All posts tagged: Adil Mijit

The Art of “Opening-up and Cooperating for the Building of the Silk Road Economic Belt”

Published by Darren Byler

It was a busy week in Ürümchi: musicals, archaeology exhibits, art shows, a ComiCon festival, and thousands of visitors from outside the “autonomous” region. Special bus lines were put in place; millions of potted flowers were carefully arranged in sculpted dune patterns; street corners were plastered with giant red billboards which (a la the Shanghai Expo 2010) featured a dancing cartoon named Heavenly Horse Star (Tianma Xingqi), the slogan: “Opening-up and Cooperating for the Building of the Silk Road Economic Belt,” and the logo for the fourth China-Eurasia Trade Expo. According to an official press release, people from 60 countries participated in the events. National leaders such as Kazakhstan’s new Prime Minister Karim Masimov and the Kyrgyz Prime Minister Djoomart Otorbaev came for high level transportation and trade talks. If the projected 200,000 attendees actually came to check out the displays of industry, development and “person-to-person” communication than the event made 10 million yuan from the sale of 50 yuan door tickets alone. One of the most important slogans for the expo (floating above a …

Uyghur Hip-Hop as Folk Music

Published by Darren Byler

Adil Mijit is not the only Uyghur comedian to incorporate a discussion of hip-hop into his performances. In the recent state-sponsored film Shewket’s Summer directed by Pan Yu with assistance from Beijing Film Academy students, Abdukerim Abliz joins the Uyghur hip-hop crew Six City as a reticent folk musician (see the 117 minute mark in the above film). The film, which is both a “coming-of-age” and “parent-trap” melodrama, highlights the way conflicts resolved at the level of the family have larger implications for society. Although the film is heavy in the propaganda of ethnic harmony (a Han character named Luobin [!] is featured as an aspiring musician in search of “original” tunes and then as an inspiration to the Uyghur characters), the slick production values and money behind the film present Uyghur folk arts in a strongly positive light. As a wise Native American activist and anthropologist once told me, “If The Man offers you money, you take the money.” Six City and Abdukerim took the money. The fact that the Uyghur-language poetics of Six City …

Hip-Hop vs. Folk Music

Published by Darren Byler

In the film The Silk Road of Pop a classically trained Uyghur tambur player tells viewers that listening to Western music such as hip-hop and jazz does not carry the same feelings of love, tradition and family as Uyghur folk music. He says that he hopes that the generation of Uyghur musicans coming of age today do not forget about their past. This tambur player, a member of a group of studio musicians who often accompany the King of Uyghur pop Abdulla, is repeating a refrain heard frequently by performance artists trained under the legacy of the Maoist regime of multiculturalism. During the Maoist years, ethnic theater, opera, music and dance troupes, were major institutional outlets for ethnically-ascribed life projects. Not only were they economically and politically secure positions, but they provided a space where the souls of people could leak out through gaps in the filter of Socialist Realism. Classically-trained performers of state-approved culture inhabited a role many people highly valued. Of course I’m not suggesting that Uyghur cultural performance was invented by the Chinese …