Search - Various Artists :: Secret Museum of Mankind: Central Asia

Incredible !

Jack Berrien | Key West, FL | 03/17/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Make no mistake, the pieces on this disk are no dusty museum curiosities. There are some lively masterpieces and virtuoso performances in this collection, representing a broad range of non-Western musical traditions. Since stumbling across the Central Asia disk, I have purchased the entire series, and Central Asia remains my favorite. As a musician, studying this music has helped me to become aware of some of the limitations of my own Western musical background. I've never written a music review on Amazon before, but I feel this series is very special and deserves a wide audience. So go buy it!"

An excellent anthology of vintage Central Asian music!

Jack Berrien | 03/11/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is an excellent cd of vintage music from the Central Asian countries of Mongolia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, The Caucasus region, Tadjikistan and Azerbaijan, etc. These recordings capture a timeless beauty and essence of the classical and folk musical styles of the Central Asian peoples. The Tajik pieces are impressive, and those tracks #20 and #22 are true classics. The Azeri pieces are great and fans of Mongolian hoomei, or throat singing will be familiar with the Mongolian tracks on this cd. This is a great cd and it is one of the bset collections in the Secret Museum of Mankind series. All of the selections are classics from a bygone era. This cd, I must give a five star rating to just because this muisc is so good. It would be nice if Yazoo would release a further volume of this vintage Central Asian music classics. This kind of music has never sounded better."

Central Asian A-go-go

John Bellarmine Vallier | Los Angeles, USA | 12/31/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Not only the dissatisfaction of the proletariat class was burgeoning in Russia during the first decade of the 20th century. A recording industry was flourishing, one that was competing with western European companies for an "ethnic music" market. By drawing on the musicality of its neighboring central Asian minorities, this Russian industry was provided with the fuel to take off.This superb CD is a compilation of 26 of these early recordings. Many of the ensembles heard on this release utilize highly developed vocal techniques, small bodied long necked lutes, reed pipes, and compact drums. The reason for this similarity in instrumentation is due to the fact that many central Asian cultures were nomadic, and thus required their belongings to be portable. Because these recordings are old you may hear an occasional skip and crackle of the needle. These extrinsic characteristics do not take away from the beauty of the music. If anything, the minor pops and hisses serve to remind us of the historical import of these recordings."