Tira-Tira

Falak is the folk music of the Pamir Mountains in Central Asia dating back to pre-Islamic times. This half-hour performance recorded live in Tashkent, Uzbekistan in 2023 proposes a contemporary overhaul of the tradition drawing on the spirit and spontaneity of free-jazz and improvisation. Tajik multi-instrumentalist Shohin Qurbon plays the doira (frame drum) and Russian guitarist Denis Sorokin replaces the traditional two-stringed dutar (lute) with an electro-acoustic guitar. Writing on falak music, Sorokin has declared that the “rhythmic freedom is probably not found in any other style, except for new types of free improvisation”. It’s a taut, gritty, brittle sound Sorokin summons, bereft of melody and harmonically limited, as he focuses in on the transporting nature of insistent, single-minded strumming. Energy ebbs and flows in a series of unhurried crescendos, with the two musicians of Duo Falak plugging into the falak tradition of rhythmic fluidity, speeding up and slowing down as the moment dictates, like a Tajik John Lee Hooker. When Qurbon lets loose with ghostly, wordless vocal moans and wails, it’s a chill, lonely wind blowing across the foothills.