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MUSICOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM

02/04/2020

Musical and pedagogical changes in dutar ensembles in Uzbekistan and beyond

Online Colloquium Musicology
Tanya Merchant (UCSC)

20 May 2020 17:00 via Zoom 
Want to join? E-mail s.muziekwetenschap@uva.nl for the Zoom-link.

Dutar ensembles, groups of musicians (usually women) playing the two stringed lute with the purpose of preparing and performing concerts, have been a hallmark of Uzbek music since the mid-20th Century. Considering these ensemble’s trajectory through the Soviet period and independence era and their transmission abroad to the U.S., U.K., and elsewhere, the ensemble’s repertoire and technique have remained somewhat stable. However, the rhetoric surrounding the ensembles has changed significantly, from uplifting folk music to propagandizing the nation, to engaging in broader discourses of world music and its role in university systems. The dutar ensemble is common throughout musical institutions in Uzbekistan from elementary schools through higher education. This talk will consider the ensembles’ pedagogical goals and techniques, as well as the stakes of concertizing non-concert-oriented music, the contrasts between ensembles that employ reconstructed dutars and those that use dutars labeled as traditional in Uzbekistan, and the dutar ensemble’s place in the pantheon of world music ensembles in the United States. It explores how tropes of national pride and tradition translate through changing settings and contexts.

Tanya Merchant, Associate Professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, is an ethnomusicologist whose research interests include music’s intersection with issues of nationalism, gender, identity, and the post-colonial situation. With a geographical focus on Central Asia, the former Soviet Union, and the Balkans, she has conducted fieldwork in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Russia, the United States, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. She is an avid performer on the Central Asian dutar and has given concerts in the U.S. and Uzbekistan. Her book, Women Musicians of Uzbekistan: From Courtyard to Conservatory, was published in 2015 by the University of Illinois Press.