Sublime Frequencies V.A.: Ethnic minority music of Northwest Xinjiang, China (CN,2009)****/***°
China is trying to get a worldwide position everywhere. Like usual in such huge nationalist progressions, it does not bring much progressions to ethnic minorities. They even face dangers of maintaining their existence, and there are parts in history where instead they prefer to establish more autonomy, while such struggles in these settings were doomed to fail. Xinjiang had been in the news a few more times for this situation. With each group having enough personality of their own and for a large part for the nomad origin groups also certain common qualities, from the surface nowadays they all prefer as seeing themselves as being part of China and more rapidly confirm expressions of some of the promoted ideas associated with it, being suspicious towards what is a little bit too far away from that, something which made recording their music as a foreigner not an easy task. In this biggest province of Chine (the size of Western Europe), stated in the Northwest edge of China, this wide area crosses the borders of Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and former Kashmir’s India, the major minorities are of Turkish (and Muslim) origin, like the Uyghur, Kyrgyz and Kazakh recorded in this album, (there exist a few more minor groups of this category), the Chinese Han (which is the latest arrived group, which associate themselves most with the centre government in China), the Hui (a Chinese/Tibetan Muslim group), and some people of Mongol origin (Erun). The area used to be called Chinese Turkestan because of the Turkish and also Muslim origins. All the recordings of this album were done near the Kazakhstan border.
What can be sensed from what these groups here have in common is first of all a nomadic tribe nature (for most of them) and the use of certain lute or saz-like instruments (like the two-stringed dongbra, the 4-stringed plucked rawab or the 3-stringed fretless plucked komuz). Except in the Mongol songs you can even here and there recognise some known tune of Turkish origin (like the third track, “Margul”). Not only these guitar-like pieces were recorded, but also a couple of songs, some with bowed instruments (like the 4-stringed viola called the rushtar) as accompaniment and occasionally also some dulcimer (the tchang). Musically one recognises the traditional elements with an occasionally stronger contemporary feeling (I had that especially on the 11th track, “Komontor Hana” by Jaymanur Ajabek). More often I still get this feeling of separation and of loneliness underneath, within a repetition of traditional tunes that have been remembered, and the creative craft with it, but also some perhaps undeliberate isolation of these elements, as if this is not supposed to spread too much further with joy as their personal or common expressions. Many of the pickings I really like to pick out for repeated listen and for closer investigation. The CD is compiled this way however that it gives no expression too much extra attention and that there’s enough listening alternation of differences throughout the CD. Technically there are a few outstanding tracks.
