UPDATED: 16:44, July 11, 2006
People's Daily Online
The Chinese Embassy in the UK held an entirely new sort of music salon in the evening on July 5th, featuring the performance by Xinjiang Uygur Muqam Arts Ensemble coming to London for the Muslim Music Festival in the English capital, with some 200 guests from various circles of politics, economy, culture, science and technology as well as education participating in the music feast.
Muqam refers to the traditional and grand Uygur classical music suites, incorporating song, music, poetry and folk custom. With the ethnic clothes, artists from Xinjiang gave a performance by sitting on the ground. Five main actors were foremost exponents of Uygur Muqam. All in their 60s or 70s, they sang joyfully in a loud voice while playing ethnic instruments such as satar, tanbr, zawap, etc., giving all the audience an account of their life and happiness with the original music form. Being more natural and revealing people's true feelings, the outstanding music artwork without any decoration drew the audiences' attention quicker than any other modern music forms. Even some governmental staff in western suits present could not help dancing with the lively music.
Invited by a corporation specializing in cultural cooperation in the UK, Xinjiang Dolan Muqam Arts Ensemble came to London for the 21st Music Village Festival-Salaam which featured the theme of peace. The general director of the cultural feast said that London had already held the 21st Summer Art Festival, which aimed at creating an open platform and promote the melting and exchange of arts between various ethnic groups. One year after the July 7th London bombings, they held a Muslim Arts Festival with peace as the theme, which collected Muslim artists from 11 foreign countries as well as UK. It was a grand feast of special significance for Muslim culture and arts outside the Islamic world.
The director also noted that this was the first time they had invited Chinese arts ensemble because China was a country with the rapid economic growth and a rich culture, and the theme for Arts Festival London 2008 would be China. It was not only because of the Sino-UK cultural exchanges but also because of the dwellers of some 100 different ethnic minorities living in London. There should be a platform which could help people better understand Chinese arts.
The Art of Muqam spread among the Uygur people, and recorded and verified the history of mutual exchange and blending of music and dance between various ethnic groups along the ancient "Silk Road", and has long been enjoying the laudatory title of ¡°gems of Chinese arts¡± and "pearl along the 'Silk Road'". Additionally, it has been enlisted into the inventory of the World Oral and Intangible Cultural Heritage.
Muqams carried forward in Gaimaiti, Turpan and Hami are of distinct ethnic characteristics, and are dubbed as the essence of Muqam. Adiya, head of the Xinjiang Dolan Muqam Arts Ensemble and a postdoctoral researcher with Institute of Ethnic Literature, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) said the eldest folk artist was 76, and all of them were farmers who were not able to read. But they carried forward the art of Muqam handed down in a direct line from the masters.
Xinjiang Dolan Muqam Arts Ensemble and other folk artists from other countries present the cultural feast entertained audiences with splendid performance at Kew Garden, Royal Botanic Garden, on July 1st and 2nd. According to the statistics by the organising committee of the festival, there were some 20,000 audiences present at the cultural feast. Among all the performances, the exotic Dolan Muqam won the attention of most audiences. Sonorous singing, bold and unconstrained melody, festive singing and dancing, cheerful movements of dancers were full of power and artistic appeal. During the 30-minutes performance, the theatre burst into the warmest applause. All the audiences present have been intoxicated deeply with such an ancient art. One audience said with feeling that the art of Muqam was quite different from the Chinese music in his imagination, and that Chinese culture was too rich.