International Popular Music Styles and Contemporary Bukharian Jewish Identity

The small yet vibrant community known as Bukharian Jews, or those who trace their ancestry to the Jews who historically lived in the urban centers of Central Asia, can claim a large number of master musicians who perform in a startlingly wide array of styles.¹ The prominent role of professional musicians with eclectic repertoires was an important aspect of Bukharian Jewish musical life during the Soviet period (1917–1991), and eclectic professional musicianship has continued to be a crucial part of Bukharian Jewish identity in the United States and Israel since mass emigration from Central Asia in the 1990s. Bukharian Jews look to these professional musicians as representatives and emissaries, and musicians take seriously their position in the community. They carefully develop their repertoires in relation to many different aspects of Bukharian Jewish identity, adjusting their performances to suit the needs of various audiences.

This article focuses on the uses of international popular music styles among the diasporic Bukharian Jewish population in New York City. Dance music, disco songs, ballads, and pop songs in Russian, English, Hebrew, Persian, Uzbek, Turkish, Spanish, Arabic, and other languages constitute the primary repertoire performed at community celebrations such as weddings.² Although there is nothing that explicitly marks this repertoire as “Bukharian Jewish,” this self-consciously diverse musical mix is what musicians most commonly choose to perform when representing themselves to Bukharian Jewish audiences. On the other hand, these musical styles are almost entirely absent from presentations to non-Bukharian audiences; for those, Bukharian Jews present classical and folkloric Central Asian music as emblematic of their cultural identity. This disconnect between Bukharian Jewish musical life and its presentation to audiences outside the community is familiar to other immigrant and ethnic groups engaging multiculturalist ideas.³ Bukharian Jews, like other groups with limited access to mainstream platforms, must address a perceived demand to outwardly represent themselves in clear and distinct ways and balance this pressure with internal motivations to reflect the diversity and urban cosmopolitan experiences of the community.

This article is based on ethnographic research among the Bukharian Jewish population in New York city, which I have been conducting since 2002. The vast majority of these Jews left Central Asia in the early 1990s, amidst the dissolution of the Soviet Union, or they are the children of such immigrants. The New York city population is differently constituted from the Bukharian community in Israel, which has steadily grown since significant migration began in the late nineteenth century. My conversations with members of the community in New York city (and my limited experiences conducting research in Israel), however, indicate that many of the same issues are found in both New York and Israel. Bukharian Jews throughout the world are very strongly linked, and musicians such as the Alaev Family (Israel) and Roshel Rubinov (New York city) perform internationally and are popular wherever Bukharian Jews live. Many musicians have lived in multiple locations, such as Avrom Tolmasov, who moved from Samarqand, Uzbekistan to Israel in 1988, then to New York city from 2002 to 2008, and then back to Israel.

Multiculturalism and Bukharian Jewish Musical Repertoires

Substantial numbers of Bukharian Jews arrived in New York city when the ideology of multiculturalism might have been at its apex. In the 1980s and 1990s, many ethnic groups and immigrant communities found distinct niches by organizing around particular forms of folk and classical music, often heavily stylized and supplemented with colorful costumes and dances. Bukharian Jews primarily presented their community identity through a combination of light classical music and folkloric material attached to the label maqom (other spellings include maqam, maqām, makam, and makom) or shashmaqom, which strictly speaking refers to a canonized classical music repertoire.⁴ Efforts to organize around these musical styles mirrored similar folklorization processes in Central Asia during the twentieth century and, in this respect, the Bukharian Jewish heritage repertoire is analogous to that of other ethnic folk and heritage ensembles in the United States.

Examples of such maqom performances include concerts at mainstream venues such as Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, at community centers and libraries in the...