"In the early morning your face was rosy as an apple

"Now sadness gives it a hue as brown as vinegar

"My heart is burning with a fierce flame

"Love's fire tortured me

"I have been tormented to the limits of my strength

"Just like the autumn dragonfly

"I would strain my wings to fly high, high

"It is so long since I had news of my beloved

"How can I bear the pain of parting?"

Farmer musicians from Makit County of the Xingjiang perform the Dolan Muqam at the China Conservatory in Beijing last week. [China Daily]

With such passionate poetry, it seems difficult to fully express the emotion by just reading it. This is probably the reason why the authors of the poetry, the Uygur people, choose to sing it.

They have been singing such poetry for hundreds of years in Muqam, an art form of large-scale suites which involves songs, instrumental music and dance.

When the Xinjiang Muqam Art Ensemble and the Dolan Muqam Group performed at the China Conservatory in Beijing on December 11, their Muqam won warm applause from the audience, though the performance was unfamiliar to most people in terms of its scale, instruments and language.

"This is the first time that I have seen a Muqam performance," said Liu Shulin, a student from the Musicology Department of the conservatory. "I was very much attracted to the composite form of Muqam."

The concert actually displayed two aspects of Muqam: the Twelve Muqam, a highly systematic classical art of the Uygur people; and Dolan Muqam, one of the many branches of the folk Muqam.

Distinctive music

Muqam is a common musical phenomenon of the Muslims farming in Central Asia, South Asia, West Asia and North Africa. However, the meaning of the word differs from people to people. Its associations include mode, scale and melodic type. For the Uygurs, it is primarily a large-scale suite.

The Uygurs are the biggest group among the 13 ethnic groups in Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

In history, Uygur music was divided into five major types identified by the regions where they are most popular - Kuga (Kucha) music, Ili Valley music, Shule music, Gaochang music and Yutian music.

According to historical accounts, the earliest component of the Muqam - "qong nagma" (also known as daqu or major verse-songs in Chinese historical books) - constituted a comprehensive body of music even before the 6th century.

As time passed, the number of Muqam tunes increased, the music developed, and the different regional styles showed signs of homogenizing.

In the 16th century, under the influence of such Muqam scholars as Amannisahan and Kedirhan, folk musicians and Muqam scholars from different regions gathered to unearth, collect and collate various types of Muqam. The result was that Muqam was systematized into a collection of 12 sets of Muqam - Rak, Qabbayat, Muxavirak, Qahargah, Panjigah, Uz-Phal, Ajam, Uxxak, Nava, Bayat, Sigah and Irak - each of which would last about two hours.

Of course it is impossible to perform the whole Twelve Muqam in one concert, yet the Xinjiang Muqam Art Ensemble offered the audience a microcosm of the art form in their performance, which included ensemble, solo, duo, singing, dancing and even juggling performances.

Selections from the Rak and Qabbayat, the first two sets of the Twelve Muqam, showed the Muqam's basic structure.

Each Muqam can be divided into three major parts of "qong nagma" (major verse-songs), "dastan" (narrative songs) and "mashrap" (gathering).

After an unmetered introduction, a Muqam enters the "qong nagma," in which the singer starts with slow songs and gradually works his way through faster and faster songs.

The "qong nagma" is followed by the "dastan." The lyrics of these songs are taken from folk songs and poetry most often telling the tales of famous heroes and lovers from Uygur folklore. The melodic range of the dastan is particularly wide.

And finally comes the "mashrap," a set of fast dance songs which conclude the Muqam.

"The influence of Muqam on the Uygur people is very deep," said Mamtimin Mamtili, director of the Xinjiang Muqam Art Ensemble. "You can find such influence in the folk songs and even pop songs of the Uygurs."

Besides ensemble playing, musicians from the group also performed solo and duo works, in which the characteristics of Uygur instruments were specifically shown.

The plucked rawap is a leading instrument in Uygur music. It is the most instantly recognized Uygur instrument when it is played in an ensemble, like in the well-known movie "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon."

When Parhat Dawut played "Xadiyana" (celebration), with a single rawap, he created the atmosphere of people celebrating a victory. The sympathetic strings and the semi-spherical sound chamber of rawap gave it a unique timbre.

The duo piece "Edzem" by tambur player Samat Sabir and dutar player Dilxat Rayidin displayed the perfect match of the two Uygur string instruments. At the accompaniment of the comparatively low sounds of the two-stringed dutar, Samat Sabir performed fast plucking and subtle sliding on the five-stringed tambur.

Dolan Muqam

If the Xinjiang Muqam Art Ensemble presented highly refined artistic Muqam music, the Dolan Muqam Group brought Muqam music in its most primitive and vital form.

Created by the Dolan people, a sub-group of Uygurs who live on the edge of the Taklimakan Desert, the Dolan Muqam is performed with only four kinds of instruments: the qalun dulcimer, Dolan rawap, Dolan ghijak (a vertically-held fiddle) and dap hand drum.

Unlike the Xinjiang Muqam Art Ensemble's musicians who have received professional training in conservatories and art schools, the Dolan Muqam Group was made up of farmers from the Yantak Township, Makit County of the Kashgar region in Xinjiang. None of them read music scores, yet every note is kept in their minds from oral transmission.

Each Dolan Muqam begins with unmetered instrumental music and then repeated calls of "Allah Allah" on the same pitch by the lead singer.

According to Zhou Ji, a researcher from the Xinjiang Research Institute of Arts, such tunes are related to the Dolan people's lives in the desert and jungles, and their hunting lifestyle.

The Dolan Muqam is firstly distinctive from other types of Muqam due to its high pitch. Their singing may actually sound like crying when it is compared to traditional Han music or Western classical music.

It was hard to believe that such passionate singing came from musicians who are mostly over 60.

"Singing like this is not easy, but it is worth the effort, since singing lightly would make no sense," said 72-year-old qalun player Abdujilil Rozi.

In addition, the dap is beat heavily with the palm in Dolan Muqam, rather than the light fingering of the Twelve Muqam.

It takes about six to 15 minutes to perform a Dolan Muqam, which is much shorter than the Twelve Muqam. However, the Dolan Muqam is not simple. The melodic instruments, the qalun, Dolan rawap and Dolan ghijak do not follow the singing part, but created a certain kind of heterophony and figuration.

This is obviously reflected in the group's performance of the "Uzral," the second of the nine existing Dolan Muqam.

Maybe because they were used to performing in orchards and courtyards, the Dolan Muqam musicians sat on the floor to sing and play, instead of sitting on chairs.

"For Dolan Muqam, there is no limitation in terms of time, place and audience," said Zunongslam, director of the Dolan Muqam Group. "Dolan Muqam takes place whether there are just a dozen people or hundreds of people, whether there is a stage or not, and you can be both a viewer or a performer."

The end of the concert proved his words, as many people in the audience joined the dance on the stage, and became part of the Muqam.

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