What is ‘Central Asia’? Denoting neither a language nor a nationality, the concept is a European one, devised to package a vast and multifarious region which disappeared from the political map during the Communist period. For the purposes of this chapter it comprises the republics which the Soviets carved out in the 1920s, and which are now known as Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan, plus Uyghur Xinjiang. For most of the twentieth century the region was resistant to outsiders: only now is the international spotlight moving back onto it, thanks partly to its new geo-political importance, and partly to a new awareness of its traditional culture, and in particular its music.

In Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan the traditional music is nomadic, reflecting the cycle of the seasons and the fauna of the steppes, with the same few instruments creating a musical lingua franca linking players thousands of miles apart. We’re talking principally about the jew’s harp, many kinds of lute, and the shamanic fiddle: with a mirror set in its bowl to ward off evil spirits, plus its haunting cello-like timbre, the last of these is a commanding presence. The two-string Kazakh dombra and the three-string Kyrgyz komuz are Central Asia’s answers to the guitar, their airy magic impregnated with the sound of horses’ hooves. To play at speed while waving your instrument balletically in the air – or behind your back, or upside down – is a routine mark of virtuosity.

These instruments can also have serious artistic purposes. What the Kazakhs call a kui and the Kyrgyz a küü is a wordless instrumental piece which may tell a story – perhaps about the winged horse Tulpar, cousin to the ancient Greeks’ Pegasus – or it may simply be a tone-poem. But the glory of this nomad-pastoralist music lies in its self-accompanied singing by bards; this is folk music of the most sophisticated sort.

It’s essentially a solo art, whose sound-world is permeated by Turkic and Mongolian influences. Urban influences from Iran, meanwhile, gave rise to the classical style of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, which is rooted in a tradition of music theory that goes back to tenth-century Baghdad.