Varieties of musical nationalism in Soviet Uzbekistan

Abstract

This paper investigates how post-colonial studies may help us grasp the transformation of musical life in Central Asia. Drawing on the emphasis of post-colonial scholars on the variety of nationalisms, I examine the developments of musical life in Uzbekistan in the early Soviet period, and describe two kinds of musical nationalism—each symbolized by a musical object. While the kind of musical nationalism that gained strength in the early 1920s was directed to building ‘Uzbek classical music’ that of the 1930s was focused on creating an ‘Uzbek opera’. Judging from some recently published accounts, I observe that while Uzbek musical nationalism of the 1920s had notable resemblances with Indian musical nationalism under British colonialism, that of the 1930s significantly differed from the two.

My research in Uzbekistan was supported by the Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ISEEES) at the University of California, Berkeley. I would like to thank John Lie, Victoria E. Bonnell and Yuri Slezkine for their encouragement; William Quillen, Lisa Jakelski, Adeeb Khalid and the reviewers of Central Asian Survey for their comments and criticisms on earlier drafts.

Notes

1. Mukhtar Ashrafi, ‘Po Indii’, in Aleksandr Rybnik, ed, Muzyka v moei zhizni: sbornik statei (Tashkent: Izdatel'stvo Literatury i Iskusstva imeni Gafura Guliama, 1975), pp 137–149 (originally published 1955).

2. Ibid, p 137.

3. Ibid, p 145.

4. Francine Hirsch, ‘Toward an empire of nations: border-making and the formation of Soviet national identities’, Russian Review, Vol 59, No 2, 2000, pp 201–226; Paula A. Michaels, ‘Medical propaganda and cultural revolution in Soviet Kazakhstan, 1928–1941’, Russian Review, Vol 59, No 2, 2000, pp 159–178; Yuri Slezkine, ‘Imperialism as the highest stage of socialism’, Russian Review, Vol 59, No 2, 2000, pp 227–234; Douglas Northrop, Veiled Empire: Gender and Power in Stalinist Central Asia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004).

5. Chris M. Hann, Caroline Humphrey and Katherine Verdery, ‘Introduction: postsocialism as a topic of anthropological investigation’, in Chris M. Hann, ed, Postsocialism: Ideals, Ideologues and Practices in Eurasia (New York: Routledge, 2002), pp 1–28; Michael Burawoy, ‘Neoclassical sociology: from the end of communism to the end of classes’, American Journal of Sociology, Vol 106, No 4, 2001, pp 1099–1120.

6. Ranajit Guha, ‘On some aspects of the historiography of colonial India’, in Ranajit Guha, ed, Subaltern Studies (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982), pp 1–8.

7. Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse? (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1986); Ranajit Guha and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Selected Subaltern Studies (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988); Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon, 1978). On the linking, see Gyan Prakash, ‘Writing post-orientalist histories of the Third World: perspectives from Indian historiography’, Comparative Study of Society and History, Vol 32, No 2, 1990, pp 383–408; Sumit Sarkar, ‘The decline of the subaltern in Subaltern Studies’, in Vinayak Chaturvedi, ed, Mapping Subaltern Studies and the Postcolonial (London: Verso, 2000), pp 300–323.

8. Dipesh Chakrabarty, ‘Postcoloniality and the artifice of history: who speaks for “Indian” pasts?’, Representations, Vol 37, 1992, pp 1–26; Gyan Prakash, ‘Postcolonial criticism and Indian historiography’, Social Text, Vol 31/32, 1992, pp 8–19.

9. Ania Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism (London: Routledge, 2005) (originally published 1998).

10. Robert Young, Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), p 63.

11. Arif Dirlik, ‘The postcolonial aura: Third World criticism in the age of global capitalism’, Critical Inquiry, Vol 20, 1994, pp 328–356; Sarkar, op cit, Ref 7.

12. Chatterjee, op cit, Ref 7, p 21.

13. Homi Bhabha, ‘Of mimicry and man: the ambivalence of colonial discourse’, October, Vol 28, 1984, p 126.

14. Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), p 19.

15. Ralph P. Locke, ‘Constructing the oriental “other”: Saint-Saëns’ Samson et Delila', Cambridge Opera Journal, Vol 3, 1991, pp 261–302; Ralph P. Locke, ‘Reflections on orientalism in opera and musical theatre’, Opera Quarterly, Vol 10, 1993, pp 49–73; Paul Robinson, ‘Is Aida an orientalist opera?’, Cambridge Opera Journal, Vol 5, 1993, pp 133–140; Richard Taruskin, ‘Entoiling the falconet: Russian musical orientalism in context’, Cambridge Opera Journal, Vol 5, 1992, pp 253–280. For an overview post-colonial approaches in studies of music and musical experience, see Georgina Born and David Hesmondhalgh, ‘Introduction: on difference, representation and appropriation in music’, in Georgina Born and David Hesmondhalgh, eds, Western Music and Its Others (Berkeley, CA: University of Berkeley Press, 2000). For an excellent introduction to the birth and spread of musical nationalism in Europe, Eastern Europe and Russia (and the USA), see Richard Taruskin, ‘Nationalism’, in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (New York: Grove, 2001).

16. Janaki Bakhle, Two Men and Music: Nationalism in the Making of an Indian Classical Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005); Amanda Weidman, Singing the Classical, Voicing the Modern: The Postcolonial Politics of Music in South India (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006).

17. Russia conquered Tashkent in 1865 and Samarqand in 1868, forming the Governorate-general of Turkestan (1867) with its capital in Tashkent. It then turned Bukhara and Khiva into protectorates, allowing the former rulers to continue under Russian control. On Central Asia in the Russian colonial era, see Adeeb Khalid, The Politics of Muslim Cultural Reform: Jadidism in Central Asia (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998); Jeff Sahadeo, Russian Colonial Society in Tashkent, 1865–1923 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2007).

18. The term maqom refers to a suite comprising songs and instrumental pieces performed in a certain order. Sometimes, it also refers to a melody type. The three most reknown maqom repertoires in Uzbekistan are shashmaqom, oltiyarim maqom and chormaqom, associated with Bukhara, Khorezm and Kokand, respectively. The numerical modifier indicates the number of suites in the repertory. For a brief overview, see Theodore Levin, ‘Uzbekistan, urban traditions, suite forms’, in L. Macy, ed, The New Grove Dictionary of Music Online, available at http://www.grovemusic.com (last accessed 7 December 2007).

19. As Khalid notes, even as Russia has in many ways been the ‘other’ of Europe, it ‘personif[ied] “the West” in its Asian borderlands’. Khalid, op cit, Ref 17, p 15.

20. Tamara S. Vyzgo, Razvitie muzykal'nogo iskusstva Uzbekistana i ego sviazi s russkoi muzykoi (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo Muzyka, 1970), pp 64–76.

21. Khalid, op cit, Ref 17, p 153.

22. Theodore C. Levin, The Hundred Thousand Fools of God: Musical Travels in Central Asia (and Queens, New York) (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), p 104.

23. Vyzgo, op cit, Ref 20; Tamara S. Vyzgo, ed, Istoriia Uzbekskoi Sovetskoi Muzyki, Vol 1 (Tashkent: Izdatel'stvo Literatury i Iskusstva imeni Gafura Guliama, 1972).

24. Alexander Djumaev, ‘Power structures, culture policy and traditional music in Soviet Central Asia’, Yearbook For Traditional Music, Vol 25, 1993, pp 46–47.

25. Levin, op cit, Ref 22, p 104.

26. In October 1917, Bolsheviks took power in parts of the Turkestan Governorate; and in May 1918, they proclaimed the Turkestan Soviet Socialist Republic. They took control in Bukhara a little later in September 1920 and proclaimed the Bukharan Soviet People's Republic. These autonomous republics continued to exist until October 1924, when the central authorities reorganized Central Asia into five soviet socialist republics: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.

27. Abdurauf Fitrat, Oila (Baku, 1914), cited in Dilbar Rashidova, ‘Jadidlarning merosida musiqa (A. Fitratning ijodiga oid ma'lumotlar)’, in Jadidchilik: islohot, yangilanish, mustaqillik va taraqqiyot uchun kurash (Tashkent: Universitet, 1999), p 129.

28. The introduction of the study of piano or western musical notation into this institution did not take place until 1932. Tamara S. Vyzgo, ‘Pervye muzykal'nye uchebnye zavedeniia’, in Tamara S. Vyzgo, ed, op cit, Ref 23, pp 103–112.

29. This small book was written in 1926 and published for the first time in 1927 in Arabic script; but banned for a significant part of the Soviet period. After Uzbekistan gained its independence from the Soviet Union, it was republished in 1993 and has since attained a sanctified status. For more detail, see Alexander Djumaev, ‘Musical heritage and national identity in Uzbekistan’, Ethnomusicological Forum, Vol 14, No 2, 1999, pp 165–184.

30. Djumaev, op cit, Ref 24; see also Alexander Djumaev, ‘Abdurauf Fitrat i ego sovremenniki na “muzykal'nom fronte” (20–30 gody)’, Tsentral'naia Aziia, 1997, 1/7, pp 104–109; 2/8, pp 111–115; 3/9, pp 118–123. For arguments against this thesis, see Rashidova, op cit, Ref 27; Abdumannon Nazarov, ‘Soxta muamma kimga zarur? Yoki ilmiylikdan iyrok ba'zi “ilmiy” kashfiyotlar xususida’, O'zbekiston adabiyoti va san'ati, 13 June 1997, p 5. For Djumaev's response, see Alexander Djumaev, ‘Otkryvaia ‘chernyi iashchik’ proshlogo', Muzykal'naia Akademiia, 2000, 1, pp 89–103.

31. Djumaev, op cit, Ref 29, p 171.

32. Ibid; Rashidova, op cit, Ref 27, p 129.

33. Abdurauf Fitrat, O'zbek klassik musiqasi va uning tarixi (Tashkent, 1993), p 5 (originally published 1927).

34. Djumaev, op cit, Ref 29, p 168; Viktor A. Uspenskii, ‘Klassicheskaia muzyka Uzbekov’, Sovetskii Uzbekistan, 1927, pp 305–315 [republished in Il'ias Akbarov, ed, Viktor A. Uspenskii: nauchnoe naslediie, vospominaniia sovremennikov, kompozitorskoe tvorchestvo, pis'ma (Tashkent: Institut Iskusstvoznaniia imeni Khamzy Khakim-zade Niiazi, 1980), pp 31–38].

35. Abdurauf Fitrat, ‘O'zbek musiqasi to'g’risida', Alanga, Vol 2, 1928, p 14.

36. Nataliia Ianov-Ianovskaia, Mutal' Burkhanov (Tashkent: Izdatel'stvo Media Land, 1999), pp 28–35.

37. In 1929, the capital of Uzbek SSR again moved, this time to Tashkent. In 1932, the Samarqand Institute of Music and Choreography followed and was reorganized into the Scientific Research Institute of Art Studies. The latter continues to exist in Tashkent; its library holds a range of books and archival material on artistic matters.

38. Ianov-Ianovskaia, op cit, Ref 36, p 31.

39. Yuri Slezkine, ‘The USSR as a communal apartment, or how a socialist state promoted ethnic particularism’, Slavic Review, Vol 2, 1994, pp 414–452; Terry Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001); Adrianne Edgar, Tribal Nation: The Making of Soviet Turkmenistan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004).

40. Sheila Fitzpatrick, Cultural Front: Power and Culture in Revolutionary Russia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992), p 210. On the Cultural Revolution (1928–1931), see Sheila Fitzpatrick, ed., Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1928–1931 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1978). For a brief overview of the Cultural Revolution in music in Moscow, see Amy Nelson, Music for the Revolution: Musicians and Power in Early Soviet Russia (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania University Press, 2004), pp 208–240.

41. Djumaev, 2000, op cit, Ref 30, p 97.

42. Iosif Stalin, Marksizm i natsional'no-kolonial'nyi vopros: sbornik izbrannykh statei i rechei (Moscow: Partizdat, 1937), p 195.

43. Akmal Ikramov, ‘Kul'turnoe stroitel'stvo v Uzbekistane’, Izvestiia, 28 August 1932.

44. Vyzgo, op cit, Ref 20, p 114.

45. The latter was one a series of studios founded in Moscow around this time to train students arriving from the peripheral republics.

46. The word dekada refers to 10-day festivals of music and theatre that were organized mostly in Moscow but also in other republican capitals throughout the 1930s up to the 1950s. Each dekada would be devoted to the cultural productions by one nationality.

47. Pervaia Uzbekskaia muzykal'naia konferentsiia, Mai 23–27, 1936: Stenograficheskii otchet, Biblioteka Nauchno-Issledovatel'skogo Instituta Iskusstvoznaniia, Tashkent, No 253.

48. Nataliia Ianov-Ianovskaia, ‘Deiatel'nost’ russkogo opernogo teatra', in T. Vyzgo, ed, op cit, Ref 23, p 92.

49. Of these musical plays, Halima and Farhod va Shirin were written in Uzbekistan. Layli va Majnun was first performed by touring Azeri troupes; its Uzbek version was produced much later.

50. Stenogramma soveshchaniia pri Uzbekskom radiokomitete po voprosam sozdaniia Sovetskoi Uzbekskoi Opery, Oktiabr 1934. Biblioteka Nauchno-Issledovatel'skogo Instituta Iskusstvoznaniia, Tashkent, No 254.

51. Viktor Uspenskii, ‘Vpervye v istorii Uzbekistana’, Pravda Vostoka, 28 February 1936.

52. Annaia F. Korsakova, Uzbekskii opernyi teatr (Tashkent: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'svo Khudozhestvennnoi Literatury UzSSR, 1961), p 121.

53. Ashrafi, op cit, Ref 1, p 33.

54. Elena E. Romanovskaia, ‘Muzykal'nyi teatr Uzbekistana’, Sovetskaia Muzyka, 1937, 4, pp 3–9 [republished in Stat'i i doklady: Zapisi muzykal'nogo fol'klora (Tashkent: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'svo Khudozhestvennnoi Literatury UzSSR, 1957), pp 46–50].

55. Marina Frolova-Walker, ‘National in form, socialist in content’: musical nation-building in the Soviet Republics', Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol 51, No 2, 1998, pp 331–371.

56. Stenogramma, op cit, Ref 50, p 27.

57. Khalima Nasyrova, ‘Rozhdenie “Farkhad i Shirin”, in Uspenskii, op cit, Ref 34, p 101.

58. Stenogramma, op cit, Ref 50, p 25.

59. Viktor Uspenskii, ‘Moia rabota nad muzykoi Farkhad i Shirin’, Izvestiia, 24 May 1937.

60. Stenogramma, op cit, Ref 50, p 40.

61. Ibid.

62. Nasyrova, op cit, Ref 57, pp 101–105; Mukhitdin Kari-Iakubov, ‘Tekst vystupleniia Kari-Iakubova na Plenume SSKUz’, 1947, Biblioteka Nauchno-Issledovatel'skogo Instituta Iskusstvoznaniia, Tashkent, No 414.

63. Stenogramma, op cit, Ref 50, p 17.

64. Uspenskii, op cit, Ref 51.

65. Tamara S. Vyzgo and Ashot Petrosyants, Uzbekskii orkestr narodnykh instrumentov (Tashkent: Goslitizdat, 1962).

66. For a similar analysis, see Michael Rouland, ‘A nation on stage: music and the 1936 Festival of Kazak Arts’, in Neil Edmunds, ed, Soviet Music and Society under Lenin and Stalin: The Baton and Sickle (London: Routledge, 2004), pp 182–208.

67. Mukhtar Ashrafi, ‘Pervaia Uzbekskaia opera’, in Rybnik, ed, op cit, Ref 1, p 33. See also Ianov-Ianovskaia, op cit, Ref 36.

68. Djumaev, 2000, op cit, Ref 30, p 96.

69. Kirill Tomoff's account of this episode is based on the official reports by the investigative commissions sent from Moscow to Uzbekistan and fills a crucial gap in the story of musical policy in Central Asia. Kirill Tomoff, ‘Uzbek music's separate path: interpreting ‘anticosmopolitanism’ in Stalinist Central Asia, 1949–1952', The Russian Review, Vol 63, 2004, pp 212–240.

70. Ibid, pp 212–220.

71. Ianov-Ianovskaia, op cit, Ref 36, p 122.

72. On the significance of this, see Otanazar Matyakubov, ‘Vpervyi v USSR’, Sovetskaia Muzyka, 1978, 12, pp 82–83. On the conferences, see Faizulla M. Karomatov and Dilbar A. Rashidova, Makomy, mugamy i sovremennoe kompozitorskoe tvorchestvo: mezhrespublikanskaia nauchno-teoreticheskaia konferentsiia, Tashkent, 10–14 iiunia 1975 g. (Tashkent: Izdatel'stvo Literatury i Iskusstva imeni Gafura Guliama, 1978); Iurii V. Keldysh, Faizulla M. Karomatov and Dilbar A. Rashidova, Professional'naia muzyka ustnoi traditsii narodov Blizhnego i Srednego Vostoka i sovremennost: sbornik materialov mezhdunarodnogo muzykovedcheskogo simpoziuma mezhdunarodnogo muzykal'nogo Soveta IUNESKO, Samarkand, 3–6 Oktiabria 1978 g. (Tashkent: Izdatel'stvo Literatury i Iskusstvo imeni Gafura Guliama, 1981); Dilbar A. Rashidova and Tokhtasyn B. Gafurbekov, Traditsii muzykal'nikh kul'tur narodov Blizhnego, Srednego Vostoka i Sovremennost': sbornik materialov vtorogo mezhdunarodnogo simpoziuma, Samarkand, 7–12 Oktiabria 1983 g. (Moscow: Sovetskii Kompozitor, 1987).

73. Vyzgo, op cit, Ref 20, p 136.

74. Fitrat was executed in 1938.

75. Bhabha, op cit, Ref 13.

76. Ibid, p 127.

77. Ibid, p 127.

78. On related issues, see Yuri Slezkine Arctic Mirrors: Russia and the Small Peoples of the North (Ithaca, 1994), pp. 346–364.

79. Bakhle, op cit, Ref 16, pp 14–15.

80. Weidman notes that ‘its status as an art or classical music was what allowed many ethnomusicological programmes in the West to argue in the 1950s and 1960s that their field was legitimate, indeed, commensurate with musicology’. Weidman, op cit, Ref 16, p 23.

81. Laura L. Adams, ‘Modernity, postcolonialism and theatrical form in Uzbekistan’, Slavic Review, Vol 64, No 2, 2005, pp 333–354; Theodore Levin, ‘The reterritorialization of culture in the new Central Asian states: a report from Uzbekistan’, Yearbook for Traditional Music, Vol 25, 1993, pp 51–59.