1955 Turkmenistan | 2 Hours of Vintage Bard Songs, Two String Lute and Lament

🌍 Country 182 of 197 | The 1955 Series | Around This Dot 1955 Turkmenistan, a Soviet republic of about one and a half million people, four fifths of it desert, the settled population strung along the oases. Nearly three hours of music as it might have sounded there in 1955, across four suites: the long bard songs of the sand and the felt tent; the two string lute and the bowed fiddle; the wedding room and the bard's running figure; and a closing pair leading into the Pan-Turkmenistan Inter-Region Folk Extended Suite. CHAPTERS 0:00 Suite I: Songs of the Sand and the Felt Tent A man sits alone outside a felt tent at the edge of the sand at the end of the day with the light going red across flat ground, singing in phrases so long there is no beat under them, the voice forced up hard from the throat and held under real strain at the top before it drops away. Beside it a carpet inside the tent in the middle of the day with the roof flap open and the light coming down in one shaft, an old man singing at the very bottom of his range while two women hold one thin high tone above him. Closes with the Songs of the Sand and the Felt Tent Extended Suite. 46:10 Suite II: The Two String Lute and the Bowed Fiddle A small deep body with a very long fretted neck and two gut strings, brushed with the fingers so the lower string is caught again and again before it can die, while underneath a hide bag half full of milk is swung back and forth on its frame all morning. Then a round body of hollowed wood covered in thin hide on a long foot, stood on the knee and bowed in long unbroken strokes so the tone never stops for the length of a phrase. Closes with The Two String Lute and the Bowed Fiddle Extended Suite. 1:26:52 Suite III: The Wedding Room and the Bard A room full of women sitting close together on carpets at a wedding, all carrying one long open line and holding it out so the sound never lifts off, while under them one wide shallow frame drum is struck once and left alone for whole seconds at a time. With it the lute in its other manner: the fingers working steadily across both strings in an unhurried repeating pattern that never stops, under one held voice and over a drone the singers keep beneath everything. Closes with The Wedding Room and the Bard Extended Suite. 2:02:27 Suite IV: Heritage and Inter-Region Before first light in a room of dried earth, with the household gathered and nothing else sounding, a woman lets out long phrases that begin high and come down in slow narrow steps, the voice pinched almost shut at the end of each descent before she draws it back up. Then a heavy wooden bowl turned from one piece, set upturned on a carpet and struck once on its base with a spoon, the strokes very far apart. Closes with the Pan-Turkmenistan Inter-Region Folk Extended Suite. ABOUT 1955 In 1955 Turkmenistan was a Soviet republic of about one and a half million people, four fifths of it desert, with the settled population strung along the oases at the foot of the mountains and the rivers at either end. Suhan Babayev had led the republic's communist party since 1951. The capital was still being rebuilt: an earthquake in October 1948 had destroyed almost the whole city and killed a large part of its population. The economic project of the decade was the canal begun in 1954 to carry water from the great river westward into the sand for cotton. Cotton, sheep and carpets were the economy, and the tribal confederations that had organised life before the conquest from the north still shaped who married whom and which carpet pattern a household wove. The music heard here belongs to the tents and the oases of that world. ABOUT THE SERIES Around This Dot is a journey around our planet through sound. The 1955 Series visits every country on Earth, one country at a time, capturing the music a listener might have heard there in 1955. From Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, 197 countries in total. DISCLOSURE Music composed by AI and audio performed by AI based on detailed historical and ethnomusicological prompts. These are approximations of regional traditions, not authentic recordings. Two things are worth naming. The reed pipes of this country are not rendered here, because wind instruments fall outside what this series can do honestly in slow sustained settings, and the state folk orchestra arrangements that dominated broadcasting in this period are left out because they belong to an institution rather than to the tents and villages this series is trying to hear. Shrine repertory is ritual material and is described and left alone. This is also a country with very little drumming, and the album reflects that rather than importing drums it did not have. Created for educational and ambient listening purposes. #Turkmenistan #CentralAsia #BardSong #TwoStringLute #Karakum #Lament #FolkMusic #1950s #AmbientMusic #WorldMusic #AroundThisDot