If you’ve come here looking for the continuing adventures of Seth H. Morgan, Gentleman, then you should proceed to: growingglobal.wordpress.com, where I write about my new gig gardening in the rainforest and learning about agricultural development at ECHO in Fort Myers, Florida. If you’d rather watch a monkey fall out of a tree, go here. Thanks for stopping by!
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Tajik Music
Long overdue: Here’s what you need to know about Tajik pop music. I listened to this stuff on buses, at weddings, pumping out of shop doors on the way to work, basically everywhere. So eventually I developed a taste for it. Tajik pop music is a mishmash of pop beats and electronified traditional instruments. It’s crazy stuff sometimes but I love it.
Current Tajik pop begins and ends with Shabnami Soraya. She’s the Madonna of Tajikistan, the reigning pop diva. This song is a great party-starter. The chorus means, “everybody clap!”
Karcak-Shabnami Soraya
Next on the list has to be the up-and-comer Nozia Karamatullo. If Shabnam is Madonna, Nozia is Britney Spears, just before she lost the nice girl image. She’s taking the country by storm, while slowly shedding the unibrow-sporting, traditionalist image she started with. This song never fails to make me happy.
Track 05-Nozia
Daler Nazarov is a Tajik singer-songwriter with more high-art pretensions. He’s kind of the Bob Dylan figure of the Tajik scene, in that everyone pays lip-service to his songwriting, but the kids don’t listen to him anymore. Nevertheless he continues to do cool things. He composed the soundtrack to the excellent film Luna Papa, which was directed by his cousin Bakhtior Xudonazarov. This song is from the album he released in the wake of that film:
I’ll finish this Tajik pop overview with one of my personal favorites. This song by Suhrob Otaev is one long love letter to oshi palav, the Tajik national dish. It’s a good example of the over-the-top techno-borrowing that is taken to an extreme in a lot of tracks. But I like this one. The chorus goes, “Everybody knows it! Everybody eats it! This delicious thing, oshi palav!”
So that’s a taste of Tajik pop. Hope you enjoy it. I know I do.
The Journey Home Part 1
This has been a year full of hard goodbyes. From the time I left Chattanooga, Tennessee to begin this adventure up to now, I have had to say farewell to more people than I ever thought possible. And my goodbyes from Khujand were some of the hardest. So to begin this brief retrospective, here are some images of the lovely people I had to leave behind.
My students at American Corner:
Including these break dancers, who performed at my goodbye party:
Naturally, my host bro Amirjon:
And the rest of the host family. Here is Nasim and Mansura, making osh–another thing I miss:
And my Tajik grandmother, Mukhadas, with the finished product:
I think I can honestly say that I’ve never said goodbye more times than the day before I left Khujand. But that’s the way of it. If it’s not worth missing, then it’s not worth visiting. That’s what I say. So goodbye, my friends! I miss you. But that’s a good thing. It means we meant something to each other.
The travels begin next post.
Amir’s Blog
If you want to see my host bro’s personal introduction to the family and their new bed and breakfast scheme here in Khujand, check out his blog site here: amirnuriddinov.wordpress.com
Homestay in Khujand
A word to any Tajikistan travelers who might come across this site: my happy homestay is open to you as well. I’ll be leaving this place in 3 weeks. I can’t believe 10 months has gone so fast. But more on that later. Nasimako, Amirjon and the rest of the family are hoping to attract a few people to their place in the future, so here’s a little advertisement:
Here’s the place from the outside. And here’s my room. It has its own shower.
Moreover, we just installed a water cooler! Check out Nasimako lovin’ on some bottled water.
So, theoretical googler of “homestays in Khujand” or however else you may see this, I recommend staying with tne Nuriddinovs. I stayed here for 10 months as a Fulbright Fellow and the family was remarkably hospitable and helpful. So if you’re headed through Khujand, contact Amir (who knows English quite well) at (+992) 92 777-6114. Or e-mail him at amirnuriddinov[at]gmail.com or contact me by commenting on this blog.
Rohi safed! (may your road be white)
Dappled Things 