Installment three, Journey to Samarkand, an Unexpected One-Week Odyssey to Sharq Taronalari: Opening Night

 

   

With admission to Registan Square completed by 18:00 we the ticketed audience enjoy some considerable evening sunshine

 

Sunblock: multi-purposing our tickets and programmes

In our plush allocated seating, to my left Kacem El Ghazzali, a Tunisian from Zurich, writing freelance for NZZ, and to my right Carlos Ferreira, a music specialist on Portuguese radio from the Azores islands. It has actually already been quite a performance for everyone in the audience to get through the security procedures at the venue's gates, especially with either a camera or mobile phone. Both Kacem and I fought successfully to win our useful journalistic devices back (thanks assertive Germanic cultures!), but Carlos will have to retrieve his mobile at the end of the performances proper: several journalists have had cameras and phones taken away despite needing these tools to do our jobs. Having insisted long and hard on keeping my camera, I can happily deliver unto you this photograph of the pair of snipers positioned atop the mid-1600s-built Tilya Kori (gilded) Madrasa, high above the square, which has been transformed into centre stage. Kacem is ace on background: according to his information, 1 in 10 of us here tonight are security personnel.

Also well-trained and ready for action

At long last round 7 p.m. the reason for all this security, Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, arrives. The burkha-banning, Registan Square museumifying reformer (following in the footsteps of the Soviet regime who de-religioned and renovated the square's three historic madrasas, which eventually earned Samarkand a UNESCO World Heritage listing at the start of this century) takes the stage right as the sun goes down. Simultaneously the lights come up, and a sizeable evening chorus of birds perched in the trees at our backs swells into collective voice. We mere humans stand and clap the Pres. to the stage until he greets us and invites us to retake our super comfy velvety seats. His subsequent speech is all in Uzbek but 'pandemic' – which paused the festival for a couple of beats until this year – appears to be one word in all our lexicons. Swallows wheel and circle, hunting in the dusk, the avian chorus intensifies, one of the snipers on the central madrasa has disappeared from sight. Those who understand all the other words the president has spoken conclude the festival opening formalities by leading us in polite applause.

The Pres.

More top headwear

Let the show begin! I'm surprised to get my country's very own standard bearer in the march of the flag-bearers parade and feel like a minor cultural ambassador for Aotearoa New Zealand. Never had a flag flying for me before! Unlike at the Paris Olympics which just ended a couple of weeks before, both Belarusian and Russian Federation flags are fluttering here alongside mine. I quietly wonder if the only Ukrainian here is Olga, the journalist who came with us Berliners and who, by coincidence, knows pretty much all of my Kiev-based folklore singing teachers. As well in this small mention of chance international friendship coincidences, via the Berlin language-teaching trap Sol knows my old friend Alan, an Australian-born, partly NZ-raised, longtime-Berlin-living muso nicknamed Ozi (who I've just gladly seen three nights ago at Poetry Day). Incredibly, she's also acquainted with a Russian friend Vladislav who in 2002 welcomed me as into his Berlin apartment which in turn subsequently became my own home – the two of them met at a festival somewhere in South America where they were both programmed. It's a small world. On stage, the parade of flags ends, the next programme item begins.

The reported flag in action

Colour washes, fans of spotlights and writhing light projections snake on the madrasa mosaics, the orchestra gears up. Two giant video screens flank the massive stage with simulcast montages of the president, Uzbekistan, past festivals, live action, and we the audience. Setting the event's tone, famous singer, composer, musician and producer Otabek Muhammadzohid sings a poem by the prolific poet Marhabo Karimova alongside four vocalists sourced from OVoz, the Uzbek branch of The Voice franchise, while masses of dancers whirl in colour-sensational traditional costumes. Another famous soloist and more OVoz artists belt out a medley sampling songs from across the east. On the big screens, vocal soloist close-ups are slightly out-of-synch with the audio, perhaps due to the customary live broadcast delay. Many in the proud, mainly local crowd wave bright green banners in time to the up beats. A segue to another famous poet's poem, this sung by female soloist Sevara Nazarhkan – the 2004 BBC Radio 3 World Music Awards 'Best Asian Artist' winner. A segue and change of pace to a mistful rendition of Delibes' Les filles de cadix accompanied by ballerinas, the line-up complete with violin, electric guitars and the State Symphony Orchestra of Uzbekistan, who are seated either side of the stage proper, one half of them on classical and modern, the other on traditional instruments. Then straight into a famous duet from Verdi's La Traviata, also with ballet, quite the mix. Borrowing the earlier medley's title, it's indeed a potpourri. Or to paraphrase Sol's comment later in the evening, it's the 'Disneyworld of central east Asian talent'. We the lucky audience are offered a true feast of local musical stars, many of them holders of the honorary 'People's Artist of Uzbekistan' title. Not to mention the top-notch dancers again: an outrageous number of dancers fills the square and terraces in front of the madrasas in a constantly changing palette of synchronised movement. It is a spectacular non-stop showcase extravaganza perfectly framed by the beautiful mosaics and architecture of the Registan Square madrasas. And yes, this is a dense paragraph of impressions, it matches the staging.

But one must reluctantly take a break. I wander through the warm evening beneath low-lit trees to the well-attended and well-appointed (think water spray nether-regions jets, yes!) toilet facilities in a far corner of the park. It's good to stretch the legs a little, and noticing on my return trip that the nearly six-month-old ankle is limping a little on just eight hours sleep in the past two nights I decide to take the stretch a bit further. Pausing upon a low marble stair to follow my physiotherapist's instructions I'm just starting to lengthen my calf muscle and the still-recovering achilles, when suddenly I'm swarmed by a handful of the afore-mentioned security detail. It's one of those minor international incidents of cultural difference in which I learn that even despite my decorous attire this kind of behaviour during such a public occasion is not acceptable. I'm confused: everyone else's eyes are locked on the stage and I'm not in their line of sight, and it's also hard to tell if the guards think I'm being a bit indecent or if they believe I'm in need of medical assistance. They escort me to the back staircase of the tiered seating and an English-speaking doctor materialises, offering me analgesics, which I turn down, explaining I can't take them and that only the lengthening procedure will help during the body's long adjustment to the new talus prosthesis. Several pairs of uniformed eyes remain trained upon me but I manage a few more sneaky stretches by dropping my heel on my way up the stairs. Escaping them to re-enter the audience, I discover that during my short absence many of us have now leapt to our feet in the aisles for a dance party. When in Samarkand, do as the locals do: the only way back down is to bust out some dance moves in a staggered but not staggering descent. As I retake my seat, the pace on stage continues to ramp up, there must be at least 300 performers totally going for it upon the tiles of the former execution and 'sandy place' tonight. For the musical poem finale, 'Samarqandim' by Sirojiddin Sayyid, music by Nodirbek Umarov, sung by four singers (one third of the 21 pieces tonight are credited as poems), the programme note says they are interpreted by "All (nine) dance ensembles".

It was even bigger than this big

Post-extravaganza casual conversations done with my Berlin friends, our volunteers soon motion us towards our buses – pausing on the way for people to reclaim their seized devices – to take a reflective journey, mind bursting with the night's impressions, through the still lively city back to the relatively deserted and tranquil hotel park. 

From the mundane: I'm ready for my close-up device to be given back now cluster...

...to remembering the sublime

 

Journey to Samarkand, an Unexpected One-Week Odyssey to Sharq Taronalari: Arrival

'Suddenly' it's 3 a.m. local time in Samarkand and our pilot touches us safely down to a smattering of applause from passengers. Recently opened in mid-March 2022 and designed in the form of an open book – as a book maker myself I can only approve – the new airport's roof 'pages' glow with constellations in a nod to the late-medieval scientist, mathematician, astronomer and statesman Mirzo Ulugbek and his main work The New Astronomical Table of Kuragoni. In his day he also sponsored the construction of an observatory and a library. More of him in a coming installment. And more of the usual airport security checks and procedures, for some of our group taking longer than others – such as our Guyana-born Colombian-Venezuelan Musikerin Sol Okarina who all too often suffers her passport's poor credentials. Our Berlin team is welcomed here by some truly dedicated festival volunteers, and eventually we depart the spectacularly lit international terminal for the city's early morning still and darkness.

Samarkand International Airport                         PHOTO: Silkroad-Samarkand website

We travel along deserted main roads that are lined with numerous grocery stores mysteriously open for business despite the wee small hours, and arrive at our hotel in the city's eastern realms round 5 a.m. Well, everyone's at their hotel except me: unlike at previous editions of the biennial festival, for whatever reason at this, edition 13, journalists are largely being lodged away from the musicians and conference attendees, and even one another. As Star Trek's Mr Spock would say, in terms of easy facilitation of cross-disciplinary dialogue, "Illogical". It also nips the fledgling plans of fellow-journalist Olga and myself to sing some archaic Ukrainian songs together, as she is able to stay here with her partner in work and life, balafon maestro Aly. So what to do? I put my admirably small piece of precision-packed luggage back into the minivan, bid "Auf wiedersehen" to Mahide (Germany), Sol (Columbia), Angela (Nigeria), Olga (Ukraine), Aly (Mali) and Noureddine (Tunisia) and am driven off again, now in a slow half oval round to another hotel on the far-flung opposite side of the rowing canal located in the centre of the Samarkand Silk Road commercial and cultural development's massive lawns. Finally we can all get some sleep! Well, ok, three hours of sleep if you want to shower, dress, and head downstairs to the dining room to eat before breakfast ends at 10, that is. The single best argument against flights taking off and landing during the tiny hours of the night/morning? Sleep deprivation. Perhaps these flight connections were all the Uzbek travel agency could get us at such short notice.

In my own previous life encounters with the wider east since mid-1997, one of the first cultural givens I had a steep learning curve with was last-minute prioritisation. From South Korea to Russia to Poland (and for sure others of the global east) in my experience there's an unwritten rule that you're often notified at pretty short notice about the really important things that are happening, or more so, about to happen. By default this deigns them as the most urgent, those to be given utter precedence. In a twisted way, me only publishing this series now is right on theme, as my health situation suddenly, repeatedly, constantly demanded number one position during the last year. Though casting my mind back to my fairly high level of resistance to the forwarded schedules arriving each day in Samarkand from the unseen planner's moving finger...

                that having writ and pressed send

                at 08:59 moves on

                to other tasks that

                don't involve getting the day's schedule out to we  

                musos & journalistic mages

                in more reasonable time, say perhaps, by the prior evening

...I can tell I've lost some of my eastern flexibility, having probably lived for far too long in Germany, where some hospital appointments are made 10 months in advance. So here, for example, when receiving a festival day schedule via email at 9 a.m. that details breakfast from 7 till 9 with hotel departure at 9:30, there is some... resistance. Although to use another Star Trek reference, from the Borg, whose catch-phrase is "Resistance is futile," I can only say, no schedule can stand in the way of me and my breakfast. At least on our arrival day we have some grace, for other than meals and some rest time, the plan's first official action is scheduled for 16:00, namely, transiting to the opening ceremony.

Spoiler alert, didn't make it to the exhibition

But in general, from beginning to end of this Sharq Taronalari life chapter things are frequently spontaneous/on the fly: the call for performers made just 3.5 weeks before the 26 August opening night; the subsequent processes of artist selection, accreditation and flight bookings; the hotel segregation surprise upon arrival; and the biggest announcement (on Tuesday), that due to the city's impending celebrations of Uzbekistan's September 1st Independence Day, which is falling on a Sunday and is requiring two evenings of city-wide preparations and doubtless some end-of-working-week 'partying-in' for city inhabitants, the Sharq Taronalari festival is not to be spaced over its originally scheduled five nights but instead crammed into four, with the finale and prize-giving happening not on Friday but Thursday. In the experience of our group's agent, who has attended Sharq Taronalari several times, this edition was not as efficiently organised as past editions. So it goes.

And peculiarly, it also must be said that one crucial item was perpetually missing. When writing a draft of this piece on 26 October, eight weeks after the festival, strange as it may seem I'd still not received the running-order lists of the two nights of competition performers from the festival administrator's invisible hand. This was despite requesting them twice, including a direct request that we journalists all be sent copies of the obscure text to the Minister of Culture's press secretary when we met face to face during the week and he asked me for feedback. Perhaps my 'feedback' was not diplomatic enough to achieve a result, even if I had indeed first given thanks with one hand before demanding with the other. None of we journalists received the lists during the festival, though more enterprising, one clever Indian guy in our press corps, Ramanan Selvam, a mechanical engineer and writer, approached one of the judges on the festival's first night of competition and took a photo of their list. The officially requested lists I believe to be yet lost in an email void, wandering the central Asian digital ether hoping to hitch a ride onwards to our in-boxes with an otherworldly camel train. But fear not gentle readers, our Berlin group agent Mahide hath duly bestowed the two competition nights performer lists via her own miraculous email system upon mine grateful eyes.

Segueing back to pre-competition festival time, however, it also must be said that – as seen above – an invitation with allocated seating and a well-printed concert programme booklet grace our palms for the opening Monday night extravaganza on 26 August 2024. Oh, the anticipation!

Not to mention the tote bag merch

And here, now, sticking to the theme of taking our own cultural liberties with space and time, and not playing with a lingering week-long bronchial conniption, on the eve of the opening event I hereby suspend day one's account, and shall resume it tomorrow. We do, after all, due to the rescheduling, have a day up our sleeve...

Teaser: the festival's stage, Registan Square in Samarkand, as depicted on a shawl