Sevara Nazarkhan Downloads

Sevara Nazarkhan, a twenty-six-year-old, Uzbek singer, songwriter and musician, is a direct descendent of the legacy of a lone woman singing and accompanying herself on a string instrument. Her instrument is the doutar - a fifteenth century, two-stringed, Central Asian lute that is plucked not strummed. When music was the preserve of shepherds and lonely wayfarers, the strings were made from animal intestines. As the Silk Route became better established and the dried fruits and animal skins that Marco Polo carried were traded for gems and Chinese porcelain, the strings were woven from silk. The doutar has a warm, dulcet tone. In Sevara?s hands and voice an ancient tradition breathes.

Her independent album 'Gozal Dema' is a meeting place between the old and the new. Along the Silk Route, even today, some traditions haven't faded. Folk songs from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries underpin the popular music of the region. Unlike the west which has no musical equivalent, centuries-old maqams cycles of vocalisation and instrumentation are performed and danced to by old and young alike. This music has never been rediscovered or benefited from a "back to the roots" retro movement, since it is as current today as it was hundreds of years ago. With the line between entertainment and ritual blurred, music played at toi, wedding parties or family and community festivities, and at bairam, national or regional celebrations, has been incorporated into the full body of life, not relegated to consumer consumption. As a result, the Spice Girls sit side by side with peasant songs. Time and music actually do stand still in Central Asia.

This dichotomy exists within Sevara's own oeuvre. In Tashkent, Uzbekistan's capital, she is a pop star. Her first group in 1998 was a soulful women's quartet. During this period, she also sang in the city's popular arts café - Taxi Blues. A year later, she released her debut album and established herself as a solo singer. Despite her choice of western musical forms, her roots are apparent. Sevara's father, formerly a vocalist of European classical music, headed the traditional music department in Tashkent radio before his retirement. Her mother teaches traditional string instruments and is the director of an extracurricular music school. From 1998 to earlier this year, Sevara studied voice at the Tashkent State Conservatoire, where folk music is a rigorously taught and transmitted musical art under the country's formidable singers and ethnomusicologists. It is not unusual for Sevara, a slight, striking woman with long, dark hair, to be stopped on the street by her fans who thank her for her music.

Here is one of the songs from her CD - a folk song called "Kuigai": The world is lit by a huge flame when you speak, And seas, rivers, and lakes, too. Your bow-shaped eyebrows shoot arrows. I have no rest when you are around, My heart burns into ashes with love for you. It's like sunshine when you look, Where shall I find patience if I can't look into your eyes? The world is lit with a huge flame when you speak.