Lost in Tajikistan

These tracks were recorded in 2008 after English musician Lu Edmonds began recording musicians in a makeshift studio in the Gurminj Museum of Musical Instruments in Tajikistan's capital city, Dushanbe. The album begins there and traces a journey across Tajikistan up through switchback mountain roads to the town of Khorog and villages in the Pamir Mountains that seem lost to time. It's a wonderful trip, beginning with cosmopolitan mixes of setor, dotar and guitar garnished by the South Asian harmonium and a local jaw harp (the lab chang). Eight of the 15 tracks are by the groups Mizrob and Samandar. Occasionally, drums blur the melodies, but generally the instruments beautifully counterpoint vocals, evoking both Central and South Asia. As the journey continues, travelling close to the Afghanistan border, so traditional music makes itself felt in tracks by the group Samo that mix rubab, ghijak, daf and tanbur, or when local friends join Davlat Nazar at his home in Khorog. Finally, we reach mountain villages, welcomed by Sulton Nazar in Mihonyar, and end with the unsullied folklore of Shanbe in Barsem.