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