Arka’k Su

Here’s another beautiful produc¬tion from the Caprice label and the Centre for Swedish Folk Music and Jazz Research. Kurash Sultan was a popular singer in the Uyghur homeland of Xinjiang/East Turkestan in north-west China before he fled into exile, eventually settling in Sweden. There he collaborated on fusion projects and did much to raise awareness of the situation of the Uyghurs. The sensitively written liner notes do a fine job of introducing readers to the complexities of that situation, and Sultan’s extraordinary life. It is a shame that the listening experience does not quite match the quality of the production. The CD was recorded solo in a Swedish studio just before his death in 2006, with Sultan accompanying himself on the Uyghur dutar, a long¬necked two-stringed lute. The tracks are introspective, and the lovingly translated lyrics reveal a fascinating if dispiriting portrait of an artist in exile. Sultan sounds isolated, embittered and drained. The penultimate track, ‘Do Not Sell Your Land’ is an earlier composition, the one which finally drove him into exile: a clarion call to Uyghur peasants to maintain economic control of their farmland under the pressure of a rising tide of Chinese immigrants to the region. In 90s Xinjiang, this song was released on cassette, and Sultan’s powerful voice and virtuoso dutar, thick with reverb, blared out from market stalls and restaurants across the region. This precise and tasteful recording is from another world; clearly a highly sympathetic one, but ultimately one where Sultan struggled to find his place.