Article

Choreographing the Self: Staged Folklore and Popular Music in Rural Tajikistan

Federico Spinetti

Published in: Ethnomusicology Ireland 5 (2017)

Pages: 76-101 | Published Online: July 2017

https://doi.org/10.64208/DWBS4999

Abstract

This article discusses the influence of staged folklore and popular music upon the musical life of a Central Asian rural community – that of the Dashtijum mountain valley in Tajikistan. I trace the musical history of the Dashtijumis across the late-Soviet and post-Soviet periods, following their experiences of migration away from and back to the mountains. In the process, I highlight how the cross-fertilization between grassroots musical practices, and staged and mediated traditional and popular musics, has offered a terrain for the articulation of collective identifications, memories and everyday lifeworlds among the Dashtijumis, illuminating more broadly their position and response vis-à-vis changing historical, technological and ideological frameworks.

Keywords: Soviet and post-Soviet Central Asia, rural ethnography, popular culture, memory, migration

Author: Federico Spinetti