EVERY GENRE PROJECT - July 4 - Falak
Genre of the Day - Falak
Album of the Day - Tajikistan: Falak by Goltchereh Sadikova (1992)
I write this en route to the beautiful Rocky Mountains, just a stone’s throw (or really a two hour drive) from Denver where I am sojourning for the summer. I’m excited to meet some goats and breathe in the fresh mountain air and appreciate the natural sights of the countryside as the US’ national project continues to feel as if it’s structurally crumbling at a faster clip, what with the disgraceful state of the courts and our electoral options. Besides that, it means that while installments of this project are usually exercises in imagined travels to other regions via their music, today’s takes less mental effort. Falak is the genre of the Pamir mountains of Tajikistan, voices to the heavens from some of the earth’s highest points. As I survey the verdant vistas and jagged peaks of North America’s greatest mountains from our Subaru Outback, I feel nearly there even a continent away.
There is a Tajik saying: Бо моҳ шини моҳ шави / Бо дег шини сиeҳ шави. “If you sit with the moon you become the moon; if you sit in a cauldron you become sooty.” While I could find sites peddling this proverb, I didn’t find many explaining it. If my deductive reasoning drawn from parallel proverbs is right, I guess it communicates that whatever environment you situate yourself in, you absorb its elements, the good and the bad. Is it not an apt metaphor for music and how what we choose to listen to informs our worldview, and music that reflects a particular place or attitude makes us a participant by proxy? So even if you are far from a mountain range today, just listening to the impassioned vocals and fiery lute can season you in the essence of falak, if for an album’s length.
Where I am in the mountains, I sit at 7,000 feet above sea level. The Pamirs quash that lowly sum, nearly doubling it at an average elevation of 12,000 feet. This lands them as the third highest mountain range by elevation in the world. Scraping the sky only miles from the heavens, the people of the Pamirs have developed a singing tradition that reflects these godly summits. The name falak rather mystically translates as heaven, fortune, and universe. It’s a tradition among the people of the Pamirs with a wide range of variety—songs can be two minute vignettes or thirty minute epics performed by a single vocalist, weaving tales of separation, love, struggle, or musings reflecting the introspective religious writings of Sufi mystics and poets. The primary partner instrumentally is a lute, typically the practically long necked tanbur.
With a population of only 230,000 across the entire Pamir Mountain region of eastern Tajikistan, its sparse inhabitants look to desolate landscapes where no other groups of people may lie for miles. With the need to hurry to the next place rare, it’s understandable that performances might unfold into such impressive lengths—with the exception of one six-minute song, today’s album features three songs clocking in at over twenty minutes. Goltchereh Sadikova, who dedicated herself to learning a wide repertoire of falak after the death of her husband, commands the snow-capped mountains with the extra giraffe-length necked two-stringed dutar, her voice shooting up into the sky with its intensity and emotion. During the first track “Zédouri Tâ Bé Kay,” the emotional stakes rise suddenly after fifteen minutes like how grief can creep in and grab ahold of one’s mind after a period of calm, her voice wrought with feeling and gravity. “Ala” strikes a soft and restrained contrast among the fast-paced lute epics in its a capella bareness, capturing the gentleness of her delivery. Like the variety in sights between the soaring peaks and flat, windswept valleys of a mountain journey, it's a riveting insight into the musical variety engendered by walking so close to the sky.