Tajikistan 1955 | A 2-Hour Journey Through Mountain Laments, Long Necked Lute and Drums

🌍 Country 173 of 197 | The 1955 Series | Around This Dot 1955 Tajikistan, the smallest and most mountainous of the Central Asian republics, about one and three quarter million people, most of the country standing above three thousand feet. Nearly three hours of music as it might have sounded there in 1955, across four suites: the long unmetered laments of the narrow valleys; the plucked lute over the sound of churning; the cotton rows and the bowed fiddle; and a closing pair leading into the Pan-Tajikistan Inter-Region Folk Extended Suite. CHAPTERS 0:00 Suite I: Songs of the Narrow Valleys A man sings alone on a bare slope high above a narrow valley with rock going up on both sides, in phrases so long there is no beat under them at all, the voice driven up into a high tight register and held there under pressure before it falls away in slow steps, over a low drone held beneath by a second voice that never stops. Beside it a low flat-ceilinged room with the door open onto cold air, 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 Narrow Valleys Extended Suite. 47:19 Suite II: The Lute and the Churn A very long slender neck over a small pear-shaped body, held upright across the lap, the thumb catching the heaviest low string again and again so that it is renewed before it can die and stands under the whole piece as one unmoving tone. With it a heavy round jar of fired clay struck once on the shoulder and left, and underneath both a hide bag half full of milk swung back and forth on its frame without stopping, a low surging wash that never breaks. Closes with The Lute and the Churn Extended Suite. 1:26:59 Suite III: The Cotton Rows and the Fiddle A long line of women works down the rows in the lowland heat, the hands moving on a slow even stroke, the woman at the head throwing out one long phrase and the rest coming in underneath it before she has finished. With it the fiddle: a short round body covered in hide on a long thin foot, the bow drawn over its lowest string in long unbroken strokes so the tone never stops, thin wires ringing on by themselves under the fingerboard, while low voices hold one chord and hand it between them as they breathe. Closes with The Cotton Rows and the Fiddle Extended Suite. 2:05:13 Suite IV: Heritage and Inter-Region A courtyard full of women sitting close together at a wedding, all of them carrying one long open line together and holding it out so the sound never lifts off, while under them wide shallow hand drums are struck once and then left alone for whole seconds at a time. Then the lute again over the churning, this time with no voices at all. Closes with the Pan-Tajikistan Inter-Region Folk Extended Suite. ABOUT 1955 In 1955 Tajikistan was a Soviet republic of roughly one and three quarter million people, the smallest and most mountainous in Central Asia, with more than nine tenths of its territory above three thousand feet. Bobojon Gafurov had led the republic's communist party since 1946 and would hold the post until 1956; a historian by training, he founded the republic's first university in 1948 and its academy of sciences in 1951. The capital was called Stalinabad that year and would not take the name Dushanbe until 1961. The economic project of the decade was irrigation and cotton in the southern valley, where dams were being built for power and water and land was being brought under cultivation by people resettled from the mountains. The towns were filling with incomers while the Tajik population stayed overwhelmingly rural, and in the far east the mountain communities lived at altitudes that kept them largely to themselves. The music heard here belongs to those valleys and that lowland. 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 devotional repertory of the mountain communities is a large part of the recorded music of this country and is not rendered anywhere here, because this series does not approximate religious or ritual material. And the state folk orchestra arrangements that dominated broadcasting in this period are also left out, since they belong to an institution rather than to the villages this series is trying to hear. Created for educational and ambient listening purposes. #Tajikistan #CentralAsia #Pamirs #MountainSong #Lute #Fiddle #HandDrums #FolkMusic #1950s #AmbientMusic #WorldMusic #AroundThisDot