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Reviewed by:
  • The Music of Central Asia ed. by Theodore Levin, Saida Daukeyeva, and Elmira Köchümkulova
  • Sunmin Yoon
The Music of Central Asia. Edited by Theodore Levin, Saida Daukeyeva, and Elmira Köchümkulova. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2016. [xxii, 676 p. ISBN 9780253017512 (hardback), $40.] Music examples, illustrations, bibliography, glossary, index, accompanying website.

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Central Asian culture is unique and complex, distilled from the surrounding diverse languages, religions, and geographical environments, yet only a very few works have been produced on musical and cultural studies of the region. Since Mark and Greta Slobin's translation of Viktor Belı͡aev's Central Asian Music: Essays in the History of the Music of the Peoples of the U.S.S.R (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University, 1975), this is the first volume to cover the music of several Central Asian countries using contrasting approaches and perspectives. Strongly based in the nomadic lives of the people and in the worldview that reflects their geographical environment, music and musical performance in Central Asia have also been influenced by the Islamic tradition, as revealed in each nation's similar yet contrasting ways of understanding and making musics. The Soviet Union's political and cultural ideology, which left deep footprints in the process of modernization, affected all the nation states in this region during the twentieth century. Now in the post-Soviet twenty-first century, their cultural transformation has diversified and become more innovative. With thirty-five chapters by twenty-seven authors (including a comprehensive overview of each section by Theodore Levin), this book is rich in case studies by contemporary scholars—both insiders and outsiders—of the current world of Central Asian music. One particular strength of this book comes from the voices that describe lived experiences, both cultural and musical. As Levin explains in his introduction, "none of the contributors are 'armchair' scholars whose knowledge comes exclusively from written sources, whether primary or secondary. Rather they are music ethnographers, performers, educators, and cultural entrepreneurs—typically a combination of these—whose experience of music, whether as creators or consumers, has been direct and un-mediated" (p. x). Through a combination of native scholars and practitioners, and including outside researchers who work closely with local musicians, this volume presents an abundance of oral traditions and practices that have rarely been made available until now.

The book is divided into four sections: part 1, "Music and Culture in Central Asia," introduces Central Asian musical tradition; part 2, "The Nomadic World," focuses on the countries that have stronger nomadic musical traditions, and their orality; part 3, "The World of Sedentary Dwellers," deals with those areas that have a stronger musical tradition linked to the practice of Islam; and part 4, "Central Asian Music in the Age of Globalization," uses case studies of how hybrid forms of musical practice are being influenced by the globalization of cultural exchanges in the urban spaces of Central Asia. Within these divisions, the book does not proceed by geographical region, as is the case with most other area-studies books. Rather, each chapter has its specific focus: genres, instruments, musicians, performance practices, related social issues, and so forth. In this way, the chapters cover similar genres but from various angles—through illustrations from different authors and regions and also from diverse perspectives and focuses. For this reason, the entire volume might at first appear to be repeating information, but this is not the case. For example, the genre of epic is explained across several chapters (chaps. 3–7), but each chapter illustrates a different facet of the topic. Chapter 3 offers an overall explanation of Central Asian epic characters. Chapter 4 focuses only on Kyrgyz epic, chapter 5 on Kazakh epic, chapter 6 on Karakalpak epic, and chapter 7 addresses the epic in Turkmenistan, with each of these four chapters presenting an overview of their respective countries. At the same time, chapter 5 uses written narratives of [End Page 525] musicians' biographies by an author who is also a practitioner of the tradition, while chapters 6 and 7 focus on the role of the masters who carry on and pass down the cultures. Later, chapter 8 looks at the...

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