Ari Babakhanov

Ustadh ari babakhanov or Ari Babachanow (* 1934 in Bukhara , Uzbekistan ) is a professional musician, the long neck denominated tanbur , qaschqarische Rubab and Dotar controlled.

biography

He was born into a Jewish family of traditional musicians. This was founded by his grandfather Levi Babakhan (1873-1926), a court singer of the last Emir of Bukhara Alim Khan . Levi Babakhan's son Moshe Babakhanov (1910-1983) was also a singer who accompanied himself on the tanbur and the frame drum doira (Tajik dājere ).

In contrast to his grandfather and father, Ari Babakhanov became a pure instrumentalist. He completed his music studies at the Tashkent Conservatory , which was based on the European curriculum , in 1958 with the state examination. Due to the Soviet cultural policy , local instruments could still be used, but mainly for a European repertoire . Due to the discrepancy between monophonic Uzbek and polyphonic European music, this compulsion led to an artificial cultural hybrid .

Despite his artistic success in Tashkent, Ari Babakhanov returned home to Bukhara, where he taught at the music school for the next 40 years. With the help of his father and through musicians like Maarufjon Tashpulov, Najmiddin Nasriddinov and Aminjon Ismatov, he gradually found his way back to Shashmaqam , traditional Bucharian music, and made its further development his life's work. By writing notes and texts of classical Persian poetry as well as popular Uzbek and Tajik poems, he contributed to the preservation of this musical tradition. In doing so, he revived a number of lost creations that had previously been part of the Shashmaqam repertoire. This basis inspired him to compose his own instrumentals and songs in the traditional style, some of which became popular in Uzbekistan.

In 1991 he founded the Shashmaqam Ensemble at the Bukhara State Philharmonic, which initially consisted of ten members, and the number of members has almost doubled over the course of a few years. After a short time the group appeared under the artistic direction of Ari Babakhanov for Uzbek radio and television and had established itself in the traditional music scene. In 1998 her CD Ari Babakhanov & Ensemble - Shashmaqam: The Tradition of Bukhara was released on New Samarkand Records .

Since the formerly large Jewish community of Bukhara has almost dissolved due to emigration since Uzbekistan gained independence, Ari Babakhanov's family moved to Germany , where he and the musicologist Angelika Jung have been researching Shashmaqam since 2002.

literature

• Stephan Trudewind: Ari Babakhanov, the guardian of the music of "Shaschmaqam" from Bukhara. In: Der Arabische Almanach - Zeitschrift für orientalische Kultur 16 (2005/06), Frank & Frei Verlag, Berlin, ISSN  1432-0215 .
• Alexander Djumaev: Ari Babakhanov & Ensemble - Shashmaqam: The Tradition of Bukhara. CD booklet, 1999, New Samarkand Records, Amsterdam.