, 115, 184–186, 190; in poetry, 30, 129; modern styles of, 54, 56, 120, 135–139, 148, 150–164, 215n7; representation of, 50, 52, 133–135, 209; uses in pop, 108, 120–121. See also Dawut Awut Red Guard (Qizil qoghdichuchilar), 197, 198, 218n1 Red Lantern, The (Qizil chiragh; Hongdeng ji), 17, 196–201, 219n6

reflexive cinema, 38 representations, 3, 7, 12, 31, 102, 122–123, 127, 171, 187, 193, 204n5 Republican era, 47. See also Kuomintang resistance, 11, 50, 55, 102, 111, 118, 127 Rozek Bashi, 150, 155, 216n21 Rozi héyt (Eid al-Fitr), 97 Rozi Tembur, 15, 37, 41, 67, 73, 75, 79, 170, 177 ruan, 141 rubāb, 115, 133 Rudolstadt, 185, 190, 218n24 Ruxsari, 73, 178, 179, 212n21   Sadir Palwan, 168, 174, 217n5 “Salamu Mao zhuxi” (Salaam Chairman Mao), 49–50, 209n22 sana’inepise, 37, 40, 176 sapayi, 34, 125 satar, 15, 19, 76, 78, 132, 137, 146, 151, 168, 170, 172, 191, 197, 210n5; construction and tuning of, 5, 6, 45, 81–82, 212n29; seen in images, 34, 37, 79; techniques, 84, 93 Scott, James, 118, 121 second-generation ethnic policy, 12, 200, 205n13 Semet Abdulla, 140, 143 Senuber Tursun, 130, 131, 189, 191, 192, 194, 203, 215n20; Arzu, 189 September 11, 2001, attacks, 10–11 Seypidin Ezizi, 15, 16, 141, 206n21 Seytulla(m) Toxti, 143 “Shadiyane,” 137, 155 Shanghai, 21, 44, 104, 149, 209n15 “Shanli Qur’an,” 42–43 shashmaqām, 4, 60, 67, 210n1 Shehrizade, 8, 204n6 Sheng Shicai, 35, 36, 40 Sheqiy Türkistan jumhuriyiti. See East Turkestan Republic Shinjangda bahar (Spring in Xinjiang), 216n27 Shinjang muqam sen’et ömiki (Xinjiang Muqam Art Ensemble), 4, 62, 89, 98, 103, 152, 218n21 Shinjang sen’et inistituti (Xinjiang Arts Institute), 51, 130, 136, 140, 144, 159, 161, 171, 214n11, 216n26

Shir’eli Eltékin, 103–109, 118–127, 213n2, 214nn10–12, 214n17; “Anijan,” 105, 107–109; “Chahargah meshrep,” 119, 123–125; “Chebbiyat jula,” 119, 122, 214n8; Muqam ishqi, 118, 121, 122; “Mushawarek dastan,” 119; “Nawa ikkinichi meshrep,” 120, 123; Yolliringgha qaraymen, 104, 119, 120 Sim bayawan, 186 socialist, 1, 57, 103–104, 139, 149, 152, 170, 198, 209n21 song-and-dance troupes (naxsha-ussul ömiki), 51, 52 “Song of Monsters and Demons,” 197, 218n1 song thief (naxsha oghrisi), 3, 25, 27, 117, 127 sonic schizophrenia, 139, 160, 201 Soviet, 31, 37, 38, 40, 43, 44, 163, 208nn8–9; folkloric style and research, 5, 17, 51, 54, 136, 139, 149, 161, 201; model of “minority” autonomy, 35–36, 44, 50 spying, 25–27, 207n42 subalternity, 18, 52, 55, 56–58, 101, 121, 126, 163, 173, 201, 202 Sufism, 6, 34, 59, 60, 108, 156, 214n15; elements in pop, 108, 122, 124–125, 214n17; influence on Uyghur music and art, 6, 59, 71, 79, 100, 157; mendicant, 34, 122, 137, 155 Sykes, Ella Constance, 32–33 sympathetic strings: removal of, 138, 140, 142; tuning of, 81–82, 138, 141, 212n29. See also rawap, satar, ghéjek   Tahir-Zöhre, 38, 39, 96, 213n37 Taiwan, 44–45, 106–107, 209n16, 214n3 Taranchi, 6, 174, 204n3, 208n9, 217n14 Tarim Basin (Taklamakan Desert), 6 Tarim River, 108, 166, 211n9 Tash Axun, 155–157 “Tashway” (composition), 137, 155–159, 161, 216n26 tebligh, 8, 49 tembur (tanbur), 6, 56, 76, 78, 81, 129, 130, 137, 143, 165, 168, 170, 191, 198, 211n9; modern styles of, 131, 132, 144–145, 146, 147, 151, 153, 217n13; notation of, 171, 208na; seen in images, 34, 37, 79; uses in

Index

245

pop, 105, 110, 123. See also Hüsenjan Jami, Rozi Tembur, Nurmuhemmet Tursun Tengritagh (Tianshan), 6, 162 terrorism, discourse of, 11, 12, 14, 133, 192 tezkire, 210n8 three evil forces (üch xil küch), 14 Three gratefulnesses (Üch minnetdarliq), 28 Tian’anmen movement (in 1989), 5 Tianshan Pictorial (Tianshan huabo), 42, 43, 209n15 Toqsun, 7 Turdi Axun, 15–16, 17, 20, 206n22, 206nn26–28; recordings of, 62, 64, 66, 67, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 75, 79, 82, 92, 99, 206n25, 211n12 Turkey, 22, 43, 55, 102, 104, 119 Turpan, 7, 21, 37, 39, 47, 79, 141, 190, 204n3, 207n34, 207n44, 210n6, 213n39 Tursunjan Létip, 72, 170, 212n18, 212n23; Qizil rawaq muqami, 74   Üchturpan, 37 Üch wilayet inqilabi (Sanqü geming). See East Turkestan Republic Umm Kulthūm, 109 UNESCO proclamation of the Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity, 20, 61, 98, 181, 194, 210n3, 218n22 urtin duu, 183, 193, 210n3 Ürümchi: protests and violence in (2009), 12, 13, 22, 23, 24, 49, 133, 169, 205n17 ustaz-shagirt, 26, 27–28, 63 Uyghur Cultural Enlightenment Association (Medeniy aqartish uyushmisi; UMAU), 35–40, 43, 208nn10–11 Uzbek: ethnicity/nationality, 25, 33, 34, 37, 208n9; language, 6; musical styles, 119, 135, 142, 143, 151, 210n1 Uzbekistan, 4, 8, 33, 55, 136, 140, 155   virtuosity, 2, 51, 53, 143, 149, 150, 154, 159–164   Wagner, Richard, 162–163 Wang Jingmei, 191, 218n25

246

Index

Wang Luobin, 3, 8, 25, 49, 117, 203n1, 207n41 “Wangxulu,” 174, 217n14 Wan Tongshu, 15, 20, 51, 62, 71, 72, 73, 84, 139, 145, 146, 184, 206n23, 207n31, 211n12 Werktreue, 61, 99 wezin, 86 Wu Man, 190–191   Xanleylun, 175–179, 191, 217n15 Xelq kommunisi yaxshi (The people’s commune is good), 17, 198 Xi Jinping, 14, 28, 127 Xinjiang University, 16, 136 Xoja Niyaz, 40 xushtar, 5, 100, 139–143, 145, 148, 215n13, 215n15   Yakupjan Ababekri, 178, 203 yangqin, 5, 146, 157, 215n6 Yang Yinliu, 15, 18 Yarkand khanate, 18, 47 Yarkent Kalte Chapanliri, 34 Yarmuhemmet Jamaldin, 139, 153, 170, 179 Yasin Muxpul, 147 Yéngisar, 6, 11, 42 yerlik, 6, 47, 77, 80, 81, 83, 204n3 Yettisu, 34 Yiraqtiki uchqunlar, 38 “Yizhou,” 206n30 Youth Singing and Dancing Troupe of Xinjiang (Xinjiang qingnian gewutuan), 44 “Yukuai de rewapu,” 134 yürüsh, 34, 76, 78, 85, 147, 167, 173–180 Yüsüpjan Ghapparuf, 34 Yüsüp Qadirxan Yarkandi, 18, 63, 154, 211n9   zexmek, 129, 135, 144, 150 Zhang Zhizhong, 44 Zhonghua minzu (Chinese nationality), 4, 46 Zhou Ji, 17, 20–21, 64–65, 84–85, 218n23 zikr, 124, 214n15, 214n17. See also Sufism Zikri Elpetta, 37, 67, 73, 177, 178, 199, 208n7, 212n21 zurney, 100, 110, 146, 162, 216n20

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Chuen-Fung Wong is associate professor of music at Macalester College, where he teaches courses in ethnomusicology and world music, and directs the Macalester Asian Music Ensemble. He studies Uyghur music and publishes on topics ranging from modernity and minority nationalism to musical revival and exoticism. Wong has published three other books, Silk and Bamboo: Instrumental Music from the Chinese South (A-R Editions, 2023), Soundscapes in Chinese Music (Hong Kong University Press, 2019), and Listening to Chinese Music (Hong Kong Commercial Press, 2009). He is the recipient of the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, Hong Kong Research Grants Council grants, and the Rulan Chao Pian Prize for the best article on Chinese music, among other awards and recognitions. He was president of the Association for Chinese Music Research and editor of the ACMR Newsletter. He holds a PhD in ethnomusicology from UCLA.

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