Two Rare, Lovely Releases of Kyrgyzstan Music

The Voice of Kyrgyzstan Salamat Sadikova (Frequency Glide Enterprises) One of the strongest images in my mind these last few months?besides the shots of the planes slashing into the World Trade Center over and over like so many snuff films?is a photo I saw of an Afghan refugee heading to the Pakistani border to escape American bombs. He was an old man, skinny and wrinkled and dusty, leading a few bony animals over a mountain pass. The history of Afghanistan might have been written on his wrinkled face, but I saw it only as he was being driven out.

The producer of these two albums of music from Kyrgyzstan, a small former Soviet satellite to the northeast of Afghanistan, wisely remarks in his notes that we in the West seem to take notice of Third World nations only when something terrible happens there. He might have further noted that the only time we pay attention to their cultures is when they're disappearing?as with the Tuvans in Mongolia, or the Afghans forbidden by the Taliban to play music.

These two CDs of field and studio recordings, made in 1999 and 2000 by Mark A. Humphrey, are some of the only albums of music from Kyrgyzstan available and they're total gems. Humphrey is an amateur world-music scholar in Santa Monica who stumbled onto Kyrgyz music by accident but did a first-class, Lomax-worthy job on these releases. Kyrgyzstan is the "Switzerland of Central Asia," whose mountains and plains turn up repeatedly here as objects of tearful adoration. The musical tradition reflects the country's geographical position?it's somewhere between Mongolia and the Persian desert, between Asia and the Middle East, proudly isolated in the mountains. It's earthy and humble like all mountain music from Kentucky to the Andes, but with a whiff of the nomadic Arab spirit. Most of the music here is solo vocals with accompaniment on the komuz, a plucky mandolin-like instrument. The singing is simple and natural, unlike the throat gymnastics of Mongol music. It's slow, nostalgic and elegiac.

Salamat Sadikova is a beautiful woman in her 40s who's absorbed the country's song tradition, overcoming social prejudice, which seems to have made her patriotism stronger. She's the Kyrgyz Leadbelly. Her songs have titles like "I Miss You, My Birthplace," "Kyrgyz Land," "My Village in the Mountain" and "My Magnificent Batken," a song for her hometown. Mostly she accompanies herself on the komuz, but on one disturbing track on Shüüdüngüt's Road (the title is taken from a long ballad praising Attila the Hun), we're given the "pop" version of her song "An Evening in the Village." That means an ugly intrusion of synthesizers, like a Wal-Mart popping up in the isolated mountains. Fortunately, on the next track we get the song with just Sadikova's lullaby voice and lilting komuz. It's divine. The performers on the compilation are less professional than Sadikova, but more fun. One track is a fast run through Mozart's Turkish March, performed on the komuz by Baktybek Shatenov and followed by guffaws from his buddies. I hope I never see them running for cover across some dusty border.

These two albums are available from www.kyrgyzmusic.com.