Features

On the Silk Road

6 May 2005 in Music

On the Great Silk Road

BATTLEFIELD BAND take to the road with a group of musicians from Uzbekistan this month – keyboard player ALAN REID tells the Arts Journal what the project is all about

ON THE GREAT SILK ROAD had its origins in a trip the band made to Uzbekistan exactly two years ago, at the behest of Craig Murray, the British Ambassador there at that time. He had been a student at Dundee University, and had known the band for years, and he thought that it would a good idea to bring the band over there as a goodwill gesture.

We went out there and did six concerts all over the country. We had one evening off in the course of the week, and Craig arranged for us to visit Ilyas Lutfullaev, who is a professor at the conservatory there – folk musicians there are more like classical musicians are here in terms of how they are regarded.

We were invited to dinner with Ilyas and some of his friends, and at the end of the meal you stand up and toast the company, and a wee while later somebody else stands up and toasts the company, and so it goes on. It ended up in a jam session, which was obviously lubricated by the conviviality of the evening.

That jam was the catalyst for this project, and up until now it was the only time we have had the chance to play together. Travel is very slow and difficult over there, and that was the only chance we had to meet them at that point. After we came back Robin Morton, the manager of Battlefield Band, thought it would be good idea to bring these musicians over and do a tour.

It has been a long, long hard job getting it together, but he managed to get some funding from the Scottish Arts Council’s Tune Up programme and Visiting Arts up here, and the Arts Council of England came in with some money as well to let us do some gigs south of the border.
There are four musicians – and their native instruments – from Uzbekistan that have come over here. Ilyas (dutar, kushkar, rubab) is joined by Khusan Nasirov (tabla), Abdulahat Abdurashidov (nai), and Akhmatjon Dadaev (gidjak, vocals). We are into rehearsing now, and it looks a though it will be very interesting.

“This is very different for us, and we hope it will be well received, and that we get good audiences for it as well”

The immediate connection over there really lay in the fact that their instrumentation is quite similar to ours – Ilyas plays a kind of version of the bouzouki and guitar, Abdulahat has a form of flute, and Akhmatjon plays a kind of upright fiddle, plus they have the hand drum. So it was quite close to our own instruments, if you take out the keyboard and the pipes.

The whole sound was quite a wonderful noise, and we are now trying to keep that excitement but tighten it up as well for formal concert presentation, rather than just having a jam. We are only really at the start of this process at this point, and the Uzbeks were pretty jag-lagged when they arrived, although having said that they put in a power of work.

We worked on a jig in which each of them took a solo. Because the forms of the music are quite different, it will take time for them to learn how to play the tunes properly. Today we are looking at Uzbek music, and once we know that we are comfortable with that, we can tailor how we are going to work as an ensemble.

We have dancers as well – there will be two Uzbek dancers and two Scottish dancers, and once they come in that should help us see the possibilities. They may be able to dance together – we have a piece of film of Uzbek dance, and the engineer here at Temple studio transposed Mike playing the pipes onto the film, and it seemed to work, so there are lots of possibilities using dancers in between the pieces of music.

The way it will most likely work on stage is that each group will do their own set of whatever length, and then we will get together, or some variation on that plan. That seems sensible given the time we have at our disposal, and maybe even from an interest point of view.

That way the Uzbeks can have a solo spot and show what they can do, and we’ll do something likewise. It will be different, and it will give them a platform in this country as well, and who knows, maybe somebody like Celtic Connections will take them up. This is very different for us, and we hope it will be well received, and that we get good audiences for it as well.

On the Great Silk Road visits the following Highlands and Islands venues:

  • Aros Centre, Isle of Skye, Thursday 19 May 2005
  • Eden Court Theatre, Inverness, Saturday 28 May 2005

(Alan Reid spoke to Kenny Mathieson)

© Kenny Mathieson, 2005