Not Suitable for Kazakhs? Authenticity and National Identity in Contemporary Kazakhstani Music (original) (raw)
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Ethnomusicology Forum Music and Identity in Central Asia: Introduction Razia Sultanova
Ethnomusicology Forum Vol. 14, No. 2, November pp. 131 /142, 2005
Music and Identity in Central Asia: Introduction Razia Sultanova This introduction gives a short overview of the four articles collected in this volume by leading Western and local scholars on the issue of music and identity in Central Asian cultures, surveying the past and present of music-making processes. The introduction also examines two phenomena in greater detail: the performer and the event as focal points of changing national identities. Taking examples from Uzbekistan and concentrating on the singer/wedding paradigm, the introduction explores the historical background and issues of change in musical and national identity over a period starting with Russian and Bolshevik rule over Central Asia and continuing up to the contemporary independent states. Keywords: Central Asia; Ethnic Identity; National Identity in Music; Singer; Wedding
Timbres of Identity: Ethnomusicological Approaches to Music-Dance and Identity
Timbres of Identity: Ethnomusicologsical Approaches to Music-Dance and Music, 2021
FOREWORDS Timothy Rice, in his article on the concept of “identity”, which has been increasingly taking place in all social science studies since the 1980s, and the orientation towards its studies, focused specifically on ethnomusicology and questioned the reasons for this increase. The author initially stated that the concept of identity was present in the literature of sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, and philosophy as a tool of psycho-social analysis in the early 1960s. In ethnomusicology studies, beyond ethnic, national, gender and social class-based identity studies, shaping of identity-specific elements in living spaces is a separate area of focus as Rice states. Music and dance, which are the abstract and concrete formative elements of the living space in question, shape identities as well as forming them. The formation process of the book Timbres of Identity: Ethnomusicological approaches to Music-Dance and Identity, which is the idea we set out with, started about a year ago, following the International Ethnomusicology Symposium (hybrid), under titled Music- Dance and Identity: Timbres of Danube. However, ahead of the symposium we had included many sub-titles in our music-dance and identity-oriented symposium call, which we, as the Association of Ethnomusicology/TURKEY, decided with the support of the Istanbul Hungarian Cultural Center. The symposium we conducted online and in Bursa /Turkey started with the concert of Uludağ University State Conservatory Youth Symphony Orchestra string instruments group under the direction of conductor Dağhan Doğu that played “Tuna’da Bir Uğurböceği (A Ladybug in the Danube)” composed by Oğuzhab Balcı for the symposium. After the symposium, which was streamed live on all social media accounts of the Ethnomusicology Association for three days, the collective book “Identity of Music: Ideology, Ethnography, Popular Culture” was published in Turkish by Doğu Publishing House on September 2001. This book, on the other hand, including Ethnomusicology as Science Versus Ethnomusicology as Humanity chapter that was also one of the symposium keynotes by Helen Myers at the same symposium is published in English by the Association of Ethnomusicology Publishing. Following another of the symposium keynotes, How Essential is Music Researche Today?, presented by Gisa Jachnigen and written separately for the book, Daith Kearney penned his fieldwork titled Forging the Dance: The Expression of Regional Identity in Irish Folk Theatre. In addition to article by Nick Poulakis titled Greek Music and Dance: Performing Identities Through Cinema, Saman Panapitiya introduced another exemplary work on the tones of identity with his article titled Folk Arts Associated with Agro-Lifestyle and Performing Arts of Today in Sri Lanka. Shan Du wrote The Gatha of the Nava Durg-a Between Divine and Human Roles section, while Meruyert Berdikul discuss examples of the reflections of music politics in the formation of musical identity with the article titled Postcolonial Discourse of Studying the Song Culture of Kazakhs of the XX. Century and Özgecan Karadağlı with the article titled Identity and Music: Saygun’s Yunus Emre Oratorio. Finally, the only article in the book that was not presented at the symposium, Georgian People on the Boundaries via Music and Dance: Artvin-Maçahel/TURKEY, was written by me. Hope to contribute to readers and the field. Prof. Dr. Özlem DOĞUŞ VARLI
НОВЫЙ ИССЛЕДОВАНИЯ ТУВЫ / THE NEW RESEARCH OF TUVA, Issue No. 2, 2017
Part of a Special Issue on Ethnomusicology edited by Valentina Süzükei. This article explores some of the relationships between ideology, aesthetics, circulation, and agency in productions of “traditional music” and “world music” made by musicians from Tuva, a Turkic-speaking republic in Inner Asia that is now a part of the Russian Federation. This article contends that the conditions surrounding the dissolution of state socialism in the former Soviet Union laid the groundwork for the meaning and value of culture and identity in post-Soviet Tuva, including traditional music, to be renegotiated. The intentions of actors and interest groups involved in renegotiating the aesthetics of Tuva’s traditional music were diverse and not always consistent. Nonetheless, their efforts in combination had the effect of rejecting Soviet state-sponsored folkloric models as overly mediated and embracing global music industry models as more representative of “authentic” Tuvan musical practices. Neoliberal “branding” of xöömei throat-singing and Tuvan traditional music within the world music industries produced new forms of meaning and value for Tuvan people in the post-Soviet era. It also gave legitimacy to local projects of postcolonial historiography and precipitated a reevaluation of indigenous culture, language, and identity. This article traces and attempts to disentangle the work of some of the agents who were instrumental in shaping Tuvan musical aesthetics during the 1980s and 1990s, which are foundational to understanding Tuva’s contemporary music scenes based in the republic’s capital city of Kyzyl.
Q-Pop, the Pride of Kazakh Youth, and its Stimulation of Ethnic Identity
Central Asia Program , 2021
Ethnic identity is a crucial topic in Kazakhstan, especially for ethnic Kazakh adolescents, who were born after the country gained independence. This part of the “Nazarbayev Generation” displays a complex combination of civic and ethnic identities. Empirical studies about ethnic identity and popular culture reveal that previously marginalized ethnic groups often manage to “rediscover” their ethnic and cultural roots and transmit different identity statuses by applying pop cultural texts in adulthood. In this study, we aim to explore whether the genre of Kazakhstani contemporary music known as Q-pop is related to national identity, ethnic identity, in-group interaction, and ethnic language proficiency and to study the factors that explain the popularity of Q-pop. Our results show that while Q-pop is strongly related to national identity and ethnic identity, it has only a weak correlation with in-group interaction and ethnic language proficiency. Q-pop also explains a significant amount of variance in both national identity and ethnic identity. However, it did not predict a lot of variances in ethnic language proficiency and in-group interaction. The main factors that contributed to Q-pop’s popularity were the usage of Kazakh language, songs’ composition, and performance quality. Other factors included lyrics, idols’ appearance, their singing ability, fashion style, and choreography. Notably, as with K-pop, the Internet was the main reason for the rapid growth of interest in Q-pop among study respondents. Most of the study participants were middle or high school students and learned about Q-pop from YouTube, social media, or their friends.
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The Republic of Tyva and her people, since mid-twentieth century, exist in a colonized state first by the Soviet Union (1944-1991) and currently by the Russian Federation (1991-Present). In an increasingly nationalistic Russification policy inside Mr. Putin's Russia, the people of Tyva continue to live as a marginalized population and the target of rampant discrimination at home. While traditionally the Tyvan people have relied on geographic isolation as a form of defense, both indigenous language and music, while not classified as endangered are under pressure due to continued internal Russification policies. This mixed methods dissertation explored modern Tyvan identity, musical culture, and music learning by means of immersive field work in Tyva and Mongolia described in autoethnography, a Likert style survey (N = 168) to rank the importance of markers of modern Tyvan identity, and finally an extended long form questionnaire (N = 44) designed to explore the musical lives, teaching and learning of Tyvan Vocal Music (khöömei), and Tyvan Instrumental Music (doshpuluur, igil, chanzy, kengirge, shoor, chadagan, khomus). Both music and voice function as embodied forms of memory that bind the Tyvans to their ancestral lands and pre-Soviet non-colonized nomadic life.
Music and Identity in Central Asia: Introduction
Ethnomusicology Forum, 2005
This introduction gives a short overview of the four articles collected in this volume by leading Western and local scholars on the issue of music and identity in Central Asian cultures, surveying the past and present of music-making processes. The introduction also examines two phenomena in greater detail: the performer and the event as focal points of changing national identities. Taking examples from Uzbekistan and concentrating on the singer/wedding paradigm, the introduction explores the historical background and issues of change in musical and national identity over a period starting with Russian and Bolshevik rule over Central Asia and continuing up to the contemporary independent states.
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Echoes of Home: The Diasporic Performer and the Quest for “Armenianness” Current scholarship recognizes that music is a powerful channel that can manifest individual identity. But such research takes for granted music as a symbol of collective cultural identity, and, therefore, neglects examining how music in general, but musical performance in particular, functions to produce and reproduce a society at large. Indeed, what is missing is a rigorous understanding of not only how the act of performing forms collective identity, but also how it acts as an agency, indeed, perhaps the only agency that enables this process. As Thomas Turino suggests, externalized musical practice can facilitate the creation of emergent cultural identities, and help in forming life in new cultural surroundings. The present thesis examines the dynamics between cultural identity and music from the perspective of the performing musician. By examining musical situations in the context of the Armenian – Canadian...
A resurgence of interest in the Philippine gongs and drum tradition called kulintang took place in the United States from the late twentieth century. It is performed in its traditional style but has also seen several transformations. This study examines the popularity of the kulintang among Filipino American academics, artists, and the youth. It seeks to answer questions about the authenticity of traditions, as they are transported into an unfamiliar territory and given new forms of dynamism by individuals or groups for their own immediate needs to locate their identities.
Music and Identity in Central Asia: Introduction in Music and Identity in Central Asia
2005
This introduction gives a short overview of the four articles collected in this volume by leading Western and local scholars on the issue of music and identity in Central Asian cultures, surveying the past and present of music-making processes. The introduction also examines two phenomena in greater detail: the performer and the event as focal points of changing national identities. Taking examples from Uzbekistan and concentrating on the singer/wedding paradigm, the introduction explores the historical background and issues of change in musical and national identity over a period starting with Russian and Bolshevik rule over Central Asia and continuing up to the contemporary independent states.