|
Institute for Studies In American Music |
|
|
|
|
|
Inside This Issue George Handy’s Bloos by Benjamin Bierman American Hymn Tune Index by Gayle Sherwood Magee Composing Queer, review by Howard Pollack Nine Hours with Jelly Roll Morton, review by Jeff Taylor Alvin Lucier, review by David Grubbs |
Bukharian Jewish Music in Queens by Evan Rapport
Bukharian Jewish Maqom ensemble Photo courtesy of Evan Rapport In her contribution to the 2002 symposium “Disciplining American Music,” Anne Rasmussen encouraged a more multicultural approach to American music pedagogy, asking, “How long until a music, a religion, a food, gets its green card? Fifty years? Seventy-five years? One hundred fifty years? What will our American music curriculum look like a century from now?”1 Bringing the musical life of new Americans to the center of our studies, rather than waiting for mainstream acceptance, is crucial, illuminating the process of music in the United States becoming music of the United States. For the Bukharian Jews in New York, life in the U.S. has led to significant changes in practices, repertoires, performance contexts, and audiences. The choices that Bukharian musicians are making both reflect and shape shifting notions about the very concept of “American” and ideas of multiculturalism itself. At the same time, the experiences of Bukharian Americans are at the center of contemporary world politics and issues. Bukharian culture, connected to hundreds of years of Jewish–Muslim interaction, is changing in the wake of the events of September 11, 2001, and the vast and multilayered Bukharian diaspora sheds new light on globalization and contemporary migration. The Bukharian Jews—Jews from the present-day nations of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Kyrgyzstan, and their descendants—lived for centuries in the cities of Central Asia.2 In the 1980s and 1990s, with perestroika and the subsequent establishment of independent post-Soviet states, Bukharians joined many other Jews in leaving the areas once strictly controlled by the USSR. In the newly independent Central Asian countries, anti-Semitism increased and tensions between Jews and Muslims ran high. Jews were sometimes the victims of hate crimes, as they were associated with Israel, the United States, and oddly enough, even former Soviet regimes. During the past two decades, Bukharians have established vibrant and thriving communities in Israel, Europe, and the U.S. The Bukharian community in New York, and especially in Queens, has grown substantially. Population estimates for today’s New York community hover around 50,000. Interest in Central Asia, exotic Jewish groups, and multiculturalism have created new kinds of opportunities for Bukharian musicians in the U.S. to perform for general and mostly non-Bukharian audiences. In such situations, Bukharians favor selections from the classical repertoires called maqom (or simply described as vaznin, “heavy”) associated with the Central Asian courts; the shashmaqom of the Bukharan court is the repertoire associated most strongly with Bukharian Jews.3 Maqom compositions are formally arranged into large-scale suites, although they are rarely performed this way today. The conventional instrumentation is a chamber ensemble consisting of a frame drum (doira), a long-necked lute (tanbur), and one or more singers. The tanburist often sings, making the tanbur/voice with doira duo the smallest group that covers all of the necessary bases. Larger groups are often augmented by another frame drum and other lutes (both plucked and bowed), and today, one can also hear synthesizer, clarinet, and accordion. Maqom performers typically dress in the beautiful embroidered coats used for ceremonial or otherwise special occasions. The choice to represent Bukharian culture with maqom is interesting because the repertoire has also had the burden of representing Uzbek and Tajik culture. Official Soviet cultural policies demanded “national” or “folk” musics to represent the Uzbeks, Tajiks, and other newly constructed nationalities, resulting in separate Uzbek and Tajik versions of the shashmaqom produced as cultural monuments.4 Jews were considered a separate nationality altogether. Maqom in Central Asia—like jazz in the United States—was at the center of a twentieth-century public conversation about identity, but the significant Jewish contribution to the music was excluded from this discussion. In fact, Bukharians were famous for performing maqom in feudal Central Asia and in the national orchestras of the Soviet Union, and they have played a significant role in the repertoire’s development. Bukharians have seized the opportunity in the U.S. to proclaim their role in the history and perpetuation of maqom. Bukharian groups with names such as “Maqom” and “Shashmaqom” have performed at Carnegie Hall, Symphony Space, and the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. The Bukharian decision to publicly treat maqom as a sort of national Bukharian music shows just how well Soviet conceptions of nationality dovetail with U.S. multiculturalism, which implies (or requires) that demarcated groups have a representative and distinct music or culture. Perhaps because maqom has such a deep history of interchange between Muslims and Jews, and Uzbeks and Tajiks, it remains a lively site of public discourse about heritage and ethnicity. Recently, the Aga Khan Music Initiative in Central Asia has sponsored international concerts and recordings of maqom by Tajik Muslim musicians, highlighting the repertoire’s strong Sufi connections.5 In the United States, maqom and Bukharian culture have meaning as a product of Jewish–Muslim interactions and a (retrospectively) multicultural Central Asia, presenting an alternative to fearmongering, ignorance, and notions that Jews and Muslims are eternal enemies or that the world is caught in a doomed clash of civilizations. Literature for the 2002 Smithsonian Folklife Festival (The Silk Road: Connecting Cultures, Creating Trust), which featured a Bukharian ensemble, stated: “Following the events of September 11, it seems clear to us that it is ever so important for people and societies the world over to take account of their neighbors, to come to know them and learn of and from them, to engage them in positive ways.”6 However, such laudable
rhetoric may obscure the often-conflicting views that Bukharians hold about
Muslims, Central Asia, and the meanings of maqom. This is an irony of
multicultural initiatives and related scholarship (including my own work):
repertoires and musicians are asked to serve ideologies that may run counter
to the ideologies of the musicians themselves. Power dynamics are always at
play in social interactions, and one voice—even one informed by
multiculturalism—can silence or undermine another, as when the Ilyas
Malayev Ensemble’s entirely standard choice to show respect and pride
with formal Bukharian clothes at Carnegie Hall was dismissed by John Rockwell
of The New York Times as looking “more touristic than
authentic.” The dress “pigeonholed all the Central Asian
performers as exotics . . . All one needed was desert dust and a whiff of
camel dung.”7 Other significant performance contexts for New York Bukharians are the multicultural projects of established U.S. Jewish communities, where maqom is also the repertoire of choice. Multiculturalism has found a receptive home in synagogues and Jewish institutions, which now regularly feature educational programs designed to expose their congregations to the tapestry of world Jewish culture such as Bukharian, Yemenite, and Ugandan Jewry. Some Bukharians wholeheartedly embrace Jewish pluralism: Yuhan Benjamin, a prominent Bukharian performer, compared the Jewish people to a plov, a Bukharian rice and meat dish in which all of the ingredients—meat, spices, rice, and fruit—come together to make one dish but retain their unique and individual tastes. But as there is in other multicultural initiatives, there is a risk of marginalization and exoticization, and the complex dynamics between Bukharians and the more powerful U.S. Ashkenazic communities are often masked. In Bukharian synagogues themselves, the music has much in common with the music of other Orthodox Jewish congregations. Bukharians today sing many Ashkenazic and Sephardic melodies, and they follow the Sephardic rite, which they probably adopted in the late 18th or early 19th century. Men lead and participate in the prayers, and the music is entirely vocal except for on a few special holidays. However, Bukharians also have distinct traditions. They have their own way of performing prayer, and they sing some sacred Hebrew texts, or Persian paraphrases of them, to maqom melodies. The use of maqom in a religious context underscores the spiritual, vaznin associations of Central Asian classical music for the Bukharian community. In the U.S., with its ideological atmosphere of multiculturalism, Bukharians are encouraged to recognize and cultivate their religious music as a unique heritage. Perhaps one of the most remarkable recent developments has been the Eternal Music of Bukharian Jewish Hymns project, spearheaded by Ezra Malakov and Ari Babakhanov. Malakov is a cantor at Beth Gavriel Congregation in Queens and a prominent singer of maqom, and Babakhanov is a master maqom instrumentalist living in Germany. Malakov has recorded seven CDs of religious music presented in many different styles, including solo cantorial singing, small voice/tanbur/doira ensembles, and new arrangements featuring synthesizers. Transcriptions of the recordings have been notated by Babakhanov and set and compiled by an international team, including a number of people in Uzbekistan. Eternal Music of Bukharian Jewish Hymns serves as a monument to Bukharian Jewish culture. Perhaps conceptually similar to the Uzbek and Tajik cultural monuments of the Soviet era, in reality it is significantly different. Jewish practice and culture was heavily suppressed in the Soviet Union, not celebrated with publications. In the U.S., Europe, and Israel, Bukharian religious life is undergoing a renaissance, and Malakov’s project presents the possibility that Bukharian hymns will be sung on an international scale. Yet a notion of Bukharian distinctiveness exists as one
option among many in the U.S., where ideas of choice and opportunity are just
as important as multiculturalism. For example, some Bukharians resist the
notion that everyone in the community should follow any one version of
prayer, and some prefer attending Reform and Conservative congregations,
which were unknown in Soviet Central Asia. Such choices are seen by some
Bukharians as threats to community values or unity, but by showing remarkable
vigor in engaging change and addressing the various needs of its individuals,
the Bukharian community has remained a viable entity. In private celebrations such as weddings and bar mitzvah
parties the dominant music—usually described as sabuk (light)—is
marked by omnipresent 6/8 rhythms and heavily amplified ensembles made up of doira plus instruments introduced
relatively recently to Bukharian music, such as the clarinet, guitar,
synthesizer, and darabukka (goblet
drum). In line with a considerable pride regarding the Bukharian ability to
perform and appreciate musics of many different ethnic groups, parties can
include Hebrew, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Turkish, Indian, Arabic, Russian,
Spanish, and American songs. Maqom
retains a presence as a symbol of Bukharian heritage, but these classical
selections are usually relegated to three or four numbers at the end of an
event, played on the electronic instruments with lots of reverb and the
guitar standing in for the tanbur. Celebrants sometimes wear ceremonial
coats, but bands usually wear suits and dresses. A small Bukharian CD industry has emerged, with party music most strongly represented. These CDs continue the theme of variety and diversity, highlighting proficiency in many styles and languages, and images often show musicians in notable combinations of locations and clothing. Ilya Khavasov’s My Samarkand (2002), for instance, shows the singer in a stylish suit backed by the New York skyline—the Twin Towers are intact and prominent—juxtaposed with an image of the Registan in Samarkand, one of the most famous locations of the Muslim world. Yuhan Benjamin’s website, www.yuhanny.com, opens with a flash animation showing a star of David followed by a cross, a crescent moon, and a statue of Buddha. One implication of these CDs is that Bukharians are urban and cosmopolitan, able to thrive in the many cities in which they are scattered while remaining connected to their past. The Bukharian diaspora has many levels and includes the Babylonian exile of the Jews, a sojourn in Persia and continued eastward movement, and over a century of regular migration to Palestine/Israel. Connections between Bukharians in New York and elsewhere are quite strong, and there is substantial travel and continued movement between New York, other cities in the United States, Israel, Europe, and Central Asia. Bukharians have a strong sense of their migratory history. Their songs, replete with images of far-flung locations and rendered in a variety of styles and languages, demonstrate that diaspora is an essential component of Bukharian identity. A new standard for maqom performances and parties is the song “Yalalum” by Ilyas Malayev, who is widely considered to be the community’s greatest poet. The song exists in two versions: one a celebration of immigration to New York (“In the hands of friends, young beautiful flowers/They greet us with smiles/We flew from Asia to America”), and one in praise of Jerusalem (“I am happy in our bountiful homeland/God’s name is brought day and night to my tongue/Again I request for my homeland eternal life”).8 A cosmopolitan, multifaceted self-image carries over into conceptions of “America” and “American.” Self-representations of Bukharian musicians flanked by the World Trade Center do not replace images of Bukharians in other locations, but coexist with them. Bukharians are just as interested in being Americans as previous generations of Jewish Americans, but they seem more comfortable with retaining elements of difference—a plov rather than a melting pot. This is no doubt connected to multiculturalism and a prevailing ideology moving from “tolerance” to celebration of diversity. But while multiculturalism encourages the study of groups like the Bukharian Jews as Americans, the matter remains as to how best discuss and represent the internal complexities that are a reality for any community, and especially diasporic ones, in today’s world. It is important to examine what is considered “American music,” since the answer determines the nature of our scholarship and pedagogy. But while questioning an exclusionary definition of “American music” and arguing for the inclusion of the music of communities such as the Bukharian Jews, it is equally important to avoid reducing a group to a representative music and marginalizing or tokenizing the group in the process. Bukharian music in New York is itself diverse, made up of numerous repertoires and constantly changing. Furthermore, there are Bukharians who feel little connection to any particularly Bukharian styles or idioms, which is one by-product of living in a society that holds the right to choose one’s identity, personality, and interests to be fundamental. The varied practices and actions of Bukharian musicians in this moment of transition and adaptation present a rare opportunity for us to learn about the roles that Jewish immigrants play in the musical life of the United States, and at the same time, the effect that the United States has on the lives of its newest residents. —Evan Rapport College of Staten Island, CUNY Notes 1 Anne K. Rasmussen, “Mainstreaming
American Musical Multiculturalism,” American Music 22/2 (Summer
2004), 297. 2 In English, the spelling
“Bukharan” is also common. “Bukharian” is the
preferred term among New York Bukharians themselves, and can refer to any Jew
with a Central Asian heritage, not just Jews from the city of Bukhara. 3 An excellent rendition of an abridged
suite from the shashmaqom can be heard on the Ilyas Malayev Ensemble’s At the
Bazaar of Love, Shanachie 64081, 1997. 4 More on the shashmaqom and
nationalism can be found in several sources, including Theodore Levin, The Hundred Thousand Fools
of God: Musical Travels in Central Asia (and Queens, New York) (Indiana
University Press, 1996), 46-47, 92, and Alexander Djumaev, “Musical
Heritage and National Identity in Uzbekistan,” Ethnomusicology Forum 14/2 (November
2005), 165-84. 5 See and hear Invisible Face of the
Beloved: Classical Music of the Tajiks and Uzbeks (Smithsonian Folkways
SFW CD 40521, 2005). 6 Richard Kurin and Diana Parker, “The Festival and the Transnational Production of Culture,” in The Silk Road: Connecting Cultures, Creating Trust, Program Book, 2002 Smithsonian Folklife Festival. Also available online at http://www.silkroadproject.org/smithsonian (in “Program Book”). 7 John Rockwell, “For Silk Road Audiences, A Better Map Would Help,” The New York Times, May 19, 2002. 8 Translations are by the author from the original Persian. ISAM home Who we
are Contact us
ISAM Conferences and Lectures Copyright © 2005 Institute for Studies in
American Music, Conservatory of Music, Brooklyn College. All Rights
Reserved. |
|
|
|
