In contrast to the folk music styles just described, the court-derived classical style of Bukhara and Samarkand represents a highly systematic, theoretically grounded, cosmopolitan musical tradition. Lying along the medieval Silk Road trade route, the Turkistani oases were open to musical crosscurrents. Today’s musical roots may reach back to the period in which urban Central Asian music was in vogue at Tang dynasty (618–907 ce) courts in China. The movement of musical instruments across the caravan trail from the Middle East to China via Central Asia has been well documented since early times. Over the centuries, town musicians evolved an urban style patronized by the local courts, notably under Timur (Tamerlane) and his descendants (c. 1350–1500) in Herāt (now in Afghanistan) and Samarkand. The degree of musical eclecticism characteristic of the era is illustrated by a court historian’s description of the festivities of Timur’s son:

Golden-tongued singers and sweet-sounding musicians played and sang to motives [melodic figures] in Persian style, to Arab melodies according to Turkish practice and with Mongol voices, following Chinese laws of singing and Altai metres.

By the 17th century the court style had been codified into sets of nonimprovised suites of instrumental and vocal pieces using poetic texts in classical Persian and local court Turkish (Chagatai). In Bukhara this collection of suites was known as the shash maqām, or six maqāms (suites), with each maqām (an Arabic term, but changed in meaning) set in one of the classical Persian musical modes. (The Persian modes are melodic frameworks, each with a given scale, typical melodic figures, and accepted emotional content.) Regional courts and large towns developed their own sets of maqāms, which are performed in unison by an orchestra and a male chorus.

Areas of Turkistan under Soviet rule between about 1920 and 1991 underwent far-reaching modification of traditional music practice, although the older styles and repertoires such as the shash maqām were also maintained. Changes include the reconstruction of local instruments to fit the Western musical scale of 12 equally spaced half steps, the establishment of music schools and conservatories, the creation of orchestras of folk instruments, the introduction of vocal polyphony, and the writing of works in Western forms (symphonies, operas, chamber music) by native and European Soviet composers. In Afghanistan musical change began on a national basis in the 1950s under the influence of Radio Afghanistan, which broadcast principally popular styles based on Pashtun folk music and songs of the Bollywood (Indian film) industry. After the Taliban government captured Kabul in 1996, however, the station was renamed Voice of the Shari’at, and the broadcast of music was forbidden.

Social role of music

Three basic functions of music are common throughout most of the region: music as ritual, with magical connotations (shamanism); music as tribal record, aiding group solidarity (epic recitation); and music as entertainment (itinerant performers, festivals). Music is the medium of the shaman, or priest-healer, who serves as a mediator between the seen, or human beings, and the unseen, the spirits that inhabit the spheres above and below the earth. Traditional shamanistic rituals were creative, impassioned musico-dramatic scenes produced by a single male or female performer—the shaman. Not only is music the shaman’s aid in inducing the trance that enables contact with the spirits, but in Siberia the shaman’s drum (a very large tambourine) may be considered a steed for the trip to other worlds. Thus, great attention is given to each stage of drum construction, from the selection of the wood of certain trees to the painting of symbolically charged designs on the drumhead. The metal hangings, sometimes including bells, on the shaman’s costume also play a musical role. Among the Kyrgyz and the Kazakhs and until recently among the Turkmen, a fiddle with horsehair strings and bow perform the same function as the Siberian drum. Metal ringlets are attached to the head of the fiddle, and a niche is hollowed there for a mirror to catch the reflections of spirits. Shamans’ horsehair fiddles can even be found among townspeople of northern Afghanistan. The occurrence of shamanism has sharply declined in the portions of Central Asia that were part of the U.S.S.R.

Epic recitation, which may serve as tribal history, also has magical overtones. Among Turkic peoples, the same term (bakhshi) may be used for both shamans and bards, and both may be called to their trade by spirits to undergo a difficult period of initiation. Storytellers use a fiddle or lute as accompaniment, and tales may run through several nights of exhaustive performance; one Kyrgyz bard was known to have recited some 300,000 verses of the Manas, the major Kyrgyz epic. Such marathon performances are facilitated by the use of formulaic or otherwise recurrent melodic motives—standard short melodic figures—often invented by the individual performer. Local epic traditions vary widely in dramatization—i.e., the proportion of dialogue, monologue, and narrative.

The third areawide musical function, entertainment, takes many forms. One common diversion is the singing contest, in which rival minstrels compete in wit and virtuosity. Such trials of skill are most notable among the Kyrgyz, the Kazakhs, and the Mongols. The contests follow strict rules of versification, musicality, and procedure. Often the loser must pay a forfeit to the victor, who receives acclaim from the audience and gifts from wealthy patrons; a singer’s reputation may be made or broken in a single afternoon. Frequently a contestant will vilify the clan championed by the opposing singer and laud his own faction. In Siberia another type of entertainment is the historically widespread practice of bear festivals at specific times of the year, during which a bear—considered a sacred animal in Finno-Ugric religion—is killed and its head displayed, to the accompaniment of music, dance, and games.