The invention of 1 previous file is respiration 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 previous 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 monitor had been recorded in 1981 within the capital, Tashkent.
SOHONIE: And I bear 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 may be an understatement. He is like a bloodhound for uncommon Central Asian music. He confirmed Sohonie what he had, and so they started to construct a set of uncommon Uzbek pop music from this identical 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 – monitor 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: Nevertheless 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 the 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 stunning historical past behind that musical sanctuary, together with wartime displacement and a disco mafia. At present, 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 hundreds of thousands of individuals from Japanese Europe after the Nazi invasion.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: In a sudden coup, Germany’s navy would possibly has been thrown in opposition to her former ally, Russia.
SOHONIE: One of many nice untold tales of the Second World Struggle was this evacuation. The overwhelming majority have 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.
All the physique of locations just like the Leningrad Conservatory was, in its entirety, evacuated to Tashkent, which clearly had a huge effect on the event of music, and this creates, clearly, an extremely numerous space.
SOHONIE: On these trains have been additionally engineers who may produce vinyl manufacturing vegetation. And on the finish of the battle, they arrange one of many key vinyl manufacturing vegetation simply outdoors 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 form of a motion within the Soviet Union to liberalize the humanities, in a way.
EISENBERG: This was possibly the primary time that music did not must be overtly ideological. That was the interval when Western types have been flowing into the nation, and it all of a sudden turned authorized to make music in them.
SOHONIE: Jazz golf equipment being born, rock golf equipment from the Nineteen Fifties and ’60s that will 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: (By 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 essentially the most highly effective sound and lighting tools. Every evening had its personal shade. We took an previous 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 sort of disco mafia, which mentioned, that is a particularly profitable enterprise, and, , this isn’t small cash. So the disco mafia emerged, and so they started controlling all these income streams. So that you had the primary inklings of free enterprise that the Soviet Union labored onerous to make sure its music business didn’t have.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
POPOV: (By interpreter) After we began within the ’70s, we have been solely taking part in Western music.
Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, Black Sabbath with Ozzy Osbourne.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
POPOV: (By 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 prime to say, , it’s important to promote Soviet artists. It was Soviet youth themselves and DJs themselves that mentioned, hey, why are we solely taking part in Western music at our golf equipment? We have now an abundance of artists – , Uzbek dance music, Crimean music influenced by American jazz or American funk. In case you have been from, as an example, 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 good looking 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, alternate 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 – actually, all of the file vegetation throughout the Soviet Union shut down. And with the collapse of those file vegetation, there’s the demise of the music business. All the cash dries up. So, , preserving vinyl will not be 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 personal archives. However we have 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’s totally uncommon. It is music you by no means heard earlier than. Listeners can be taught so much new factor from part of the world they in all probability did not know something about. It is an absolute bomb. You are 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 is probably not in its closing kind and could also be up to date or revised sooner or later. Accuracy and availability might range. The authoritative file of NPR’s programming is the audio file.
