MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The network of trade routes that stretched across Asia for centuries - the Silk Road - also helped send dance, theater and music between continents. As NPR's Charles Maynes reports, the Silk Road's legacy as a cultural crossroads persists and comes with a thumping beat.
CHARLES MAYNES, BYLINE: In the late 1970s, Central Asia could seem like just another stagnating Soviet backwater.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED NEWS ANCHOR: (Non-English language spoken).
MAYNES: News of the day praised economic achievements that weren't real and a socialist future few actually believed in. Yet those with an ear to the ground knew more was going on.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TANTSUYUSHCHIY OSTROV (DANCING ISLAND)")
ANGELINA PETROSOVA: (Singing in Russian).
MAYNES: That idea is at the heart of "Synthesizing The Silk Roads," an anthology of rare Soviet Central Asian pop. Released on Ostinato Records - an imprint that highlights overlooked global music - the album captures Central Asia's role as a forgotten cultural stomping ground, where East met West in an echo of the region's trade routes of old.
VIK SOHONIE: I can hear so many different cultures mingling in this music.
MAYNES: That's Ostinato founder Vik Sohonie. He says, are there shades of disco? Sure. But strange synthesizers and Central Asian folk melodies give the music a genre-bending twist. Meanwhile, the collection also features contributions from the region's wider ethnic patchwork - Korean brass bands, Crimean Tatar jazz and garage rock from a Uyghur ensemble called Yashlik.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "RADOST (JOY)")
YASHLIK: (Singing) Hey, hey. Hey, hey.
MAYNES: Collectively, the recordings make the case the region offered far more than Iron Curtain kitsch. Sohonie argues the songs reveal the rhythms and dreams of the region's post-Soviet future.
SOHONIE: There's a lot of different styles. And I think, again, it's just a testament that Central Asia is really - I mean, the word central, you know, couldn't be stronger. It is really a very central part of the entire world.
(SOUNDBITE OF ISMAIL JALILOV SONG, "GUZAL (BEAUTIFUL)")
MAYNES: For all this, we can thank...
ANVAR KALANDAROV: My name is Anvar Kalandarov.
MAYNES: ...Anvar Kalandarov...
KALANDAROV: (Speaking Russian).
MAYNES: ...An avid record collector in Uzbekistan's capital city of Tashkent. Kalandarov dug through the bargain bins at flea markets and traded with fellow music obsessives, amassing a collection of rare LPs. In fact, his love affair with Central Asian vinyl ran so deep, it got to the point where it was not only cramping his apartment but his marriage.
KALANDAROV: (Through interpreter) My wife's a psychologist who treats people with addictions. One day, she says, you have 2,000 records. Do you ever think about why you do this?
MAYNES: It was time, Kalandarov vowed, to finally share Central Asia's secret with the rest of us.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "VSTAVAY, STRANA OGROMNAYA")
ALEXANDROV ENSEMBLE: (Singing in Russian).
MAYNES: In the process, he uncovered a hidden history that dates back to World War II and an order by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin to evacuate millions of Soviets out of the reach of the invading German army.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JOSEF STALIN: (Speaking Russian).
MAYNES: Sound engineers - critical to the Soviet propaganda machine - were among the new arrivals to Central Asia, where they came to form the backbone of Tashkent's Zavod Gramplastinok - the Tashkent Record Factory...
(SOUNDBITE OF ISMAIL JALILOV SONG, "GUZAL (BEAUTIFUL)")
MAYNES: ...As Kalandarov explains.
KALANDAROV: (Through interpreter) By the 1960s, the factory was recording music from all over Central Asia, and it was all recorded here in Tashkent. And little musical acts popped up because of it.
(SOUNDBITE OF NATALIA NURUMKHAMEDOVA SONG, "NASHI SSORI (OUR QUARRELS)")
MAYNES: As the factory grew, it churned out vinyl records by the millions, with many of those LPs making their way into clubs and discos in Tashkent and other cities in Central Asia. DJs wanted local artists in their rotation, and locals wanted to rotate and let off steam on the dance floor.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "NASHI SSORI")
NATALIA NURUMKHAMEDOVA: (Singing in Russian).
(Singing in Russian, laughing).
MAYNES: Natalia Nurumkhamedova was a popular Uzbek singer of those times. She may not recall all the lyrics, but she definitely remembers the sense of relative freedom.
NURUMKHAMEDOVA: (Through interpreter) They let us get away with more. There weren't as many restrictions because we were so far from Moscow. And so we'd add our own style to Russian songs, to everything. We thought of ourselves as avant-garde, as experimenters (laughter).
(SOUNDBITE OF ORIGINAL SONG, "SEN QAIDAN BILASAN (HOW DO YOU KNOW)")
MAYNES: Despite the creative sounds and energy on the dance floor, a Soviet Studio 54 this was not. Excesses were limited to the club's shadows. And more experimental Central Asian acts like the group Original - heard here - faced harassment, even imprisonment, on orders of the KGB. Still, Ostinato's Vik Sohonie says, mostly, Soviet officials just wanted in on the fun.
SOHONIE: They would come in under the banner of, hey, we're here, but from the government, and we don't like what you're doing. And they wouldn't really do anything because they were like, oh, actually, this is our ticket to enter the club.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SEN QAIDAN BILASAN (HOW DO YOU KNOW)")
ORIGINAL: (Singing in non-English language).
(CHEERING)
MAYNES: By the early 1990s, the biggest club of them all - the Soviet Union - was set to shutter its doors. Upheaval had gripped Moscow, and it rippled across the USSR.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MAYNES: Central Asia gained its independence, but the Tashkent Record Factory closed, felled by economic hardships, Western culture and the CD.
KALANDAROV: (Speaking Russian).
MAYNES: In preparing the new compilation, Anvar Kalandarov says part of his mission was to track down and finally secure licensing agreements for Central Asian artists, many of whom were once household names but never received royalties.
KALANDAROV: (Through interpreter) Some of these people aren't living as well as they should, or as well as I would like, because the proceeds from the records still go to the state.
MAYNES: Meanwhile, Vik Sohonie says the music's rediscovery fits into a more contemporary narrative - the shift to a multipolar world, with new global centers of influence in China, Russia and the Global South competing with the West. Some, like Russian President Vladimir Putin, have exploited the concept to justify war and conquest. Sohonie says projects like "Synthesizing The Silk Roads" give multipolarity a more positive spin.
SOHONIE: This album is a soundtrack to a world that is changing very, very, very rapidly. The old networks that connected and integrated Asia with Europe, the old land routes known as the Silk Roads - they're not coming back exactly, but they are slowly reemerging.
(SOUNDBITE OF BOLALAR SONG, "LOLA")
MAYNES: In some ways, the mere existence of the album mirrors that global message. Ostinato is a Brooklyn-founded label now run out of Thailand, with music curated by an Uzbek who tracked down artists from all backgrounds across Central Asia, Russia, Ukraine, even the U.S. Put another way, the times are a-changin'. In fact, they always were.
Charles Maynes, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LOLA")
BOLALAR: (Singing in non-English language). Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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