All posts tagged: Abdulla

The Blind Voice of the New Silk Road

Published by Darren Byler

Perhatjan performing in the second segment of the Voice of the Silk Road  This week was the screening of the seventh segment of the first round of The Voice of the Silk Road – a show that hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs watch every Friday night at 8 pm local time on Xinjiang TV Channel 9. People like the contest because they can watch their favorite performers joke around with each other; they can see people they know perform or imagine themselves performing in their place. Uyghurs see themselves trying on a performance mode popularized by mainstream English and Chinese-language versions of the show, but instead of English or Chinese pop ballads and American and (largely) Han stories of unrecognized talent, on this show they see the reverse. They largely see Uyghur folk songs, classical muqam and pop music; and they mostly hear Uyghur stories of personal triumph. The Voice of the Silk Road is a celebration of an amateur love for Uyghur music. The contestants sing because they love to sing; they sing because they …

Review of the Uyghur blockbuster “Money on the Road”

Published by Darren Byler

Update: A full-length version of Money on the Road (featuring Chinese and English subtitles) is now available to view for free on Youtube. In the autumn of 2014, just in time for the long ten-day break for the National Holiday and Qurban, the Uyghur comedian Abdukerim Abliz released his first full-length Uyghur language feature film (with Chinese and English subtitles). The comedy titled Money on the Road (or This is What Money Does from the Uyghur, and, Running with Money on the Road from the Chinese) features an ensemble cast of stars, including a cameo by the famous singer Abdulla. It follows the misadventures of three Uyghur farmers who come to the city as migrant workers to participate in Ürümchi’s urban renewal. Abdullah, who plays the role of a construction manager named Musa in charge of the demolition of degrading one-story housing on the south side of Ürümchi’s ring road, invites the three down-on-their-luck farmers from his home town near Kucha to come to the city and work for cash. Although they arrive in the city with “hungry-eyes” as …

What It Means To Be A Uyghur Man

Published by Darren Byler

Watching the leaked surveillance video of two men walking with a sea of migrant workers in front of the train station in Ürümchi makes your blood turn cold. You want to look away but you can’t. You want to understand what was going through the minds of those men with their hats pulled low as they moved in step with the crowd – but you can’t. Only after the shock of the fireball and the smoke clears can you stop looking, but then you can’t un-see it. You can only play it over and over in your mind. Xi Jinping said that what those two men at the train station on Wednesday, April 30, 2014 were feeling was an “overweening arrogance.”  I don’t know what they were feeling; none of us can really know. It is in times of grief and shame like these that Uyghurs might turn to people like the late-poet Rozi Sayit for a clearer understanding of themselves and what Uyghur life should be. In his lyric (performed above by Abdulla), Rozi …

The Fog of Drugs

Published by Darren Byler

Although the use of hashish has been a part of the Uyghur pharmacopoeia for centuries, drugs appear to have become a widespread problem for Uyghurs only in the early 1990s. It was only then that young men in their twenties began dying of overdoses and needle-borne disease. As Ilham Tohti mentioned in 2011, in the intervening decades drugs along with theft, pickpocketing, trafficking and prostitution “have gotten so bad that our entire ethnic group is suddenly perceived as a crime-prone community.” These are issues which Uyghurs discuss among themselves and feel embarrassed about when they are raised among outsiders. Rumors are a major part of this discussion. Many people point out that the drugs come from the Golden Triangle and tell tales about the way they are trafficked by Hui middleman. They suggest that there is a general conspiracy operating among non-Uyghurs—with the tacit support of the government—to poison young Uyghur men and thus curtail their futures. These stories are supported by popular media. A famous Uyghur writer, Jalalidin Behram, vividly describes the life paths …