Journey Across the Steppes

Recordings of Turkmen musicians are few and far between. Oghlan Bakhshi, born Mohammad Geldi Geldi Nejad in 1993, is a Turkmen, but from Iran. There are Turkmen musicians and dutar (long-necked lute) players in Turkmenistan, northeast Iran and northern Afghanistan. Oghlan was granted this honorific bakshy (minstrel) status– also spelt bakhshi and bagsy – when he was just nine years old. He graduated from the Turkmen National Conservatory in Ashgabat and is now based in the US.

The traditional performances here are vocals accompanied by two-string dutar and bowed gyjak, spike fiddle or kamancheh. There are three different gyjak accompanists, but the main role is taken by Oghlan's father and teacher Abdolghaffar Geldinejad on three of the eight tracks. There aren't lyric translations, so it's the vocal textures with their glottlestop effects and close-up details of the dutar fingerwork that repay the listening. With jangling strings and vocals alternating from inward to declamatory, it's an intense experience. The album finishes with a dutar solo which shows the variety of sounds that can be evoked from this ‘simple’ instrument.