tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2428287168015111512024-03-18T23:28:15.279-04:00MoyindauExploring the relationship of Central Asian music to jazz, contemporary classical, rock and improvised music.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger16125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-242828716801511151.post-67289835831032773402011-08-26T09:53:00.007-04:002020-08-17T09:42:53.024-04:00Kazakhstan<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Once again I apologize for not updating this very frequently. I´m settled in Vienna now, taking intensive German class every morning, practicing every afternoon and trying to get back into a routine with playing my instrument. It´s refreshing to have easy access to a piano now, but also frustrating because I have some catching up to do before I can practice as much as I´d like. Tomorrow Ryan´s coming back to Vienna for a few days before flying home. Then the trip will be officially complete. Right now he´s in Italy hanging with a cymbal maker. I´m looking forward to seeing him again.</span></div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">I miss Central Asia but I´m usually too busy to notice. Our last days we spent in Almaty with Kenny, our fantastic couchsurfing host, who hosted 7 people simultaneously with ease--James, the Germans and the four of us. James is an American who had biked to Kazakhstan from Amsterdam. He had been through record-setting snowstorms in Holland and had gotten hit by a car in Atyrau (western KZ) just days before we met him. His nose was bandaged up, but he said it was to win sympathy points at the Tajik embassy. He had traveled in the northern Caucasus in southern Russia, and in Nagorno-Karabakh, places where few travelers ever set foot, but where he encountered only very kind people. He told us stories from his travels; some of them were hilarious and I think I laughed harder than I ever had the whole trip.</span></div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">We arrived in Shymkent on the morning of Aug 4, Kevin, Susanna, Ryan and I, on a night bus from Bishkek. Aina met us at the station and took us back to her home, where we met her family: her father, mother, older brother, his wife and two kids...and Abhishka, an Indian guy from MSU who was traveling around KZ at the same time as we were and who would turn up again and again, unannounced, in Astana and Almaty...always moving his two giant suitcases from one friend´s house to another´s. That night we went to the summer camp for the children at the orphanages...I think there were 4 orphanages total, one of which was where Sabyrbek the poet was raised (more on him later). It was so hot, so Aina´s mother gave us all hats; Kevin wore his hat at all the shows (see youtube video below). I personally enjoyed wearing my hat, because having had long hair for so many years I didn´t wear hats (so with short hair it´s easier, I guess). When we got to the camp, about 45 minutes outside of Shymkent alongside a peaceful river that runs through some small mountains, Kevin discovered that he´d lost his mouthpiece, probably in the Fergana Valley but really we don´t know where. So we did one improv at the show where Kevin played without a mouthpiece, and he sounded amazing and the kids loved it. And otherwise he sat in the audience with his hat on, surrounded by Kazakh kids vying for his attention. Susanna premiered my solo cello piece "Maddoh/Mado" based on Sufi religious music from Badakhshan...for the first time in its entirety, with an extensive vocal part in the last section. The kids were chanting, "Susanna, Susanna, Susanna..." She sounded beautiful on this pretty rough cello that they gave her (I thought the instrument fit the music well, though). Then immediately after our performance they transitioned into a dance party, blasting the Russian pop music that we had somehow come to enjoy through giant speakers, and all of these middle/high school Kazakh kids were trying to get us to dance with them. I was exhausted, we got back in the car and drove, I was falling asleep but we stopped anyway at a chaikhana for shashlyk and kvas, and I fell asleep on the mats at the chaikhana as well. Ahh, now I miss the chaikhanas...there was a song that we listened to in the van driving from Sary Tash to Osh with all the NGO volunteers called "Chaikhona", it was their favorite song and they all sang along and debated on which Central Asian country it was from, some suggested Tajikistan because it was pronounced "chaikhona" not "chaikhana" and that "o" is a Persian thing... The song is about a (Tajik?) guy who´s living abroad, and he describes how much he misses the chaikhona and how great it is. And we had just stopped at a chaikhana ourselves, gotten to know the NGO/development folks a bit better, and they were all really cool, nice people with insipiring stories. And then when we arrived in Osh and were parked in the driveway of the NGO (same NGO, by the way, as the one with which Bactria Cultural Center in Dushanbe is affiliated), they blasted this song and had a little dance party, while meanwhile our driver was trying to charge extra and arguing with our leader from LA who they called a "fountain of knowledge" because he knew so much about the region, the Aga Khan Foundation, Ismaili Islam, etc...</span></div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Our second day in Shymkent we played a concert at the Opera and Ballet Theater, a nice big hall with a nice big grand piano and a sound system...so they were even able to mic the piano which was great for me. We spent much of the day at the venue, it was ridiculously hot outside. Kevin and Ryan and I had a fun little session in a sweltering dressing room, where we played Turkish pop songs and sang the melodies (without words, we haven´t memorized the Turkish words). The concert was a wonderful experience. It was great to play the songs with Aina again and it sank in that we were finally in Kazakhstan, completing the circle of the collaboration that had started almost two years ago in East Lansing. Sabyrbek Nurmanuly, the poet whose words I set to music including "Moyindau" ("acknowledgement")--which was now a word I´d spoken and heard spoken a thousand times--came to the stage to address the audience and we met for the first time. And I have to say that in real life he totally defied the image I had formed of him! (We were laughing about that afterwards...) Kevin found a mouthpiece, we were all given flowers in the end, and then we hurried to get everything packed up and get out of the venue... Afterwards we were invited to Aina´s sister´s house for an amazing dinner and a swim in their pool...we left with new traditional Kazakh hats and baby camels, known for their beautiful eyes... We were all so happy, it was a beautiful experience.</span></div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">The next morning Susanna woke up sick. We were supposed to leave that day but we didn´t. Instead we sat around Aina´s house and did absolutely nothing. Once again it was oppressively hot. We ate besh barmak for dinner--that´s horsemeat with noodles and some vegetables that you´re supposed to eat with your hands (besh barmak means "five fingers"). Susanna was getting worse, so we called some doctors, who arrived and prescribed some diet for her to get better. We were sitting outside, it had cooled now, watching Kazakh news on TV with it´s epic jingle that plays before all the commercial breaks.</span></div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Kevin and I left the next day on a 24-hr bus to Astana. After having had so many opportunities to practice, I had by this point significantly improved my sleeping on buses skills, so I slept, and when I woke up we were in Balkash north of Almaty, a town that lies on a giant lake that´s half saltwater, half freshwater. We ate ice cream for breakfast. By 6pm or so we were in Astana. The sun was setting and the weather was cool...I put on my red sweater that was given to me by the Kurdish family in Tuzluca 2 months earlier. Meirgul, a classmate of mine from my Turkish class freshman year, met us at Congress Hall and took us to our apartment: for 7,000 tenge ($33) we rented a beautiful apartment with kitchen, balcony, living room, bathroom, bedroom, and NICE furniture. The next night we downgraded to a slightly less luxurious place for 5,000 tenge, still a great deal...</span></div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">The Kazakh girls had arranged everything for us. Gaukhar, another MSU student who´d just graduated, was going to meet Ryan and Susanna at the train station the next morning (they opted for the more comfortable "kupe" on a night train from Shymkent). So Kevin and I slept in and everyone met at our place the next morning, where we cooked breakfast and made some Chinese tea! There had been some talk of having a show that day, but it didn´t turn out, so we met up with a large group of Gaukhar´s friends at night and went to a delicious Uyghur restaurant (which made me wish even more that I´d spent more time in Xinjiang). Afterwards we went walking along the river, which divides the old and new city (the new city being built entirely within the past 10 years, since the capital of Kazakhstan was moved from Almaty to Astana). Astana was cool, quiet, new, clean...a "northern" city and very different from anywhere else in Central Asia I´d been. Yet it´s the capital of Kazakhstan, and I realized how much I like these big countries like Kazakhstan, China, Turkey, and the US...because you can travel for 24 hours without leaving the country and be some place with a totally different vibe but same (or similar) culture...language, food, habits...although these change a little bit too, but because people move around in their own country there´s a lot of mixing...and people in one part of the country will always refer to another part far away, like the family we met in Tuzluca talking about going to Istanbul, or in China the migrant workers coming from all over to the big cities like Beijing and doing construction work.</span></div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">The next day was our performance at the National Library in Astana, in the heart of the new city, on the end of a long square, where if you look up the sky looks big like it does in Wyoming, and where you realize that you are in the middle of the giant steppe. We arrived there around 5:30pm, and by that time the clouds that had hung over the city all day long were gone and the sky was blue and beautiful. I went with Kevin and Susanna, Ryan was picking up a snare drum to play sitting cross-legged on the floor with his two hi-hats from</span><span style="font-size: small;"> <span class="profileName fn ginormousProfileName fwb">Kadıköy, because the guy wanted too much money for the whole set. And after looking all afternoon for a cello, we had finally resigned to play trio because we could not find one, until at the last moment one of the super friendly, helpful volunteers exclaimed that we had a cello, and it was the Public Affairs officers´ daughter´s practice instrument, for when she would come to visit, I think. So it all worked out fantastically, and we had a little question and answer session beforehand and then played, and the audience was so curious and appreciative that it was really an honor. Afterwards people told me that although we couldn´t really know "the Kazakh soul" or what it is to be Kazakh, we had grasped it with our music...</span></span></div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="profileName fn ginormousProfileName fwb"><br />
</span></span></div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="profileName fn ginormousProfileName fwb">We also met Boris at the library. Boris is a young man not much older than Ryan, born in Kiev, studied at Arizona State University, lived in New York for awhile, and then decided to visit his brother in Astana for three days. Then he extended his ticket for a week, met his wife, and stayed; he´s been there a few years now I think. Anyway Boris suggested that he could get us a gig the next night in Astana, if not at the Guns & Roses Pub/Grill, then at the Amerikansky bar. We had planned to leave for Almaty the next day, but we said ok and stayed, because we didn´t have any gig planned for that first night in Almaty. But the next day we went to talk to all the places and none of them could host us, because it was simply too late of notice and the Hawaiian theme party was going on that night. So we drank tea in the Turkish restaurant and watched the Turkish music videos...they all knew us in that place by now. And we arranged our bus tickets to Almaty for the next evening at 9pm.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="profileName fn ginormousProfileName fwb"><br />
</span></span></div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="profileName fn ginormousProfileName fwb">The bus ride seemed quick from Astana to Almaty, only 19 hours. By that time Ryan and I had already done 26 hours standing on a train in China, 24+ hours from Dushanbe-Khorog twice, and Kevin and I had done 24 hours from Shymkent. And I was now relatively comfortable with sleeping in buses. We got pulled over at a police checkpoint not far from Astana and the cop came all the way to the back of the bus where we were sitting and asked for our passports. Ryan and I were fine, Susanna was sitting in the corner so the cop didn´t notice her, but Kevin had to go outside and negotiate to get his passport back, because he hadn´t registered (you´re supposed to register with the local authorities within 5 days of entering KZ, but for some reason the KZ embassy in Bishkek had automatically registered Ryan and I, otherwise we´d have been in the same boat). In the end he had to pay a $20 bribe (and in the end, when Kevin and Susanna crossed the border leaving Kazakhstan, there were no problems, no fines). </span></span></div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="profileName fn ginormousProfileName fwb"><br />
</span></span></div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="profileName fn ginormousProfileName fwb">Almaty is nice, with the mountains just a 15 minute drive outside the city, where you can hike over the pass to Issyk-Kol in Kyrgyzstan (takes 4 days I think). Aina picked us up at the bus station, we met our host Kenny at the Eiffel Tower, dropped our stuff off at his place, went back to meet Kazbek at the Eiffel Tower, and he took us to his family´s estate up in the hills on the outskirts of town. His father, Tagir, was a patient of a friend of a friend of Susanna´s mother, or something like that, in Seattle. So they prepared a delicious dinner for us, and we sat and talked for several hours, and then Tagir suggested we go together to the mountains the next morning. So the next morning we went to the mountains, and by the time we came back we already had to start finding instruments, because we had a show that night at Ultra´s Cafe/Bar, a 3-story place with a rooftop garden that brews its own beer. We needed a keyboard and a saxophone, because Kevin´s saxophone had mysteriously broken sometime in Shymkent or Astana, and he had lost his mouthpiece anyway. We found a saxophone for $40, and a keyboard for free, but it was smallish with non-weighted keys. So we had everything ready to go, and the time came for Moyindau´s last show (for awhile at least).</span></span></div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="profileName fn ginormousProfileName fwb"><br />
</span></span></div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="profileName fn ginormousProfileName fwb">Everyone sounded great, Kevin nailed this arrangment of "Mashq-e Javanan", a Tajik song with a lot of repeated notes that´s pretty difficult. We were able to loosen up on Moyindau and Senim, the songs that we performed with Aina, and she began to interact more with the band, improvising and making music together. It was a memorable experience. And afterwards a local pianist came up and played some standards with Ryan and Kevin and killed it...and you could see on their faces how good it felt...and after that there was a digeridoo/drums and jaw harp duo, and Susanna and Kevin sat in and improvised over their pulsating, trancelike groove. And late in the evening, Abhishka walked in with his suitcase and "KAZAKHSTAN" t-shirt.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">The day before Ryan and I left Almaty ourselves, we said goodbye to Kevin and Susanna at the bus station. They took a marshrutka to Bishkek and flew home from there. The last few days in Almaty were almost as if from a dream...the summer of traveling was over, I was on the verge of moving to Vienna, leaving Central Asia, and we had such a wonderful, peaceful, happy atmosphere at Kenny´s place, where we´d sit in the sunny kitchen for hours and share stories with James. And then Kalman arrived, the Hungarian with whom I hitchhiked around Turkey two summers ago, he was cutting across Eurasia towards Hong Kong to catch a flight from there to Indonesia where he´d gotten a scholarship to study Indonesian language for a year. He overstayed his Kazakh visa because everyone wanted to wrestle him in every small town he got stuck in while hitchhiking...he cursed these people, but he managed to get a visa extension for $6 when they´d wanted $100. And on our last night, we met my friend Nargiz also from my Turkish class, and she took us to one last dinner of shashlyk, drove us to the airport and saw us off, and by this time I had done that thing so many times, said goodbye to people so many times, and I knew so well that the next morning I would be in Vienna, but that at that time I was still in Almaty, and the night was warm because the days were quite hot. Nargiz mentioned airport sadness, seeing friends off at the airport, and I thought about the song that Brad Mehldau wrote called "Airport Sadness". Our flight was delayed and we barely made our connection in Kiev.</span></div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">And now I´m in Vienna, feeling a bit of longing for Central Asia after writing this long post, and also a bit of longing for the US and the people I left behind there. But I´m working towards some things here, and I´m excited for the next adventures. Thank you to everybody who reads this, my long run-on sentences... Thank you for supporting our project and our desire to get to know our home (the world) a bit better. I´ll post some pictures soon. Wishing everyone all the best...</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><b>Moyindau in Astana:</b> </span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/9JqM0vhy-Lk?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/wk2g3SdFHE0?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><b>Moyindau on the news in Shymkent: </b> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylxBS-ZPxb0</span></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-242828716801511151.post-45183167919717157412011-08-02T06:06:00.001-04:002020-08-17T09:33:21.819-04:00Quartet in Kyrgyzstan<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">The quartet (Kevin, Susanna, Ryan and I) has been together for about five days now in Kyrgyzstan. Thursday morning Ryan and I picked the others up at the airport and blasted 10 hours straight to Osh; we arrived at 5pm or so and then got in another taxi bound for Sary Tash, where we finally pulled in just after nightfall, 10,400 feet above sea level. It was cold and rainy. The next morning we hitched down the road to Tajikistan; just before the border is a town called Kashka Suu where we had to hire a jeep to drive us across the barren valley to Achik Tash and the Peak Lenin base camp, where the At Chabysh (Kyrgyz Horse) festival was held. <br />
<br />
At the festival we observed some pretty interesting sports played on horseback, including one where a man must try to kiss a woman as they're racing side by side. If he's unsuccesful, the woman has the chance to try to beat him with a whip. At night we slept in yurts, and our meals were prepared by the local Kyrgyz villagers. It was cold; on our last morning there (July 31), we woke up to find a thin layer of snow covering the valley. We performed once, a short 10 minute set because it was so cold, on a stage constructed from two pickup trucks backed into one another. The festival audience seemed appreciative of our different kind of music, and afterwards quite a few Kyrgyz guys wanted to try Kevin's saxophone. Susanna, unable to get a cello in Bishkek for the journey, sang instead. As it turned out, a cello wouldn't have fared well in the below freezing temperatures of Achik Tash. The view of the mountain from the festival site is incredible, I've never seen anything like it.<br />
<br />
After two days at the festival, we made our way back to Bishkek, hitching with a Chinese truck back to the crossroads at Sary Tash (he was headed to Kashgar, in Xinjiang, and I was so tempted to continue with him across the Irkeshtam Pass back into China, because I still had an entry left on my visa, but now our time is short, and we needed to get back to Bishkek because tomorrow we're leaving for Kazakhstan, and we'll have a busy schedule full of shows and hopefully some masterclass-type stuff as well). So we got off in Sary Tash, waited for a few hours as the wind whipped our faces and I tried to hide my forehead from the sun with my hood, even though it was cold and the sun felt good. And then two vans full of young NGO development workers pulled up; we had met some of them at the festival and they happily agreed to take us with them to Osh. We squeezed into the cars, and on the way I learned so much about the world of international development and NGOs and all the career paths open to people interested in such things, and also about Central Asian politics, the situation in Osh, Kyrgyzstan (last summer when the riots occurred and the Kyrgyz-Uzbek ethnic tension), the Aga Khan Foundation, and other things that I've been curious about the whole time I've been traveling here. I was inspired by their passion, their love of the local culture and commitment to learning the language and interacting with the peoples among which they lived and traveled. I felt more connected with them than with most of the backpackers I've met. In Osh we had dinner together (the best shashlyk I've had in Central Asia), and they took us to a hotel and arranged a cheap room for us. The hours we spent in Sary Tash, turning down the bids of persistent taxi drivers, had paid off.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-242828716801511151.post-25160081690493946882011-07-27T09:11:00.000-04:002011-07-27T09:11:04.622-04:00More pictures<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcqN3rgP6rJgVbzqSRscQLb32CJMb38ho4YB55W3CKB1cEiIyn-NVLm_m-u_2cR1nwrJ-5-5Gl2UJA4YuF3LkkS65cIiZ9m6DOf8xu_YP9H0Luv7RuKNGH1TarSKRc2KOl_drVjbwKvpUy/s1600/IMG_2594.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcqN3rgP6rJgVbzqSRscQLb32CJMb38ho4YB55W3CKB1cEiIyn-NVLm_m-u_2cR1nwrJ-5-5Gl2UJA4YuF3LkkS65cIiZ9m6DOf8xu_YP9H0Luv7RuKNGH1TarSKRc2KOl_drVjbwKvpUy/s400/IMG_2594.JPG" width="300" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Ryan with CSer Nuriya after exchanging money at a children's toy store, Tashkent, Uzbekistan</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDKQRocHy1p7oA8wbzXZPMY7Ne3ZcHzkJxKnqnrrllgQ_ktNC0uKXmD51ZxnahFLbNbVL43iPkwT3d8I9WKCuCMm_WKyeKLwCkr-fm43ts9u0qu6SO4ZDFzmqux8vSPMq9GvpxddnOWKxt/s1600/IMG_2523.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDKQRocHy1p7oA8wbzXZPMY7Ne3ZcHzkJxKnqnrrllgQ_ktNC0uKXmD51ZxnahFLbNbVL43iPkwT3d8I9WKCuCMm_WKyeKLwCkr-fm43ts9u0qu6SO4ZDFzmqux8vSPMq9GvpxddnOWKxt/s400/IMG_2523.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Musi (right) with his sister Anisa (middle) and cousin (left), Dasht village, Tajikistan</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-242828716801511151.post-79729513200542822192011-07-27T07:54:00.001-04:002020-08-17T09:36:31.376-04:00Trying to catch up...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">In just about 12 hours we'll pick up Kevin and Susanna from Manas airport in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan and head south to Osh. Right now, they're waiting in Moscow for their connecting flight. Ryan and I have been hanging out in Bishkek for the past four days. There is nothing to do here, except sleep, eat, catch up on blog posts, apply for Kazakh visas, and walk around enjoying the beautiful weather (sunny but not too hot or humid). I like the absence of tourist attractions; it was usually a pain anyway to decide whether or not we should go to them, and then if you don't (we usually didn't) you feel a bit guilty for going all the way to Xi'an and not seeing the terra cotta warriors, or spending 5 days in Beijing without visiting the Forbidden City or the Great Wall. In Istanbul our host Jim (who's getting married this weekend, by the way, we wish him and his wife all the best) gave Ryan and Mette a hard time for leaving Istanbul without ever having been to the Aya Sofya, or the Blue Mosque...in the end though everyone experiences a place in their own personal way, and the things that I remember most are not the tourist sites but the wonderful people we met, the food, music, nature, cities... Just to walk out on the street in Beijing was enough of an experience for me that I didn't feel the desire to see all the temples (we did go to one, the Lama Temple, interesting and beautiful but I didn't enjoy it as much as the subway ride we took during rush hour to get there, packed body to body and sometimes we didn't even get into the train because there were too many people and we had to wait for the next one, and when we transferred it took almost an hour because we had to walk through tunnels and wait in lines and go up and down stairs). I liked the big, crazy cities, Beijing more than Shanghai, a cultural and political center rather than an economic and commercial one. We stayed with Antonio, an Italian living in China for 3 years now, he spoke Chinese well, and he lived on the 11th floor of the 9th apartment building in a complex with innumerable high rises that looked the same as all the other compounds where millions of Beijing's residents live. An American guy we met at a couchsurfing meeting said he took an adventure one day, and rode the subway as far south as possible just to see what it would look like down there, and he got out and it looked just the same...apartment complexes...he said he had expected the city to taper out a little bit out there, at the end of the line, but not in China. The construction workers flock to the city from the provinces, work 24 hours a day building new subway lines (in Xi'an the first line will open at the end of the year, and in Shenzhen the line we took to get from the airport to meet Yaoyue at the bus station was just finished June 15), and then move on to the next project because there is always more building to be done. There are so many people in China, it is impossible to book a seat on a train a day or two in advance, so we ended up standing for 26 hours from Guangzhou to Xi'an, because we couldn't buy tickets in Zhongshan, the smaller city south of Guangzhou where my friend Yaoyue from my old piano studio at MSU lives, and where we stayed for 4 days, eating, drinking tea, watching Chinese dramas, showering 3 times a day because it was so humid...<br />
<br />
When we returned to Central Asia from China, we had acquired a familiarity with certain things, such as getting ripped off by taxi drivers even when you know the fair price and bargain hard for it (the marshrutka from Manas airport into Bishkek cost us 100 som per person, not the usual 30 som; the driver's excuse was that we paid extra for our bags, which he stuffed roughly behind the backseat, slamming the door shut before they fell out). It didn't frustrate me as much as it used to, though now I'm preparing myself to bargain for the taxi ride to Osh tomorrow, hoping we can get a driver to pick up Kevin and Susanna at the airport...<br />
<br />
I haven't updated the blog since Khiva, Uzbekistan, where I was suffering in the heat and anticipating the excitement and novelty of arriving in China, a place I'd never planned to go and hadn't spent almost a year researching. So from Khiva we worked our way back to Tashkent, where our flight left from. First was a 8 or so hour ride through the desert to Bukhara, in a black car, with a taxi driver who liked to listen to very bad music, very loud. He was the wild type, who when we make a pit stop for food wants you to eat this pastry instead of that ice cream, and then shepherds you back to the car yelling "hey, hey!"...he guessed that the temperature reached 50 degrees celsius in the desert that day. When we arrived in Bukhara he demanded an extra 5000 som from us because we wanted to go to the train station to buy our tickets for onward travel; then, he refused to take us to the train station, insisting that we were better off going the next day, but sure enough when we tried to get tickets the next day all the trains were sold out, and they don't sell standing room tickets like in China, and there were no buses, so we took yet another shared taxi that sped through the night at 160 km per hour to reach Tashkent in just 7 hours (we left at 5:30pm and arrived just after midnight, and we had expected it to be an overnight ride...). But our friend Khoorshid offered us the floor at his place, and we hung out the next day and met our couchsurfing friend Nuriya once more, and they took us to the airport and saw us off as the next phase in our journey began, unplanned and determined only weeks before, when we were sitting in Khorog Central Park and talking about how much we missed playing our instruments, and the thought that no more shows lay ahead of us for more than a month... But China temporarily took my mind off that, exposing me to an entirely new set of experiences that were not coupled with or colored by expectations or anticipations of Central Asia that had been growing for over a year. And I think Ryan and I both agree that we made a good decision that day in the park in Khorog.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-242828716801511151.post-9662272535392098152011-07-25T05:13:00.028-04:002011-07-25T09:28:27.573-04:00Pictures!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" closure_uid_j5lhjk="174" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Sorry everybody for the long delay in posting. Blogspot is inaccesible in China, and I thought also in Kyrgyzstan, but today I found an internet cafe where I could access it! So here are a few pictures, and a more lengthy post will follow shortly. Greetings from Bishkek!</div><div class="separator" closure_uid_j5lhjk="174" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" closure_uid_j5lhjk="174" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPA_D_Vr0r52E9rZCQ8gFPUrHxpHQzT8dOh5GgsT-gsLe0NBQ_AFCp0F4-uCySMXeHwKIxmj9R5Hl5rW-DGEK-7Jkhp2lCzB1DTeodCJG8YNMCCcy1mmjegoPhaCBgM8IbdS5VxXozKR0J/s1600/IMG_2498.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPA_D_Vr0r52E9rZCQ8gFPUrHxpHQzT8dOh5GgsT-gsLe0NBQ_AFCp0F4-uCySMXeHwKIxmj9R5Hl5rW-DGEK-7Jkhp2lCzB1DTeodCJG8YNMCCcy1mmjegoPhaCBgM8IbdS5VxXozKR0J/s400/IMG_2498.JPG" width="300" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"> Ryan playing volleyball with locals in Dasht village, Badakhshan, Tajikistan</div><div align="center" closure_uid_j5lhjk="110"><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPwE4Nna3Tmb9cBeL2wd0Fj14hdFz93A8Ipu5gyFMI4dojJBf_rmZoF_iXe1W2d2_DkoJZInMtF2IKtEAZvqNxeXRf-4pYxRwexuSUvhyMGYsgs3PYLmQ2U6SggalxBGl8NVWxNv1eP7Z0/s1600/IMG_2608.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPwE4Nna3Tmb9cBeL2wd0Fj14hdFz93A8Ipu5gyFMI4dojJBf_rmZoF_iXe1W2d2_DkoJZInMtF2IKtEAZvqNxeXRf-4pYxRwexuSUvhyMGYsgs3PYLmQ2U6SggalxBGl8NVWxNv1eP7Z0/s400/IMG_2608.JPG" width="400" /></a></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div align="center" closure_uid_j5lhjk="110">Ryan with flypaper at our guesthouse, Moynaq, Karakalpakstan, Uzbekistan</div><div align="center" closure_uid_j5lhjk="110"><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnZLCWQISekK3h-raFR41ittG0rFP7Dyi_aNza6MB2ilI35XRgjffzRTl8Y3oU2BZDjWkK89QRxWYa-H5ZNrWCH0ZlkUh-WcBFLVCy-V7_dfK_WIRiFR1ErFFp4TFNMsFr5IREBEIe2apc/s1600/IMG_2680.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnZLCWQISekK3h-raFR41ittG0rFP7Dyi_aNza6MB2ilI35XRgjffzRTl8Y3oU2BZDjWkK89QRxWYa-H5ZNrWCH0ZlkUh-WcBFLVCy-V7_dfK_WIRiFR1ErFFp4TFNMsFr5IREBEIe2apc/s400/IMG_2680.JPG" width="300" /></a></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div align="center" closure_uid_j5lhjk="110">Ryan, Beijing subway<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-2EhvQNsgpQATOwH_jp4E8Ar04-WV46iLXnm0au9TnnBWG2YCa5FDpwInlzlizWNDRW1tEgklqPAICngHS5T0cIcXQXOxukgnJOKasTENpn2BEbn3EB3FvWYGncfGG91S2DxE9gE0kTuz/s1600/IMG_2693.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-2EhvQNsgpQATOwH_jp4E8Ar04-WV46iLXnm0au9TnnBWG2YCa5FDpwInlzlizWNDRW1tEgklqPAICngHS5T0cIcXQXOxukgnJOKasTENpn2BEbn3EB3FvWYGncfGG91S2DxE9gE0kTuz/s400/IMG_2693.JPG" width="300" /></a></div> Outside 798 Art District, Beijing</div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-242828716801511151.post-67705530662455541752011-07-05T04:40:00.001-04:002020-08-17T09:38:42.656-04:00Tajikistan and Uzbekistan<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">So that day in the park in Khorog we decided to go to China. So we booked a pair of tickets to Beijing, and we're going to work our way back west towards Central Asia to meet up with Susanna and Kevin in Kyrgyzstan on July 30. We fly out of Tashkent on Friday.<br />
<br />
After booking the flights, we hired a driver to take us to the Wakhan Valley. The entire route follows the Pyanj River, which delineates the border with Afghanistan. At times the valley is so narrow that there is room only for the road and the raging river between two giant faces of rock. Other times the valley widens and the river spreads out and the water appears to stand still, and when you look across you can barely see the massive Hindu Kush because of all the dust in the air, which turns the sky a greenish brownish gray color at dusk when the wind blows into your eyes and blows the tall skinny trees that grow along the side of the road. Families, dressed in red, sit by the roadside and smile as we pass. Our final destination is Vrang, our driver's village, but we broke our journey and spent a night at a homestay at the top of one of the mountains. I got sick that night, but the squat toilet was in quite good condition and our host family was kind so I still enjoyed myself. The next day we continued to Vrang, stopping at some hot springs, a museum of a Sufi musician at Yamg village, and a Buddhist stupa at Vrang. In Vrang we had planned to stay for free at our driver's house, but it turned out to be all the way at the top of a mountain, a two hour hike, and so we payed for another homestay instead, because our driver insisted that we needed to leave at 5am the next morning in order for him to find enough passengers who wanted to share the ride to Dushanbe.<br />
<br />
We woke up at 5am the next morning and said goodbye to Eric, our friend from Colorado who we had met at the US embassy's event for us in Dushanbe, and then again later in Khorog at a guesthouse. We decided to travel together to share stories; he was a guitarist and interested in jazz, but didn't take the time or make the decision to pursue it professionally, or to the extent that we had. And I was interested in his travels, he had started in January in Hong Kong, spent 3 months in China, biked through Kyrgyzstan to Tajikistan, all with his guitar, onto which he had carved the phrase "you reap what you sow" in Chinese, Russian and Farsi. He made his own phrase books and taught himself the language of each country he visited. Before we parted ways he made us a Chinese phrase book from memory, quite extensive and impressive considering he had taught it all to himself.<br />
<br />
The drive back to Dushanbe took more than 24 hours. We were glad to make it back to Kirill's place, where Goulya, the children's caretaker, welcomed us back and made our beds for us and offered us food. The next day we met Munira Shahidi and discussed further plans for exploring the relationship between Sufi traditions, poetry and music, and contemporary Western music, improvisation and techniques...focusing in particular on Tajikistan as a meeting place of these two spheres. She gave me a collection of Shahidi's songs arranged for piano and vocal, as well as a CD that had just been published--with a booklet of liner notes that, I realized, were the same paragraphs she had sent me earlier this spring to edit! We discussed possibilties for a concert/series of lectures in London later this year or early next year. It was an exciting conversation and I left thinking about many ideas for future projects and exploration.<br />
<br />
That night Kirill and Bactria in collaboration with the French embassy put on a wonderful outdoor concert in front of the Opera Theater. It was fun to see live music again and they had a wonderful turnout. Afterwards we went out for dinner with Siyma at a Ukrainian restaurant. I felt that I could stay a few more days in Dushanbe, I had made some friends there. But we had to go so that we could spend some time in Uzbekistan. The next morning we met a young Dutch couple at the Rudaki statue to share a taxi to the Uzbek border. We had met them earlier at a Khorog guesthouse and ran into them by chance at an Internet Cafe in Dushanbe (while I was typing the last blog post). We continued together to Tashkent, where we spent the night at what Lonely Planet described as "the darkest hole in all of Central Asia". It wasn't so bad.<br />
<br />
The border crossing was relatively painless. They searched my entire bag, and had me play two songs when they discovered I had a mini keyboard. They asked me two questions: "Why are you so white?" and "Why don't you have a girlfriend?" Then they laughed and joked when I put sunscreen on before heading out into Uzbekistan...we were in the valley now, you could barely see mountains, and the sun was hot.<br />
<br />
The next day in Tashkent we went early to the Chinese embassy to apply for our visa. We got one in a day, but it was expensive...somehow Americans seem to get the worst price for every visa. In the evening we met couchsurfers Nuriya and Khoorshid (whose nickname was Mega). They were so kind and took us to the train station to help us buy tickets to Nukus. Then we changed money (in Uzbekistan, almost anybody is a currency exchanger...this time our taxi driver pulled out a bag of bills from the trunk to trade for our hundred dollar bill). One US dollar is equal to approximately 2450 Uzbek som on the black market, and the smallest som bill is 1000. So we stashed a giant wad of cash in our bags, and each time we go to a restaurant we count out more than 20 1000 som bills to pay. I think people in Uzbekistan actually waste a significant amount of time counting bills.<br />
<br />
Nuriya and Khoorshid treated us to a wonderful dinner and then saw us off on the train, 21 hours across the desert to Nukus, the capital of the autonomous republic of Karakalpakstan, where the langauge, Karakalpak, shares more in common with Kazakh than Uzbek. It was my first overnight train ride, and for a pretty fair price we got a comfortable bed on the top bunk, where we slept and then lounged all day long, watching the bleak desert speed past us and wondering if it would be so unforgiving at the place where we would be getting off. And as it turned out, it was, but we still had a great experience in Karakalpakstan.<br />
<br />
Now we are in Khiva, waiting for the midday heat to subside before we check out the ancient walled city. Next blog post I'll describe the rest of our week in Uzbekistan, before we head east yet again. </div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-242828716801511151.post-17985102688080550542011-06-29T15:51:00.001-04:002020-08-17T09:41:20.596-04:00"Tajikistan is easy"<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Describing the complexities of the Uzbekistan visa application process in comparison to Tajikistan's, I told our host Jim in Istanbul, "Tajikistan is easy." He laughed and it became a sort of joke that was brought up again and again. "Just remember that when things go wrong, etc," he said, and I tried to imagine what could go wrong--any number of things. Now, getting ready to leave Dushanbe and head to Uzbekistan tomorrow, I can say that we had plenty of difficulties, but they didn't come close to overshadowing the many wonderful experiences we've had here.<br />
<br />
Our flight arrived in Dushanbe at 3:30am and we waited in line to apply for our visas, but it was the wrong line, so then we entered a room where foreigners were applying for visas, and we had read up on the requirements beforehand so we were prepared. Even still the process didn't go as planned--the consul officer wanted to know why we didn't have a letter of invitation from the US embassy if they were funding our trip (we had one from the Shahidi Museum instead). He tried calling the embassy and Munira Shahidi but of course at 4am he didn't get through. So he made us wait longer, questioned us as to our reasons for visiting Tajikistan and asked Ryan three consecutive times if he had been in the military, to which Ryan replied 'no' each time. Finally he issued us "service" visas for almost double the cost of a tourist visa. We later found out that we had to register these visas, which was an additional $50 each. Luckily we were getting support from the embassy. Our host Kirill was waiting for us after this whole process and he drove us back to his place, where we found our beds and crashed.<br />
<br />
Dushanbe is hot. We spent a lot of time just hanging out at Kirill's place, in the garden. His house is actually two separate buildings, with a beautiful garden space in between. Ryan and I had one of the buildings to ourselves, and there was a piano in our bedroom so I practiced and we rehearsed as a group there. Mette stayed in her own room in the main building. Kirill is from Tashkent, but he's lived in Dushanbe for the past few years, bringing great music to the city through his job as music director of the Bactria Cultural Center. Bactria is a wonderful organization that offers language courses in English, French and German, and organizes film screenings, concerts and other events that bring international culture to Dushanbe. In addition to organizing our concert, they've collaborated with the French embassy to bring a French jazz group to town. They will perform tonight outside of the opera house--I'm excited to see it. Kirill's wife Siyma is from Istanbul and works for UNICEF in Dushanbe. They have two kids, Asya (4) and Pamir (2 I think). Asya speaks Russian, Turkish and English and wants to learn Tajik...I'm impressed! The nannies that take care of the children during the day are also super nice and I try to practice speaking Russian with them. <br />
<br />
Our first event in Dushanbe was an informal concert/party organized by the US embassy at James Callahan's house (temporary public affairs officer). Mette got sick that day (probably food allergies, unfortunately), so we went to play as a duo. Many Tajik musicians came, and a drum teacher from a local music school brought a few of his students. I had fun playing with each of them, and one of them challenged me to improvise Tajik dance music in 7/8 while everyone danced. Ryan and I played "Sitorai Man", a beautiful melody by Ziyodullo Shahidi that has turned out to be a really excellent vehicle for improvisation. Later on that night I met a lot of foreigners living in Dushanbe--one British student who had been learning Farsi in Tehran for 3 months before the Iranian government kicked him out and he relocated to Tajikistan, an Iranian filmmaker who was finishing up a documentary on Dushanbe's heavy metal scene before he planned to move to Berlin, and an American backpacker who had begun his trip in China in January and who we'd meet later on at a hostel in Khorog.<br />
<br />
The next day we played the big concert at Bactria Cultural Center. Mette was feeling better, but Ryan had gotten sick with a stomach bug. We played some new compositions and arrangements for the first time--"Shunidam" and "Sitorai Man" by Ziyodullo Shahidi and a folk song called "Kashkarchay Savti Chorgokh" that I'd transcribed from a youtube clip that's since been removed. Everyone sounded great. I learned a lot about my own playing, and saw many possibilities for future directions. Hopefully someday we'll have time to work through more music with this group. The fifty or so people in the audience, mostly local Tajiks, received it very well. We recorded it, so those of you who chose the "CD of live Central Asian performances" reward on kickstarter will get to hear it (as will everyone else...I'll put a track up on here as soon as I can).<br />
<br />
The next day was our show at the Ziyodullo Shahidi Museum. I had been corresponding via email with Munira Shahidi, the daughter of the famous composer, since December, and it was great to finally meet her, as well as her daughter who is also a fine composer living in Montreal. Unfortunately, Munira's husband had passed away only two weeks earlier, and instead of presenting a concert we were invited to perform at his memorial service. Several people spoke, and Tajik musicians presented some of Shahidi's songs (including Shunidam!). Everyone brought their memories and their sadness, and I was moved by the beautiful music that within this family was so personal, yet also spoke for an entire country of people, and had spoken to me back in America. We did our best to respect the atmosphere and offer our own, honest musical contribution. Mette came and played the melodies with such care and tenderness even though she was once again sick and had been lying in bed all day. Just this evening I met again with Munira and we discussed hopes for future projects involving Tajik and Sufi music, the songs of Shahidi, and contemporary/improvised music.<br />
<br />
The next day we left for Khorog, in Badakhshan. It took a full 24 hours to get there, with frequent stops for meals, car breakdowns and repairs, and even random roadside dance parties. When we finally pulled in to Khorog, Ryan and I wandered down the main street until we discovered a poster with our pictures on it! Two Tajiks were examining it and we walked up to join them. They glanced at us, and back and the poster; recognizing it was us, they smiled. One of them lent us his phone so we could call our contact, while the other offered us a place to stay. We went to the theater and set up, having given up hope of sleeping before the concert. Then we waited--the show began more than an hour late. We had a good, very enthusiastic crowd of 150 people or so. They cheered wildly when the curtain was opened, and during the performance whenever we did something flashy or in unison. The sound engineers turned the volume way up. Ryan was playing the only drumset in Badakhshan, and I was playing a 60-something key keyboard without weighted keys, and with no pedal. So musically, it was far from ideal, but we managed to present our music and the audience enjoyed it.<br />
<br />
The following three days we spent in Dasht, a small village just outside of Khorog, surrounded by mountains. Just adjacent to town is the future site of one of three University of Central Asia campuses (the other two are in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan). Right now it is just an empty plot of land, but soon it promises to be one of the most beautiful university campuses in the world. Our host in Dasht was Musi, a 20 year old English student at Khorog State University. His father was a driver in the Pamirs, and he has a younger sister Anisa, in 8th grade. His family adopted us, fed us, and we got to experience their daily life in Dasht village. On our first morning there, I felt sick, but a bunch of kids from the village came over and we played music together with my keyboard and Ryan's cymbals. The young kids taught me some Pamiri rhythms, some of which are quite challenging. Later that day we saw a rehearsal for a holiday celebration that would occur the following day, honoring the Aga Khan, the Ismaili people's Swiss-born spiritual leader, or imam. The efforts of the Aga Khan Foundation pretty much single-handedly saved Badakhshan from starvation during the Tajik Civil War of 1993-97, and since 1995 they have been devoted to him. In every Pamiri house there is a picture of the Aga Khan that they recognize and honor upon entering.<br />
<br />
That evening we played volleyball with the village kids. It seems that volleyball is the game of choice, at least in Dasht, and some of the kids were very good at it. The younger ones watched and cheered from the sidelines. Musi told us that they played volleyball like this every evening from 5 or 6 until dark. We noticed that their volleyball was deflated and broken so we decided to go to the store the next day to buy them a new one. It turned out to be pretty cheap (by our standards) so we bought a soccer ball too! In the evening then we got to see the holiday celebration, all the children in their traditional dress, the dances, and little skits that the kids had worked out that delighted the audience with jokes and parodies. As we walked back to the house that night, the starts shone brightly in the sky and illuminated the mountains on all sides of the village, which was completely black--we had to use a flashlight to show the way.<br />
<br />
The next day Ryan and I said goodbye to Musi and his family and sat in Khorog's Central Park to discuss our past experiences and future plans. We were starting to miss having daily contact with our instruments, and we were both hungry to work out new ideas and challenges. By the end of the day we had made some big decisions...but I'll have to write more about that later because I'm tired right now and tomorrow we are leaving for Uzbekistan!</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-242828716801511151.post-74465911808211785782011-06-14T05:42:00.000-04:002011-06-14T05:42:15.389-04:00Headed for Dushanbe!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">It's been a busy week or so on the road since we left Istanbul. All of the sudden now, we're in northern Europe (Riga), checking out the city during our 14 hour layover. It's a nice change of pace before we dive into Central Asia.<br />
<br />
It was a bit sad to leave Istanbul, but I was excited to experience the east of Turkey again. We took an overnight bus to Yozgat, a town in central Anatolia that we chose because none of us had heard of it before. From there, we hitched eastward, our goal being the town of Doğubeyazıt, which sits beneath Mt. Ararat at the very eastern end of Turkey. Before we made it there, however, we were invited by some Kurdish folks to the hot springs in Diyadin, a town about 40 minutes west of Doğubeyazıt. I had been there two years earlier, for a picnic with some old Kurdish men we met in Doğubeyazıt. But I had only seen it at night in the dark, so I when I saw the whole thing in the late afternoon light it was quite beautiful. On the way home from the hot springs, our gracious host/driver Berat discovered that his motorcycle had been stolen. Since my Turkish is pretty bad, it took us awhile to understand what the situation was, but we drove all around town, picking up people and dropping them off, stopping at the police station, and then at a restaurant where Berat treated us to a delicious meal that consisted of meat in a tomato sauce dipped in bread. We were out of cash, and our cards didn't work in the local ATMs. So they put us up for free as guests in a hotel, and bought us a ticket on the minibus to Doğubeyazıt the next morning. <br />
<br />
After Doğubeyazıt we continued north. We were traveling the same roads I had traveled two years earlier during my trip to eastern Turkey. In the next town, Iğdır, we got stuck in a downpour that lasted more than an hour until Yılmaz, a retired boxer, gave us a ride north to his hometown of Tuzluca, where he bought us Turkish pide (pizza) and we ate together in darkness because the power had gone out. Then we went back out into the rain, trying to hitch a ride out of town, and eventually gave up and accepted a generous Kurdish mother's invitation to join her and her family for tea. We climbed the stairs to their apartment and drank endless tea, ate bread and smiled and laughed with the extended family of six or so kids and two mothers, aunt and uncle... Some were Kurdish and some were Turkish, and though they each were proud of their heritage, they bonded together in love and friendship. It is difficult to describe how beautiful that experience was, but when I get to another computer I'll upload some photos that might give you an idea.<br />
<br />
The next morning we started hitching early and made it to Georgia by mid-afternoon. We stopped in the first town across the Turkish border, Akhaltsikhe, and ended up staying there two days, absorbing the new culture. Things were cheap there; the two of us ate a huge, delicious meal for 12 lari total...something like $8. The second day in Georgia we went to Vardzia, an impressive cave monastery, where we met a group of high school kids on an end of the year field trip. They took a liking to us and invited us to ride their tour bus with them back to Akhatsikhe. On the way one of the students sang Georgian folk songs, accompanying himself on guitar. A crowd of students formed a circle around him in the back of the bus, and Ryan played darbuka along with him. His voice was beautiful and the songs very moving; the experience reminded me of my own past high school trips, but at the same time I savored it as an interesting viewpoint into Georgian culture.<br />
<br />
We spent the last two days in Tbilisi, staying with our host Koka, an air traffic controller at Tbilisi airport. One day we made a trip to Kazbegi, where we hiked to a monastery perched atop a mountain. At the top, you are standing at the same level as the clouds, and the views are incredible. It was one of the most beautiful places I have ever experienced. Yesterday, I had the wonderful opportunity to play two of the Stockhausen Klavierstucke for a Georgian pianist named Nino Zhvania, who a Georgian friend of mine from MSU had connected me with. The insight she gave me opened up so many possibilities that I will be able to apply to all areas of music. Afterwards, she gave Ryan and I a walking tour of the city, and we climbed to a castle of the top of a hill, with a view overlooking Tbilisi. I hope to come back to Georgia some day soon...5 days was not enough to experience the great variety of natural beauty that the country offers and the warm hospitality of the Georgian people.<br />
<br />
So tomorrow...Dushanbe! Performances at the orphanage and the US Embassy Public Affairs officer's house on the 17th, Bactria Cultural Center on the 18th, and the Shahidi Museum on the 19th. I can't wait to meet the Tajik musicians and to play again with Mette and Ryan. I will post some pictures from the past week in a few days.<br />
<br />
And one last reminder...kickstarter ends tomorrow! 42 hours and $262 left to go!<br />
<a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/300879978/moyindau-tours-central-asia?ref=live">http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/300879978/moyindau-tours-central-asia?ref=live</a></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-242828716801511151.post-28774303543534027862011-06-05T07:08:00.000-04:002011-06-05T07:08:44.468-04:00İstanbul<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Ryan and I are getting ready to leave Istanbul this morning so I thought I´d take this opportunity to update the blog before our computer access becomes more limited.<br />
<br />
We entered Istanbul on a night bus from Sofia. We didn´t mean to return to Sofia, but for some reason Greece suspended all international train service, and the only bus office for service from Thessaloniki-Istanbul was closed. We had decided against hitchhiking as Mette was now with us, and altogether we had too many bags. So while we were waiting for a city bus in Thessaloniki, the bus to Sofia pulled up and we got on, and 5 hours later we were back in that city for which I have so many mixed feelings. And two hours after that we were on the night bus to Istanbul, the same one I had taken two years earlier.<br />
<br />
Two years ago I spent the summer studying anthropology at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul. Over the course of 9 weeks I fell in love with this enormous city of contrasts and contradictions, beautiful people and incredible music and food. Together with my travels in eastern Turkey, it was my experiences here that led me to explore Central Asian culture and music. So it is fitting that we began our tour here, where the seed for Moyindau was born.<br />
<br />
We stayed in Kadıköy (on the Asian side) with our wonderful hosts Jim and Mehraneh. Jim is from New York and ended up back in Turkey after a 14 month trip that started in Istanbul and took him as far as southeast Asia. Now after several years living here he speaks fluent Turkish and works as an English teacher. The ease with which he navigates the cultural fabric of Istanbul and communicates with locals is inspiring and makes me want to spend more time here and learn Turkish. Mehraneh is from Iran´s Azerbaijan province and studies design. Her thesis is on the relationship between hospital patients and the medical equipment they must use, and how it is affected by the design of the instruments...very interesting. Together they make a beautiful couple and we wish them all the best for their wedding next month!<br />
<br />
Wednesday´s gig at Nardis was a great success! We got the chance to play some brand new compositions of mine as well as some older ones and a Tajik song "Sitorai Man" by Ziyodullo Shahidi. We got recordings and a nice dvd video of the gig so I´m hoping we´ll be able to post something here soon! It was wonderful to play with Mette again...I am in awe of the focus and intensity she brings to the music and improvisation, the clarity of her ideas, and the urgency and vulnerability with which she can sing a melody. Serhan, the Turkish saxophonist from Istanbul, complemented her on alto, developing the motives and melodies that I had written in endlessly inventive ways that taught me a lot about improvisation and composition. Not only that, but he also took the time to show us around Istanbul and share many cups of tea and coffee, beers, bowls of "head soup" (a late-night specialty that includes the brains of some animal...I forgot which), etc...great times! And finally Ryan, who held the entire group together with his fluid and flexible playing that can fit any situation... The group came together quite nicely, and I felt the audience really enjoyed it (except for one guy, who complained that we didn´t play traditional Kazakh folk music and wanted his money back).<br />
<br />
Before I conclude this blog post, I wanted to share a few special experiences that happened here in Istanbul. On our first day here, we made a trip up to Boğaziçi University to look into a potential rehearsal space (it turned out to be under construction, but the folks there went out of their way to help us). As we were heading out from campus, I stopped to buy water and put some money on my Akbil (a debit card for Istanbul public transportation). I handed the cashier a 50 lira bill: 1 lira for water and 30 liras to be put on the Akbil. He asked if I had a 1 lira coin so he could give me 20 in change, and as I was reaching into my pocket, the girl behind me in line instantly put a lira down on the counter. I gave it back to her and paid my own lira, but her generosity touched me and, I guess, surprised me.<br />
<br />
And yesterday, in a music shop in Kadıköy, I was reading through a book of Turkish folk songs when a guy came up and replaced the book on the stand with another...his arrangements of the same songs for piano. I started to read through those, then played a few jazz tunes...then his friend came and started to play some jazz and we shared music for awhile. After two hours and some glasses of çay, the guy (who turned out to be a composition professor at Marmara University) offered me the book of his arrangements, signing it with the nicest note... Then we went and ate the best mantı (Turkish ravioli) I´ve ever experienced in my life.<br />
<br />
More soon...perhaps Ryan will write of his quest for cymbals in Istanbul... In the meantime, don´t forget our <a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/300879978/moyindau-tours-central-asia">kickstarter project</a>...10 days to go, $4,135 of $6,000 raised...we can do it!<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhC1Avw-E3kjQLOAOLve1gZGeS8XsaY56gnA64IsyjRTnISN1kA92mm06wH567ZDxmDMZ5c068ywnSYYBH8M6fwFKmAGqkzh3gy5kXyBHo7c6qy2K4z95hLDwC6lHhff65agENiwwveuyoC/s1600/IMG_1392.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhC1Avw-E3kjQLOAOLve1gZGeS8XsaY56gnA64IsyjRTnISN1kA92mm06wH567ZDxmDMZ5c068ywnSYYBH8M6fwFKmAGqkzh3gy5kXyBHo7c6qy2K4z95hLDwC6lHhff65agENiwwveuyoC/s320/IMG_1392.JPG" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Moda seaside, after a wonderful breakfast on Mette´s last day in Istanbul</div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhl6ibEZ5qJ_TCrmcQe1IQrTxmk4y4MTRLis2BYJwTn7Y_QqMZ0SymgN-a2bcT-n-ohxSQhlVqhfPFMMPDVCjbHi_uqsJgZIOmZjUIUdATYgansr55WPrLfEdkYy79eA-fnq4NLfk5nL0tf/s1600/IMG_1412.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhl6ibEZ5qJ_TCrmcQe1IQrTxmk4y4MTRLis2BYJwTn7Y_QqMZ0SymgN-a2bcT-n-ohxSQhlVqhfPFMMPDVCjbHi_uqsJgZIOmZjUIUdATYgansr55WPrLfEdkYy79eA-fnq4NLfk5nL0tf/s320/IMG_1412.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Music shop in Kadıköy (our friend Cemalettin in the red shirt gave me a book of his music)</div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw-7InA23nluibVByDnWNcVtsgJSEobq0VNK5NEmRo2wih0OxOUWvUsofNhhSrQ3-oz0t6cPDWVEQzlQWYeI5gm9pVUUIwvCp4CsD1vzJS9vz2TGH96syne5Lbn1V227AfJ-Cv68tNAtuF/s1600/IMG_1399.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw-7InA23nluibVByDnWNcVtsgJSEobq0VNK5NEmRo2wih0OxOUWvUsofNhhSrQ3-oz0t6cPDWVEQzlQWYeI5gm9pVUUIwvCp4CsD1vzJS9vz2TGH96syne5Lbn1V227AfJ-Cv68tNAtuF/s320/IMG_1399.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Turkish breakfast in Moda with Jim and Mehraneh</div><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-242828716801511151.post-15516041481977569912011-05-27T17:46:00.000-04:002011-05-27T17:46:24.992-04:00First post from pre-Central Asia trip<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">So, we've reached our halfway point on kickstarter, $3,046 of our $6,000 goal. There are 19 days left to donate if you wish to do so <a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/300879978/moyindau-tours-central-asia">here</a>! <br />
<br />
Meanwhile, Ryan and I have made our way one continent closer to Central Asia, to Greece. We arrived in Thessaloniki yesterday and our wonderful hosts, Ermis and Angeliki, took us right away up to their mountain home in Panagitsa near the border with Macedonia. It's beautiful here and we spent the day driving around the mountains, swimming in some hot springs, and cooking delicious meals from their garden. Tomorrow we'll return to Thessaloniki and meet Mette, who's flying in from Norway so that we can go to Istanbul and get our visas! And today we got our LOIs (letter of invitation) for Uzbekistan, which means we can apply and hopefully get the visas in a day. It's a complicated process...one for a separate blog post.<br />
<br />
Before Greece, our first point of arrival was Sofia, Bulgaria, where we waited several days for our luggage to come (we were delayed in Chicago and missed our connection in Brussels...then we got rerouted on Alitalia, which everyone has told us is the worst for losing luggage...) First thing out of the airport in Sofia we got "controlled" on the bus heading downtown (we didn't know how to buy a ticket). The two ladies kicked us off the bus and luckily we found ourselves right next to a currency exchange stand where we got Bulgarian leva to pay our fine. Still by the time we left Sofia we hadn't figured out exactly how the public transportation works. <br />
<br />
From Sofia we hitched a ride south with a nice old man who spoke German with me, then caught another ride with Ivan, who drove out of his way to take us closer to the Greek border and hooked us up with a hotel room within walking distance. After checking in, we walked down the road towards the lights up ahead, in search of food. We finally found a food stand close to the border, and two kind women (seemingly a mother and her daughter) patiently helped us figure out what we wanted to order. It took some difficulties to finally get our sandwiches (with a nice big chunk of Bulgarian feta in there). Once we did and we sat down to eat, I took one bite and figured out that the meat was barely cooked. I went back to them and tried to explain, but they insisted "no problem, no problem". They showed us the bag with the frozen meat inside. We didn't want to take chances, so we ate everything but the meat and left it in the trash. I waved goodbye to the girl in the stand, she waved back and then leaned over to look in the trash...shoot... We ran back to the hotel, got stuck in a thunderstorm, waited it out in a gas station amongst smiling Bulgarians, finally made it back to the hotel, and were immediately hit up by the owner for more money than we had expected...we barely had enough to pay and emptied our pockets of all but 90 Bulgarian stotinki (cents). The next day I was happy to leave Bulgaria, cross the border on foot, and catch a ride straight to Thessaloniki.<br />
<br />
I can't wait to start rehearsing some of our new compositions and arrangements once we get to Istanbul. June 1st we play at Nardis, a really nice jazz club in Beyoglu right beneath the Galata Tower. We'll update again after the gig!<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9LOshXvZM3RbTc1MblSlBD1cFrZRAwSpFHlaHf2jgpLDJw_xA5vXIXi69tSYsBbhzFuxVe4LU-oyUxhm9Aaueqnqc5xW0Qmt3v70363qW9zsQ7qINB5p6CPrPZx-WlOq0UBSHM0TUMawY/s1600/P1000214.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9LOshXvZM3RbTc1MblSlBD1cFrZRAwSpFHlaHf2jgpLDJw_xA5vXIXi69tSYsBbhzFuxVe4LU-oyUxhm9Aaueqnqc5xW0Qmt3v70363qW9zsQ7qINB5p6CPrPZx-WlOq0UBSHM0TUMawY/s320/P1000214.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"> Our hotel in Bulgaria near the Greek border</div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXj9sKGuT1X5FoqN85zYODDfT7Q39_G3KEZGV6vIhgoNsw2-nIc3XfwDJR8df_jkqi5kVkW7nxoE2Mkoo_vscuyL0N9uGVBgYLWAUBj727w6nngmdTGlY2B3d5LfqoBtDQm7XA_npUkb2V/s1600/P1000231.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXj9sKGuT1X5FoqN85zYODDfT7Q39_G3KEZGV6vIhgoNsw2-nIc3XfwDJR8df_jkqi5kVkW7nxoE2Mkoo_vscuyL0N9uGVBgYLWAUBj727w6nngmdTGlY2B3d5LfqoBtDQm7XA_npUkb2V/s320/P1000231.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Ermis' balcony in Thessaloniki</div><br />
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-242828716801511151.post-63746280626485518332011-05-13T13:58:00.003-04:002011-05-13T13:59:51.752-04:00Our itinerary!Here's our itinerary in animation form. Check "Upcoming Events" for further details!<br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/FTyppJL1FZg?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-242828716801511151.post-2407306766888596002011-05-13T13:56:00.000-04:002011-05-13T13:56:43.443-04:00Kickstarter is up and running!Dear friends!<br />
<br />
Help us kickstart our Central Asia tour! We are trying to raise $6,000 in the next month towards visas, health insurance, and other lodging/transportation/food costs. In return we are offering some great one-of-a-kind rewards...check them out <a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/300879978/moyindau-tours-central-asia">here</a>!!<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><object width="320" height="266" class="BLOGGER-youtube-video" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0" data-thumbnail-src="http://0.gvt0.com/vi/9-1MGf_Fxrw/0.jpg"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/9-1MGf_Fxrw&fs=1&source=uds" /><param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" /><embed width="320" height="266" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/9-1MGf_Fxrw&fs=1&source=uds" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"></embed></object></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-242828716801511151.post-80575810114008367742011-03-31T21:27:00.000-04:002011-03-31T21:27:58.591-04:00New tracks from the Blue Whale (Los Angeles)Hi folks,<br />
I just added two new tracks from our tour this past winter. We had a great time especially at this particular venue, the Blue Whale, where we were joined by the wonderful LA band <a href="http://slumgum.com/">Slumgum</a>! "Yanno Yannovitse" is a Macedonian folk tune inspired by Savina Yannatou's recording on "Sumiglia", while "Ferries" is another composition of mine. Hope you enjoy.<br />
On another note, all five of us (including Mette from Norway) have now booked our flights to Central Asia! We'll keep you posted as the details of this amazing adventure come into focus!<br />
All the best,<br />
AlexUnknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-242828716801511151.post-91805713169732346872011-01-19T18:37:00.000-05:002011-01-19T18:37:36.042-05:00Moyindau is branching outDear friends! I've updated the website recently to reflect the fact that Moyindau is expanding outwards in many directions! From Norway to Kazakhstan and Tajikistan...we're looking forward to new formats and exciting opportunities. Most of all, we're thrilled to have the chance to perform in Central Asia this summer. Mette Henriette Martedatter Rølvåg, wonderful saxophonist from Norway, is joining Ryan and I for a tour in Tajikistan; after that the Moyindau quartet will spend 3 weeks performing in Kazakhstan. Stay tuned for details!<br />
<br />
Thanks, AlexUnknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-242828716801511151.post-65923123460789342262010-12-06T16:50:00.002-05:002010-12-06T17:05:42.402-05:00New song, check it out!Just posted a live recording of "Shunidam", a song by Tajik composer Ziyodullo Shahidi. We've recently been exploring Central Asian folk songs as vehicles for improvisation and cross-cultural dialogue. Here I was particularly influenced by the tradition of "maddoh", a kind of sung spiritual poetry belonging to the Pamiri people of Badakhshan, in eastern Tajikistan. There are excellent recordings of this music released by Smithsonian Folkways in collaboration with the Aga Khan Music Initiative in Central Asia...definitely worth checking out.<br />
<br />
Recorded Dec. 5 at Canterbury House in Ann Arbor as part of the International Society for Improvised Music Conference (ISIM).<br />
<br />
Thanks!Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-242828716801511151.post-5921389921673126402010-12-06T16:26:00.004-05:002010-12-22T13:46:34.343-05:00Moyindau tours the southwest!!!<div><div style="margin: 0px;"><b>The schedule is still being finalized for the winter tour, but here's most of it. Nanette Jarenwattananon of WKCR will be joining us to document the experience!</b><br />
<style>
@font-face {
font-family: "Times";
}@font-face {
font-family: "Cambria";
}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }a:link, span.MsoHyperlink { color: blue; text-decoration: underline; }a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed { color: purple; text-decoration: underline; }p { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 10pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }
</style> <br />
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><b>Dec 26 | Minneapolis, MN | 9pm | </b><b><a href="http://acadiacafe.com/index.php?contentID=88">Acadia Cafe</a> <i>w/ Casey Anderson!</i></b></div><div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><b>Dec 31 | Pinedale, WY | House concert</b><br />
<b>Jan 2 | Albuquerque, NM | 3pm | <a href="http://uuabq.org/">First Unitarian Church</a> </b></div><div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><b>Jan 2 | Santa Fe, NM | 7pm | <a href="http://www.candymanlittlewing.com/">Little Wing</a> <i>w/ Tubanator 5KV!</i></b></div><div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><b>Jan 3 | Tucson, AZ | <a href="http://thehangart.org/">The HangArt</a> </b></div><div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><b>Jan 4 | San Diego, CA | 9pm | <a href="http://www.kavalounge.com/">Kava Lounge</a><i> w/ Nathan Hubbard's Passengers and Slumgum!</i></b></div><div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><b>Jan 5 | Los Angeles, CA | <a href="http://www.bluewhalemusic.com/">Blue Whale</a> <i>w/ Slumgum!</i></b></div><div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><b>Jan 6 | Oakland, CA | 7pm | <a href="http://www.mamabuzzcafe.com/mama_About.html">Mama Buzz Cafe</a> <i>w/ Phillip Greenlief/Cory Wright duo!</i></b></div><div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><b>Jan 7 | San Francisco, CA | House Concert<i></i></b><br />
<b>Jan 11 | Laramie, WY | TBD</b><br />
<b>Jan 12 | Colorado Springs, CO | TBD</b></div><div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><b>Jan 13 | Lincoln, NE | 7pm | Clawfoot House</b></div></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com