Gokche Serenade
Last week, Dave Fossum and I went to visit our training family in Gokche. I had not visited since March when I brought their Christmas presents three months late. We walked through the cracked and muddied streets, the odor of burning trash wafted into our noses. Dave brought along his dutar and began to tune it while I answered the barrage of questions from Dariya and Hoshgeldi. Yeah, Mary was going all right, I had a lot of work that was keeping me busy, including William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, and yes, my new family is treating me well.
With the inquisition done for the time being, Dave began to play the dutar. He started with a piece about the winds of the desert outside of Gok Depe. The music was sinewy, lonesome, haunting, lush, joyous and filled with a beautiful melancholy all at the same time. When he finished we applauded and asked him when and how he had learned the instrument. Dave currently lives in Serdar, a town of 30,000 that appears out of the desert just passed a checkpoint. Serdar is the type of town that truly reminds you that you are in Turkmenistan, the empty dusty streets are lined with broken shacks advertising cigarettes or ice cream. It is the type of town that I imagined I might live in when I first heard that I was coming to a land where 90 percent of the country was desert. Dave met a teacher who had recently been left unemployed due to funding cuts for his school. The music that this teacher taught was not the all praising the glorious leader of Turkmenistan that you hear and see on Altyn Asyr. This was the music that was played in back rooms of chai houses or quietly amidst a roaring sashlik fire under Soviet rule. This was the music that had been passed down through the generations of Turkmen from father to son, teacher to student. This was the music that told you more about the Turkmen people than a month of acculturation classes would teach you. This was Turkmenistan. Wind-swept, lonesome, passionate, a beautiful melancholy filled with belief in the sadness of great stories, that drifted from one town to the next on the dirt devils and on the backs of camels, donkeys, and by foot. It was history resurrected and put on a sensual platter that left me warm and full, like after Thanksgiving dinner.
Dave played song after song of the great dutar players that he knew. He played the most famous Turkmen piece and the story behind it. I apologize that I cannot recall the name of the song or artist. A dutar player falls in love with a girl in his youth. Then he heads off to fight in the last great war, WWII. When he returns from fighting proudly for his homeland he comes back to his dutar and begins to play at weddings in the surrounding towns and villages. One day he comes to a house that looks vaguely familiar for the wedding of a local successful businessman. When the bride and groom arrive, he realizes that the woman getting married is the love of his youth. He meets her eyes and a deep sigh from here is all he needs to know that she recognizes him too. He then plays a sad love song that talks of the desert sands and stars taking his heart away to the lonely moon. Halfway through the song, Hoshgeldi began to sing along. He started with a low murmur that soon filled to a ear splitting twang that made Nyda (the family’s dog) go hiding under the top john. However, it didn’t matter if the song was sang in tune or not, Hoshgeldi was singing from his heart and I was privileged to be able to see it happen. Truly laying your heart out in public whether through song, emotion, or dance was something that was as rare to Turkmen as a prom without heightened expectations from young men and women.
I passed the next half an hour goofing around with my host brother Yhlas, while Dave engaged in some name dropping of dutar players with Dariya. Enebay, then made her appearance from the back seat of the family’s Lada that had just pulled into the driveway. Dave and I each gave her hugs and tried to calm her down a bit so we could understand her questions. I poured all of us cups of tea and Dave retuned his dutar. In the middle of his second set, during a piece about a desert race on the Ah Teke horses, Enebay asked Dave if he would play the Turkmen lovers song that I have already described. The second time was even better than the first. Dave seemed to entrance not only himself but also the rest of us listening. Thankfully, for the sake of the moment, Hoshgeldi didn’t try a repeat performance. After the song was done, she began to tell Dave and I about what it was like during the Soviet times and the musicians. She went on a tear. She told us of cafes that she and Kakam (our host father) used to go to every Friday night to hear the great dutar players. Gok Depe, is a city that like DC and jazz in the 30s, was the epicenter of all of the great dutar players in Turkmenistan. She told us that musicians didn’t make anything back then, because national music was banned under Soviet rule. However, when I asked her if it was better then or now her response surprised me. She said it was better to have real Turkmen music even if you had to risk being caught, than the pompous glory praising music that is now played on all of the radio and television stations in Turkmenistan. From what I could glean from the next couple of minutes she went on a tear about one musician who was now playing for Tstan television and how he didn’t even deserve the bones that the dogs chewed on.
It seems that there is a point in every PCVs service, where people finally shed the coat of promotion and tell you what they actually think of the state of events here. For me, it has always been unexpected, when someone decides to confide in me. It comes out of the blue and usually takes me numerous times of them repeating what they are saying before I can get the actual meaning of what they are saying. I guess you could mark this as a type of milestone. When you are no longer considered a guest, but a part of the family or community, is when life here seems to get a bit easier. The stares are no longer readily apparent, at least not close to your home or place of work and there is subtle comfort in knowing that everyone in the neighborhood knows you. It seemed as if this night was the one in which our host mom decided that I was part of their family.
Before I go any further, I should give you all a better idea of how guests and families are viewed here in Turkmenistan. Guests have priority over everyone, no matter the age of sex, the guest is the most important person within any social situation. We in America, tend to use this belief during business, "The costumer is always right," but don’t seem to make it as blatant during our social interactions. Next in order are the following: the eldest male (grandfather, etc.), the eldest female, the eldest male sibling, the rest of the male siblings, and then the female siblings in descending order of age. While for us, this seems very sexist and patriarchal it is in essence merely a cultural difference. Granted it is a large one, but the person that is the most involved in the family day to day life is the eldest female. So in essence, while the power structure by appearance seems to be patriarchal it is in actuality a matriarchy.
This night was an eye-opener to the fact that I now am a member of two families, each a half a world apart. I drifted off to sleep with a smile on my face and a warming sense of gratitude for being able to be present tonight no matter that my Turkmen has gotten better or the fact that I don’t play the dutar. I was a member of an extended family and the comforting feeling of being home while being half a world away is something that I never would have thought possible until I came here.
With the inquisition done for the time being, Dave began to play the dutar. He started with a piece about the winds of the desert outside of Gok Depe. The music was sinewy, lonesome, haunting, lush, joyous and filled with a beautiful melancholy all at the same time. When he finished we applauded and asked him when and how he had learned the instrument. Dave currently lives in Serdar, a town of 30,000 that appears out of the desert just passed a checkpoint. Serdar is the type of town that truly reminds you that you are in Turkmenistan, the empty dusty streets are lined with broken shacks advertising cigarettes or ice cream. It is the type of town that I imagined I might live in when I first heard that I was coming to a land where 90 percent of the country was desert. Dave met a teacher who had recently been left unemployed due to funding cuts for his school. The music that this teacher taught was not the all praising the glorious leader of Turkmenistan that you hear and see on Altyn Asyr. This was the music that was played in back rooms of chai houses or quietly amidst a roaring sashlik fire under Soviet rule. This was the music that had been passed down through the generations of Turkmen from father to son, teacher to student. This was the music that told you more about the Turkmen people than a month of acculturation classes would teach you. This was Turkmenistan. Wind-swept, lonesome, passionate, a beautiful melancholy filled with belief in the sadness of great stories, that drifted from one town to the next on the dirt devils and on the backs of camels, donkeys, and by foot. It was history resurrected and put on a sensual platter that left me warm and full, like after Thanksgiving dinner.
Dave played song after song of the great dutar players that he knew. He played the most famous Turkmen piece and the story behind it. I apologize that I cannot recall the name of the song or artist. A dutar player falls in love with a girl in his youth. Then he heads off to fight in the last great war, WWII. When he returns from fighting proudly for his homeland he comes back to his dutar and begins to play at weddings in the surrounding towns and villages. One day he comes to a house that looks vaguely familiar for the wedding of a local successful businessman. When the bride and groom arrive, he realizes that the woman getting married is the love of his youth. He meets her eyes and a deep sigh from here is all he needs to know that she recognizes him too. He then plays a sad love song that talks of the desert sands and stars taking his heart away to the lonely moon. Halfway through the song, Hoshgeldi began to sing along. He started with a low murmur that soon filled to a ear splitting twang that made Nyda (the family’s dog) go hiding under the top john. However, it didn’t matter if the song was sang in tune or not, Hoshgeldi was singing from his heart and I was privileged to be able to see it happen. Truly laying your heart out in public whether through song, emotion, or dance was something that was as rare to Turkmen as a prom without heightened expectations from young men and women.
I passed the next half an hour goofing around with my host brother Yhlas, while Dave engaged in some name dropping of dutar players with Dariya. Enebay, then made her appearance from the back seat of the family’s Lada that had just pulled into the driveway. Dave and I each gave her hugs and tried to calm her down a bit so we could understand her questions. I poured all of us cups of tea and Dave retuned his dutar. In the middle of his second set, during a piece about a desert race on the Ah Teke horses, Enebay asked Dave if he would play the Turkmen lovers song that I have already described. The second time was even better than the first. Dave seemed to entrance not only himself but also the rest of us listening. Thankfully, for the sake of the moment, Hoshgeldi didn’t try a repeat performance. After the song was done, she began to tell Dave and I about what it was like during the Soviet times and the musicians. She went on a tear. She told us of cafes that she and Kakam (our host father) used to go to every Friday night to hear the great dutar players. Gok Depe, is a city that like DC and jazz in the 30s, was the epicenter of all of the great dutar players in Turkmenistan. She told us that musicians didn’t make anything back then, because national music was banned under Soviet rule. However, when I asked her if it was better then or now her response surprised me. She said it was better to have real Turkmen music even if you had to risk being caught, than the pompous glory praising music that is now played on all of the radio and television stations in Turkmenistan. From what I could glean from the next couple of minutes she went on a tear about one musician who was now playing for Tstan television and how he didn’t even deserve the bones that the dogs chewed on.
It seems that there is a point in every PCVs service, where people finally shed the coat of promotion and tell you what they actually think of the state of events here. For me, it has always been unexpected, when someone decides to confide in me. It comes out of the blue and usually takes me numerous times of them repeating what they are saying before I can get the actual meaning of what they are saying. I guess you could mark this as a type of milestone. When you are no longer considered a guest, but a part of the family or community, is when life here seems to get a bit easier. The stares are no longer readily apparent, at least not close to your home or place of work and there is subtle comfort in knowing that everyone in the neighborhood knows you. It seemed as if this night was the one in which our host mom decided that I was part of their family.
Before I go any further, I should give you all a better idea of how guests and families are viewed here in Turkmenistan. Guests have priority over everyone, no matter the age of sex, the guest is the most important person within any social situation. We in America, tend to use this belief during business, "The costumer is always right," but don’t seem to make it as blatant during our social interactions. Next in order are the following: the eldest male (grandfather, etc.), the eldest female, the eldest male sibling, the rest of the male siblings, and then the female siblings in descending order of age. While for us, this seems very sexist and patriarchal it is in essence merely a cultural difference. Granted it is a large one, but the person that is the most involved in the family day to day life is the eldest female. So in essence, while the power structure by appearance seems to be patriarchal it is in actuality a matriarchy.
This night was an eye-opener to the fact that I now am a member of two families, each a half a world apart. I drifted off to sleep with a smile on my face and a warming sense of gratitude for being able to be present tonight no matter that my Turkmen has gotten better or the fact that I don’t play the dutar. I was a member of an extended family and the comforting feeling of being home while being half a world away is something that I never would have thought possible until I came here.
posted by Joanne Schirm | 8:01 PM
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