Dombra from Kazakhstan

From Turkey, through Central Asia, to Xinjiang in China, the various Turkicspeaking peoples play a whole range of longnecked lutes similar to the saz in Turkey. In Kazakhstan it's the two-stringed dombra, and this disc features the traditional solo repertoire from the southern steppe region of Karatau. Perhaps it was the long evenings of nomadic life that lead to an unusual repertoire of instrumental music called kuy in Kazakhstan and küü in neighbouring Kyrgyzstan. These are pieces by known composers – Toqa (1830-1914) and Ykhlas (1843-1916) are the most famous, although most of the pieces here are by Sugir (1882– 1961), the leader player and composer of the Karatau region who was a disciple of both of them.

The tone of the dombra is soft and warm, but with the strong percussive scratching of fingers on the strings and wooden body of the instrument. Although many of the pieces have illustrative titles reflecting animals or journeys, others are more intimate expressing elegiac thoughts or “the meaning of life.” One of the pieces here, ‘Aqqu’ (The Swan), was composed by Ykhlas for kobyz, the shamanic fiddle, and is usually a vivid display of bird-like screeching (as on the Rough Guide to the Music of Central Asia album), but here on dombra it's hard to relate it to anything swan-like. There are six dombra maestros featured here, the oldest born in 1925 and youngest in 1974 and there's the opportunity to hear the same piece in totally different versions from different players. It's not a disc for listening all the way through to necessarily, but for research into an extraordinary tradition it's invaluable.