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The Mark Slobin Fieldwork Archive, Music in the Afghan North, 1967-1972 (305)
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The Radio Afghanistan Series (72)
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Description
Radio Afghanistan, the only broadcasting outlet in the country, was very hospitable to my work, particularly through my friendship with the Music Director, Abdul Wahab Madadi, who had been recently trained in German, was himself a fine singer of traditional music of his region, Herat, and was eager to work with me. He even asked me to write a series on the music of the Beatles to give his audience access to music they had heard about but did not understand.
The radio held the country’s only sound archive, and I asked for copies of regional music that would amplify what I could learn in the field, and I received the materials on the following tapes. In return, I made copies of some of my field recordings for deposit.
The archive was presumed destroyed under the anti-music campaign of the Taliban, but it turned out that heroic archivists had saved it from their rampage. Hiromi Lorraine Sakata, who was the first to do fieldwork in Afghanistan, secured grants to digitize thousands of hours of irreplaceable recordings, but to date (2017), the Afghan government has not allowed copies of the archive to be deposited outside the country, so the material remains at risk. I feel it is appropriate to allow access to the material they released to me in a happier time.
For this specific series, please note the following:
- The MS8 reel is a duplicate set of recordings that already exist in MS7. Radio VII - Naghma Songs, Hazaregi and MS11. Baz Gul/Karim (Radio). Therefore, the MS8 reel is not listed in this collection.
- The MS10 reel is not available in Wesleyan University’s World Music Archive and therefore, is not listed in this collection.
- The MS17. Beatles Program reel is not available in this collection. However, it is accessible in Wesleyan University’s World Music Archive. Mark Slobin curated this at the request of Abdul Wahab Madadi, director of music at Radio Afghanistan, who thought listeners would appreciate an introduction to a group they might have heard of, but knew nothing about in 1967. Below is a listing of the specific tracks in this recording: 1. Spoken introduction/intro music 2. Within You Without You, some talking 3. Twist and Shout, more talking 4. Eleanor Rigby, more talking 5. Tomorrow Never Knows, talking 6. Love You To 7. Rock and Roll Music 8. I'm a Loser
- MS1. Radio I (5)
- MS2. Radio II (4)
- MS3. Radio III (4)
- MS4. Radio IV (4)
- MS5. Radio V (5)
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MS6. Lunday (Radio) (3)
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DescriptionMusicians: Rokhshana, Tejalli, Gulzamān
- MS7. Radio VII - Naghma Songs, Hazāregi (6)
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MS9. N’at (Radio) (3)
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DescriptionNa’t is a form of Islamic spiritual song.
- MS11. Bāz Gul/Karim (Radio) (5)
- MS12. Baijura, Zibajân, Na’atiya (3)
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MS13. Pashai (Radio) (5)
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DescriptionThese are recordings in the Pashai language.
- MS14. Baluch (Radio) Quetta (6)
- MS15. Uzbek (Radio) (9)
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MS16. Turkmen (radio) (10)
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DescriptionMusical instrument: Turkmen dutār. See associated film footage.
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The Faizabād Tapes (90)
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Description
Greta and I made our only trip to the northeastern province of Badakhshan in late summer of 1968. It was a place difficult of access, despite having an airport, as flights were few and often canceled, so we went overland. Hiromi Lorraine Sakata spent considerable time in the region and wrote a seminal book, Music in the Mind, about it, and devoted a section of her memoir, Afghanistan Encounters with Music and Friends to the region. As elsewhere, I gathered samples and tried to fit what I found into my developing regional survey of instruments, vocal style, functions of music, and ethnic identification.
Badakhshan is a complex zone of cultural contact and unique enclaves, with the presence of ancient Indo-Iranian languages only spoken there. So just calling it a Tajik, Persian-speaking region is insufficient to map the diversity. There was also a small population of Kyrgyz in the most inaccessible area, the Wakhan. The whole province is mountainous, and the Wakhan area rises to 20,000 feet as it merges into the Himalayas. There is a tiny border with China. Jurm, Sheghnan, Rustaq, Keshm, are local areas, musical styles, and sometimes languages. The region borders Tajikistan, much better studied than Afghan Badakhshan.
I accosted musicians in the bazaar and through any contacts I could find. I had an "a-ha" moment that I have told to students many times. In a sarai shed where men gathered to hear the musician who agreed to play for me, I innocently asked if he knew Naim, one of my major collaborators, of whom more below. Everyone broke into laughter unaccountably. Eventually I learned that the musician I was talking to was himself named Naim, though he had given me a pseudonym. The men thought that I was on to the trick. So it occurred to me that many of the names that musicians had given me might not be accurate, an important fieldwork lesson about collecting, in a country with a low opinion of music and musicians.
Outside the most common stringed instrument, the dambura, the chang jaw-harp and a tula, a small wooden recorder-like flute, along with the occasional drum, are heard here. The zirbaghali is the standard drum of much of Afghanistan, related to the many pottery and wooden vase-shaped drums of the Middle East. Felak, or falak, is a characteristic mountain Tajik genre also developed strongly across the border. The word means "the heavens," with the connotation of "fate," which figures in the many songs about difficult or impossible loves and gharibi, the cruel experience of poverty and forced migration that plagues the region. Song texts can be by local poets or more broadly known Persian-language sources. Some tunes are just instrumental—naghma-- but many can also be used for dance as well, though I did not manage to see any local dance styles. For more on Badakhshani music, see The Music of Central Asia, ed. T. Levin, S. Daukeyeva and E. Köchümkulova, Indiana University Press, 2016, and Sakata, Music in the Mind, Smithsonian, 2002.
For this specific series, please note the following:
- The MS27 reel is a duplicate set of recordings that already exist in MS26. Faizabād IX. Therefore, the MS27 reel is not listed in this collection.
- MS18. Faizabād I (Keshemi) (6)
- MS19. Faizabād II, Sheghni, Jurm (7)
- MS20. Faizabād III (5)
- MS21. Faizabād IV (7)
- MS22. Faizabād V (11)
- MS23. Faizabād VI: Kaka-Akbar, Naim (14)
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MS24. Faizabād VII, Amir Tulāchi (11)
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DescriptionMusician: Amir Tulāchi on all tracks, from “that side of Jowzjān, near Faizabād”
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MS25. Faizabād VIII-Wakhi (6)
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DescriptionBai Mohmad from Khandud village (Wakhan)
- MS26. Faizabād IX (6)
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MS28. Malang, Faizabād assorted 1-5, Naim III (17)
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DescriptionNote: Tracks 12-17 on MS28 are repeated material from earlier Faizabād tapes.
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The Aqcha Series (70)
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Description
I had meant my fieldwork to be in villages, but the government did not allow it, and there were no conditions to stay in a village, even overnight. So, I worked in a variety of towns of differing size and importance in the North’s three regions, Turkestan, Kataghan, and Badakhshan. Somewhere, thinking over what I had seen and the differences among towns, I had a "eureka" moment, realizing that the urban situation might offer a unifying theoretical and analytical framework. Eventually, the paper I delivered on town-types and musical life won me the graduate student prize of the Society for Ethnomusicology and helped me to gain my first and permanent appointment at Wesleyan University.
Aqcha was a crucial location for my collection and understanding of the general patterns of music in the North, since I came there early, in fall 1967 and returned there a year later. It presented the model for the local market town, a magnet for country folk—farmers and nomads—twice a week for the market days (usually Tuesday and Friday, Monday and Thursday in some location). This made it a point of intersection for ethnic groups and also a possible site for public music-making on a regular basis, as opposed to the private celebrations or occasional festivals that occasioned performance. While I tried hard to get people to find musicians I could record privately, always difficult, I knew I could also go to the teahouse to document first-hand, live musicianship. A key musician was Aq Pishak, "the white cat," a moniker for a Turkmen who added animal sounds to his repertoire of regional dance tunes from the Uzbek and Tajik traditions, played on those group’s favorite instrument, the dambura. I also found Akhmad-bakhshi, a Turkmen who played a purely Turkmen style on their instrument, the dutar. The Turkmens lived along a strip just south of the USSR border, now Turkmenistan, being largely refugees from Soviet control and collectivization of their lands and herds in the 1920s. A survey of the Aqcha bazaar can be found in the film footage section of this project, ending with a shot of Aq Pishak and two Uzbek singers in a teahouse. There is also a sequence on Akhmad-bakhshi.
I was, however, able to get to the countryside a bit, so this series also contains material from quick forays to villages, accompanied by some helpful person. Those visits add a bit of variety, such as the tale about a wrestler, Buniyat Palewan, that wouldn’t be sung in a teahouse.
As I discuss in my book, the language of teahouse songs can be mixed Uzbek and Dari, eloquent testimony to the co-territorial sharing of cultural expression also seen in the common use of the dambura lute, though some songs are all in Uzbek.
For this specific series, please note the following:
- The MS39-MS46 reels are duplicate sets of recordings that already exist in MS31-MS38 and Andkhoi VII. Therefore, the MS39-MS46 reels are not listed in this collection.
- MS29. Aqcha I - Kweinashar, Changalārekh (11)
- MS30. Aqcha II - Changalārekh, Chārshangei 4/2-3/1968 (5)
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MS31. Aqcha III - Āq Pishak (5)
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DescriptionSee associated film footage.
- MS32. Aqcha IV – Āq Pishak, Shiberghān (10)
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MS33. Aqcha V (5)
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DescriptionTypical teahouse band with dambura, zirbaghali drum, some jaw-harp, finger cymbals.
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MS34. Aqcha VI - Āq Pishak, dambura 10/1/1968 (7)
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Description5 of the 7 tracks are in the same style of dance tune, called “Aqchai,” which Mark Slobin induced Āq Pishak to play to get a sample of a purely local sound, still available then due to poor transportation conditions between cities. Mark taped this recording on a return trip.
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MS35. Aqcha VII- Āq Pishak (5)
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DescriptionContinuation of intensive session with Āq Pishak on local dambura tunes.
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MS36. Aqcha VIII- Akhmad-bakhshi 1 (8)
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DescriptionAkhmad-bakhshi was Mark Slobin's main Turkmen dutar musician. He came from Qalā-I Zāl. 3 instrumentals.
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MS37. Aqcha IX-Akhmad-bakhshi 2 (8)
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DescriptionSee associated film footage.
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MS38. Aqcha X- Akhmad-bakhshi 3 (6)
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DescriptionSee associated film footage.
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The Tashqurghān Series (54)
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Description
Tashqurghān, also known as Khulm, was a key location for my work, as it was for the region. It’s on the border between Turkestan to the west and Kattaghan to the east, though that’s more a conceptual than an administrative line, so I spent some time asking people about the terms. The town was the closest you could find at the time to a medieval Islamic city. It had gates into the main bazaar area and night watchmen of two types: on the roofs and in the streets. The tradesmen and other professions were organized into guilds, with their own histories and memberships. But what made it particularly valuable was that it was the long-term home base for Pierre Centlivres and Micheline Centlivres-Demont, a dynamic and wise duo of anthropologists who influenced my thinking. Pierre’s study of the town can be found in Un bazar d’Asie Centrale" and many later publications (for a listing, see this site; for a listing including Micheline’s work, see Wikipedia)
We collaborated when we jointly discovered the hidden tradition of Central Asian shamanism still marginally alive in Tashqurghān (discussed in the notes on filming elsewhere), described in the article "A Muslim Shaman of Afghan Turkestan;" the sound of the séance can be found on tape 52 below and the field footage elsewhere. (Ethnology 10/2, 160-73.)
Musically, one striking aspect of the town is its production of pieces for the ghichak fiddle, which you could find across the north alongside the other exported lathe-turned wooden objects with distinctive colored bands, such as cradles and jackknife handles. And one of my main collaborators was the musician Bangecha Tashqurghāni. You could hear a variety of styles there, and it was home to a number of professionals. In my theorizing, I pointed to it as an unusual border-zone town with a special social and economic function.
- MS47. Tashqurghān I (9)
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MS48. Tashkur II/Balkh (10)
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DescriptionSee associated film footage.
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MS49. Tashqurghān III 5/2/1968 (10)
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DescriptionMusicians: Bābā Nur, voice and ghichak, Bangecha Tashqurghāni, dambura and voice, ghichak, unnamed musicians on drum and jaw-harp
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MS50. Tashqurghān IV (8)
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Description5/2/68 Continuation of session in MS49. This was a classic long session with two major musicians. Repertoire includes both Uzbek and Tajik styles, in the Kattaghan way. Musicians: Bābā Nur, voice and ghichak, Bangecha Tashqurghāni, dambura and voice, ghichak, unnamed musicians on drum and jaw-harp
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MS51. Tashqurghān V (5)
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DescriptionAbdul Nazar, Abdullah Buz-bāz, 5/6/68; This reel contains the music that goes with the footage of Abdullah Buz-bāz, a musician who learned the extra skill of manipulating a marionette of a mountain goat, discussed in the notes on filming.
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MS52. Tashqurghān VII - Mamun Shāh, Bakhshi (2)
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DescriptionMusician: Mamun Shāh
- MS53. Tashqurghān VIII / Bābā Qerān III (8)
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MS54. Tashqurghān IX - Bābā Qerān IV (2)
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DescriptionBābā Qerān, dambura. Unknown musician, drum. The musician played medleys for Mark Slobin, tunes of mixed origin, mostly Uzbek and Tajik melodies but sometimes a song from Radio Afghanistan. Mark had asked him here to play “very old” tunes, but Mark was not sure what that meant to the musician.
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The Samangān Series (19)
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DescriptionThe Samangān series moves to a number of other towns, starting with Samangān, in mid-1968.
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MS55. Samangān I 5/3/1968 (7)
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DescriptionAs Mark Slobin discusses in his book, the language of teahouse songs can be mixed Uzbek and Dari, eloquent testimony to the co-territorial sharing of cultural expression; also seen in the common use of the dambura lute, though some songs are all in Uzbek.
- MS56. Samangān II (6)
- MS57. Samangān III / Tashqurghān VI (6)
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MS55. Samangān I 5/3/1968 (7)
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The Radio Afghanistan Series (72)
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