The invention of 1 outdated file is respiratory new life right into a style of Soviet-era music that hasn’t been extensively heard abroad for many years.
ADRIAN FLORIDO, HOST:
A couple of decade in the past, music producer Vik Sohonie was in New York and stumbled upon an outdated file.
VIK SOHONIE: I got here throughout this actually dusty 45 by the band Unique.
(SOUNDBITE OF ORIGINAL SONG, “SEN QAIDAN BILASAN”)
FLORIDO: Unique was from Uzbekistan, and this observe had been recorded in 1981 within the capital, Tashkent.
SOHONIE: And I keep in mind listening to it and considering, OK, sooner or later I will do one thing with this, however I by no means had an in. I by no means had an in to that a part of the world till Anvar contacted me.
ANVAR KALANDAROV: OK, let’s go. My identify is Anvar Kalandarov. I am from Tashkent. I am a vinyl collector.
FLORIDO: Calling Kalandarok a vinyl collector could be an understatement. He is like a bloodhound for uncommon Central Asian music. He confirmed Sohonie what he had, they usually started to construct a set of uncommon Uzbek pop music from this similar interval, the late ’70s and early ’80s.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “SEN QAIDAN BILASAN”)
ORIGINAL: (Singing in Uzbek).
FLORIDO: Lastly, in 2023, they met up in Tashkent. The plan – observe down the artists and reissue the music on Sohonie’s file label.
KALANDAROV: After we meet, in two week, I discovered all of the contacts we would have liked.
FLORIDO: However it wasn’t simply Uzbek artists. It was Tajiks and Crimean Tatars and Uyghurs, all of whom had recorded songs in Tashkent on this sliver of time when town’s music scene was thriving.
SOHONIE: Tashkent was lengthy this sanctuary for musicians throughout the huge expanse of the Soviet Union.
FLORIDO: As they ready the album, Sohonie and Kalandarov started to unearth a shocking historical past behind that musical sanctuary, together with wartime displacement and a disco mafia. Immediately, for our weekly phase of short-form audio documentaries, we have now a slice of that story. We start in the summertime of 1941, as Soviet authorities evacuated thousands and thousands of individuals from Japanese Europe after the Nazi invasion.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: In a sudden coup, Germany’s navy may has been thrown in opposition to her former ally, Russia.
SOHONIE: One of many nice untold tales of the Second World Warfare was this evacuation. The overwhelming majority had been despatched to Uzbekistan and its capital, Tashkent.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
LEORA EISENBERG: Evacuation was large for the event of music in Soviet Central Asia. My identify is Leora Eisenberg. I’m a fourth-year Ph.D. pupil at Harvard, the place I research the event of Soviet Central Asian music.
The whole physique of locations just like the Leningrad Conservatory was, in its entirety, evacuated to Tashkent, which clearly had a big impact on the event of music, and this creates, clearly, an extremely various space.
SOHONIE: On these trains had been additionally engineers who might produce vinyl manufacturing crops. And on the finish of the battle, they arrange one of many key vinyl manufacturing crops simply exterior of Tashkent. And this, by the Eighties, was pumping out round 200 million vinyl data simply throughout the Soviet Union.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
EISENBERG: With the demise of Stalin, we see Nikita Khrushchev come to energy, and Nikita Khrushchev ushers on this time interval referred to as the Thaw.
SOHONIE: There was type of a motion within the Soviet Union to liberalize the humanities, in a way.
EISENBERG: This was perhaps the primary time that music did not must be overtly ideological. That was the interval when Western types had been flowing into the nation, and it all of the sudden grew to become authorized to make music in them.
SOHONIE: Jazz golf equipment being born, rock golf equipment from the Fifties and ’60s that might open – finally, it reworked into disco golf equipment. However the propaganda, , and communication departments, , mandated that earlier than the – , the needle dropped on vinyl or the social gathering began, there needed to be an hour lecture on, , Soviet philosophy and Soviet doctrine, simply to make sure that there wasn’t an excessive amount of deviation.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTISTS: (Singing) Hey, hey.
ALEKSANDR NIKOLAEVICH POPOV: (Via interpreter) My identify is Aleksandr Nikolaevich Popov (ph). In 1975, I created the primary discotheque in Tashkent. We had the thematic and ideological portion of the evening, then we’d begin the dancing. We had probably the most highly effective sound and lighting gear. Every evening had its personal colour. We took an outdated organ aside and eliminated the electronics, and we linked the keys to play particular lighting results that we projected onto a display screen.
SOHONIE: Inside these disco golf equipment, you began having the sale of imported cigarettes, imported alcohol, imported Western clothes. And there emerged this type of disco mafia, which stated, that is a particularly profitable enterprise, and, , this isn’t small cash. So the disco mafia emerged, they usually started controlling all these income streams. So that you had the primary inklings of free enterprise that the Soviet Union labored exhausting to make sure its music trade didn’t have.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
POPOV: (Via interpreter) After we began within the ’70s, we had been solely taking part in Western music.
Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, Black Sabbath with Ozzy Osbourne.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
POPOV: (Via interpreter) However two years later, the authorities started requiring us to play 70% Soviet music and solely 30% overseas music.
(SOUNDBITE OF GULSHAN FEATURING MAKHFIRAT KHAMRAKULOVA SONG, “REZABORON”)
SOHONIE: There was not solely a name from the very high to say, , it’s important to promote Soviet artists. It was Soviet youth themselves and DJs themselves that stated, hey, why are we solely taking part in Western music at our golf equipment? Now we have an abundance of artists – , Uzbek dance music, Crimean music influenced by American jazz or American funk. In case you had been from, to illustrate, Tajikistan subsequent door, you had extra of these influences in your music.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “REZABORON”)
GULSHAN AND MAKHFIRAT KHAMRAKULOVA: (Singing in non-English language).
MAKHFIRAT KHAMRAKULOVA: Oh, sure. Simply remembering. (Singing in non-English language).
My identify is Makhfirat Khamrakulova. I’m from Tajikistan. That was 1978, and sooner or later, the director from Uzbek file firm – he invite me to Uzbekistan studio.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “REZABORON”)
GULSHAN AND KHAMRAKULOVA: (Singing in non-English language).
KHAMRAKULOVA: That was a fantastic time. Tashkent was a really lovely city. Uzbekistan settle for me. Uzbekistan gave me an influence, ? We all know all singers from Gergasia (ph), Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan. Like, trade between cultures, ? Typically I simply do not even imagine myself what I’ve this life, ?
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “REZABORON”)
GULSHAN AND KHAMRAKULOVA: (Singing in non-English language).
SOHONIE: So within the early ’90s, proper after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the file plant in Tashkent – in truth, all of the file crops throughout the Soviet Union shut down. And with the collapse of those file crops, there’s the demise of the music trade. All the cash dries up. So, , preserving vinyl just isn’t on the forefront of many individuals’s priorities, proper? A few of it sat on the plant till they really destroyed the plant. Regardless of the lifeless inventory was, it went into folks’s private collections, into non-public archives. However we had been very lucky, due to Anvar’s very enterprising digging work, that he was capable of finding a substantial amount of the unique data.
KALANDAROV: That is golden period of our disco historical past (laughter), however now it is very uncommon. It is music you by no means heard earlier than. Listeners can be taught loads new factor from part of the world they most likely did not know something about. It is an absolute bomb. You’re taking it to a celebration and dance until you drop (laughter).
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “LOLA”)
TOHIR SODIQOV: (Singing in non-English language).
FLORIDO: This assortment of music from Soviet Central Asia referred to as “Synthesizing the Silk Roads” is out now.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “LOLA”)
SODIQOV: (Singing in non-English language).
Copyright © 2025 NPR. All rights reserved. Go to our web site phrases of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for additional info.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This textual content might not be in its last type and could also be up to date or revised sooner or later. Accuracy and availability could differ. The authoritative file of NPR’s programming is the audio file.
