Central Asian Film Music as a Subcultural System

Abstract

The article positions the film music of the five Central Asian countries—former Soviet republics—in global cinema. It then outlines and illustrates the film music strategies open to local directors, drawing on selected films, mainly from the 1960s and 1990s.

Keywords:

• Central Asia
• Film Music

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Cathy Portugues for loaning me the recent boxed set of Central Asian films that facilitates a survey approach (Abikeyeva 2006), and to Nancy Condee for the bibliography she shared, as well as for the conference and online materials from the University of Pittsburgh KinoKultura project that she put together, available respectively at: http://www.pitt.edu/~slavic/video/centasia.html and http://www.kinokultura.com/CA/index.html. As always, I am grateful for Greta's informed reading.

Notes

1. A boxed set of Central Asian films (Abikeyeva 2006) contains the films discussed in the present essay and facilitates a survey approach. It is not available commercially, but is held at 16 libraries, including Leeds and Oxford in the UK, and Trinity College, University of Arizona, Indiana University and University of Chicago, among others, in the US, according to WorldCat.

2. http://www.kinokultura.com/CA/reviews/aksuat.html (accessed January 2009).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mark Slobin

Mark Slobin is Professor of Music at Wesleyan University. He is a former President of the Society for Ethnomusicology and Society for Asian Music and author of numerous books including Subcultural Sounds: Micromusics of the West (1993) and Fiddler on the Move: Exploring the Klezmer World (2006). He is also the editor of Global Soundtracks: Worlds of Film Music (2008)