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Lost in the Muqam

Originally published by Aljazeera, 07 July 2010
By Camilla French
“Inside the Twelve Muqam are many myths and stories … the stories of the world are inside the Muqam, it’s not just white paper, it’s something mystical.” Mahmut Mehmet

The Muqam, a traditional form of Uighur music, are large-scale pieces consisting of instrumental sections, sung poetry, stories and dance.

The most famous Twelve Muqam, known as the “Mother of Uighur music,” consists of 360 different melodies and takes over 24 hours to play in full.

It was while studying in Beijing back in 2003 that I first heard local band The Tribesmen perform Uighur music to a small group of foreign students.

Who knew that years later I would be in China’s Northwest Xinjiang province, on the trail of one of the most well known tambur players in the region.

Eccentric, volatile, obsessive

Mahmut plays in an instrument shop
[Camilla French]

I was fortunate to know some musicians in Beijing who put me in touch with Mahmut Mehmet.

He was known to be one of the best tambur players in Xinjiang who could perform the Twelve Muqam.

I was hoping to convince Mahmut to be the central character in my documentary; as a talented musician he would be the ideal person to introduce me to Uighur music.

I had been warned of his eccentric personality, volatile temper and crazed obsession with the tambur, so it was with excitement and slight trepidation that the producer Judy Bretschneider and I set off in December 2008, into the unknown and freezing climates of Xinjiang to begin our musical journey.

China’s Wild West

As a filmmaker I was immediately drawn to the mystery surrounding Xinjiang, which is also referred to as China’s Wild West, and its people, the Uighurs, a predominantly Muslim and ethnically Turkic group who have occupied the territory for centuries.

It was a region worlds apart from the China I had grown up in; the territory is vast, three times the size of France and fairly unknown to the Western world.

But the music of Xinjiang, which is influenced by Arabic and Central Asian cultures, goes back centuries, and today still remains the strongest voice of the Uighur people.

What followed after a successful meeting with Mahmut and his many wives – the name he gives to his array of instruments hung proudly on the wall of his room – was three months of intense filming, an invitation into the lives and homes of Mahmut’s friends and family, and an unforgettable insight into Uighur culture.

Judy and I are both half Chinese and were told by everyone we encountered that we resembled Uighur women. This was a huge advantage when it came to filming as we could easily mix with the crowd. People even went so far as to say that she could be from the region of Turpan and I from Kashgar.

Traditions of music

Our journey began in Urumqi, Xinjiang’s capital, a rather depressing city coated in black from the fumes of cars and coal burning power stations.

Mahmut, originally from Kashgar in the South, had moved to the city to pursue a career in music and it was here that he would give private performances, record songs for music producers and teach the tambur to willing students.

Mahmut started learning the tambur when he was just nine years old, and his master, the late virtuoso Nurmuhammed Tursun, was considered the greatest tambur player of all time.

I soon learnt that it was customary for drinking to go hand in hand with tambur playing; in fact Mahmut often told me he would get drunk so that he could not feel the pain of the steel strings cutting into his fingers – quite understandable when a musician has to play a Muqam piece that lasts for hours. But drinking the local bai jiu, a sorghum based spirit well over 50 per cent, does eventually take its toll, and it sadly contributed to the death of Mahmut’s teacher a few years ago.

Mahmut felt alone and isolated in his field after the death of his master. We met him when he was drinking heavily and cursing the changes that were happening around him.

He lamented the fact that people no longer respected the traditions of the music; young Uighurs now preferred listening to pop music and would talk during performances when traditionally the audience should remain silent.

Uighur children, now forced to study Mandarin in school, were forgetting how to write and struggling to understand the traditional Uighur lyrics. Mahmut, despite being only 31, was a veteran in the world of Uighur music and could sit you down with a bottle of bai jiu and take you back 2,000 years to the origins of the tambur.

He told me the word tambur comes from Arabic and means “Giving people comfort”. This is how he personally saw the Muqam, and would state that if it was not for the Muqam he would probably not be in this profession.

Reduced to tears

Mahmut often invited friends round to listen to him play the Muqam on his satar; by the end of the night there would not be a dry eye in the house, such was the power of his peformance.

Kashgar market [Camilla French]

The most memorable music performance of the journey took place in Yarkand, an oasis town in southern Xinjiang, a few hours away from Kashgar.

Yarkand kingdom was in fact the home to Ammanisahan, the imperial concubine and musician, responsible for collecting the Twelve Muqam from all over Xinjiang in the mid-16th century.

Mahmut had gathered the most talented musicians in the area for an evening Meshrep (musical gathering) to perform Kashgar folk songs and sections from the Muqam.

We began the evening with kilos of lamb and litres of bai jiu, with performers taking turn on the tambur and dutar. Everyone was on their feet dancing by the end of the night and again Mahmut’s rendition of the eighth “Ussaq” Muqam reduced us all to tears.

Outside world

It was right at the end of my trip when violent protests broke out in Urumqi between the Uighurs and Han Chinese.

Cut off from the outside world and unsure of what would happen from one day to the next, there was no other option but to remain indoors and wait for further news.

Camilla filming Mahmut in the desert
[Judy Bretschneider]

The biggest challenge was keeping a low profile during the filming.

The moment you take a camera out in China people think you are a journalist and as you can imagine tensions were quite high in Xinjiang at the time so we did not want to scare people off or attract unwanted attention from guards and policemen.

We did the best we could to stay undercover – it helped that we both look Uighur. But for the sake of the people in the film if we ever suspected there might be trouble I would hide the camera immediately.

People were very welcoming though and out in the countryside we had no problem filming at all, it was just in Urumqi that we had to be on guard.

Things did finally return to normal and Mahmut continued as before, playing music, drinking with friends and telling stories about the Muqam.

It has been a year since the riots and since I left Xinjiang, I miss it dearly and hope it does not undergo too many changes before I next return.

Mahmut has had many successes since my departure, performing with the Rock group Askar in Australia at the end of 2009 and winning the national tambur competition in early 2010.

He is next scheduled to perform with the Muhammad Ayshamgul Ensemble on August 15 at the Morgenland Festival 2010 in Osnabruck, Germany.

Lost in the Muqam aired from Tuesday, July 6, 2010.

http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/witness/2010/07/20107764510239659.html