Music of Central Asia Vol Seven: In the Shrine of the Heart

With its seventh volume, the Aga Khan Trust for Culture series focuses for the first time on Uzbekistan and traditional song repertoire in Uzbek and Tajik. It's subtitled ‘Popular Classics from Bukhara and Beyond and the lovely opening track has a lyric that is a testament to the power of music: ‘Together with my dutar, I always burn with fire… Every melody of my instrument pours forth sorrow.’ Exquisitely sung and played by Nodira Pirmatova, it's emblematic of the whole disc's preoccupations: spiritual songs and love songs. The repertoire is mainly from Khorezm, around the spectacular city of Khiva in western Uzbekistan, a highlight for Silk Road tourists, and Ferghana in the east, an uneasy place these days after the riots in Andijan. There is a tense, nasal quality to traditional Uzbek singing which makes it quite a demanding listen: this is a disc which I admire more than like. But, as with all the discs in this series, the production is impressive, complete with a 48-page booklet, translations and pictures. The DVD film includes evocative shots of the architecture and the musicians in Khiva and Bukhara.