Challenging Orientalism Pt. 5

Playlist

Six international curators from the Norient community have researched contemporary music videos that re-imagine, parody, or deconstruct Orientalism. The final selection is presented in the virtual exhibition «DisOrient: Welcome to the Hall of Mirrors», which is part of the German festival Mannheimer Sommer. Here is the shortlist by curator and activist Georgy Mamedov, who focuses on videos from Central Asia.

The Orientalist depiction of Central Asian cultures originates in ethnographic works, military and colonial administration reports, and artistic production during the Russian colonization of the region in the late 18^th and throughout the 19^th century. This depiction essentially reproduces Western European Orientalist clichés about the Middle East. These clichés always form quite a paradoxical mix of mutually exclusive characteristics that the Orientalist gaze ascribes to the non-Westerners such as excessiveness (colors, odors, sounds) and scarcity (hygiene); aggressiveness (of warriors) and submissiveness (of women); irrationality and artifice.

Between «Authenticity» and «Backwardness»

The Soviet period adds another layer to the Orientalist palimpsest in Central Asia. Even though the Soviets strove to radically break up with the legacy of the Russian Empire and launched a number of public campaigns against colonial and Orientalist policies and practices, the power dynamic of the multiethnic and multicultural USSR produced its own Orientalist dichotomies in relation to Central Asia, such as backward/progressive; traditional/modern; authentic/secondary. Official Soviet discourse celebrated internationalism (or «the friendship of peoples» in its late Soviet version) and supported ethnically marked cultural expressions. Indeed, different forms of national cultures that are perceived as «authentic» today came out of the Socialist Realism formula of cultural production, «national in form, socialist in content».

At the same time, in everyday life many ethnically marked cultural practices, including speaking native languages, were considered as signs of «backwardness». To be modern and progressive, and therefore avoid Orientalization, Central Asian people had to distance themselves from «excessive» ethnic self-representation and adopt Russian language, urban lifestyle, and westernized cultural habits. In the post-Soviet period, this dynamic changed its course to the opposite direction: Nationalist regimes present self-Orientalizing cultural practices as «authentic». Conservative political forces appeal to preservation and celebration of authenticity of ethnic cultures as the only remedy against corrupting globalization and westernization.

In contemporary neoliberal capitalism, the Orientalist discourse attains new political-economic dimensions. Labor migration to Russia is the only source of livelihoods for millions of Kyrgyz, Tajiks, and Uzbeks who face both institutionalized and everyday discrimination, xenophobia, and violence. Remittances from labor migrants form from 30 to 40 percent of the GDP in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Chinese and Western capital constantly expands in the region and takes over local mining, petroleum, logistics, construction, and other industries.

Challenging Orientalism

Orientalism has been consistently challenged in Central Asia in academic writing, media discourses, and contemporary visual art. Only recently, popular music became another terrain for critical reflection of Orientalist representations. All five music videos in this selection challenge Orientalism in different ways. The first three clips directly engage with various aspects of Orientalism. Their authors also explicitly address their critical message to different subjects of the Orientalist gaze. Tajik-Russian singer Manizha confronts the cultural stereotypes, xenophobia, and everyday racism experienced by Central Asians in Russia. Anuar Duisenbinov mocks clumsy attempts of the Kazakh state to maintain a fragile balance between hyper-modernization and preservation of national authenticity. Saodat Ismailova, an Uzbek visual artist and film director based in Paris, redefines traditional Central Asian music and forms of its performance as sources of women’s empowerment.

The last two videos by Kazakh pop singer Moldonazar and the Kyrgyz K-pop style girl band Love iz do not contain explicit political or critical messages. They can be viewed as cultural productions that evolve out of the contradictory cultural landscape of Central Asia. They embrace «organically» (not in an agitated political way) the complex, mixed, contested condition of Central Asia being «in between» – «between Western Europe and Western China» – as the line goes in the lyrics of Anuar Duisenbinov.

Music: Manizha
Video: Artemii Ortus
Track: Under-Slav (Nedoslavianka) (Tajikistan/Russia, 2019)

With this most recent self-release, Tajik-Russian singer Manizha gained repute as a vocal advocate of the Central Asian migrants in Russia. Manizha, who was born in Tajikistan but lived all her life in Moscow, masterfully plays with the Russian exoticizing clichés about Tajiks and Central Asians. She takes these representations to extreme excess and turns them into subversive kitsch. However, her Under-Slav not only denounces and mocks Russian xenophobic stereotypes, but it also confronts Tajik nationalists in their demands for ethnic purity, authenticity, and unconditional Tajikness. «Under-Slav I’m and under-Tajik», she sings. Blending languages, music styles, and ethnic cultural expressions, Manizha celebrates her mixed, non-authentic, non-pure and «dirty» identity.

It is important to note that «Nedoslavyanka» is a very personal song, or rather an expression of the powerful feminist motto of the personal as political. Manizha started her career in music as a teenager under the stage name Rukkola (Russian for arugula). The Russian producers with whom she worked told her that a girl with the name Manizha could only sing Oriental songs and if she wanted to perform Western-style music, she had to pick a stage name. When she was twenty, Manizha decided to end her career as Rukkola and cut all ties with professional producers. She moved to Instagram and stared recording short music videos under her real name. Translating her personal experience of Orientalization in the Russian popular music scene into musical and visual form, Manizha also makes a political statement that resonates with the experience of millions of Tajik and Central Asian migrants in Russia.

Music: Anuar Duisenbinov (lyrics, voice), Rustem Myrzakhmetov
Video: Saule Dyussenbina
Track: Ruhani Kangaroo (Kazakhstan, 2019)

«Ruhani Zhangyru» (literally, renovation of the spirit) is the title of the Kazakh national program of modernization launched by the former president and the national leader Nursultan Nazarbayev, which aims to achieve simultaneous hyper-modernization and preservation of national authenticity of the Kazakh culture. Anuar Duisenbinov, poet, musician, and organizer of underground electronic music parties in Almaty, plays with words and turns «Zhangyru» into a «Kangaroo» that gallops through the vast steppe from Western Europe to Western China and back in search of the eternal spirit.

Music: Dmitri Yanov Yanovsky
Video: Saodat Ismailova
Work: Qyrq Qyz (86 minutes, Uzbekistan, 2018)

In this all-female performative retelling of the medieval epic tale, Saodat Ismailova redefines the meanings of «traditional» and «ethnic». Ismailova avoids irony, mockery, and deconstruction of the traditional culture. Instead, she treats tradition with acute sensitivity and delicacy, which at the same time does not mean that her approach is deprived of critical distance. Juxtaposing traditional sounds with electronic and meditative video footage, the artist strives to actualize the philosophical and emancipatory potential of the traditional practice of bard singing. Ismailova challenges the Orientalist progressivist gaze that views native cultural expressions as exclusively shallow and backward.

Music: Galymzhan Moldanazar
Video: Shapagat Orynbaev
Track: Akpen Birge (Kazakhstan, 2013)

Moldonazar does not exacerbate Orientalist oppositions, nor does he denounce them. He does something much more subtle and radical. In his sounds and clips full of nostalgic vibes, he offers dialectical resolution to these conflicts. Kazakh and Soviet, Kazakh and global are not the oppositions anymore. The Soviet becomes Kazakh and the Kazakh becomes global.

Music: Love iz
Video: Fam Entertainment
Track: OA (Kyrgyzstan, 2019)

Girl band Love iz is the most popular Kyrgyz K-popish project. The global popularity of K-pop provoked demand in the localized versions of the original style. Love iz, like all other local bands, sings in Kyrgyz, while they themselves and their audiences are Russophone. K-pop is a marker of contemporaneity for the Kyrgyz Generation Z. What makes this trend interesting from the Orientalist perspective is that K-pop is not at all a Western phenomenon. Even though it blends «Western» musical styles, it is not only the sound that defines K-pop – a very paradoxical phenomenon, especially in its various local versions. In Kyrgyzstan, K-pop subculture can be viewed as a space of productive dialogue between global and local, Asian and Western, alternative and mainstream, subversive and conformist.

This playlist has been compiled in the context of «DisOrient: Welcome to the Hall of Mirrors». A virtual music video exhibition by Norient for Mannheimer Sommer (July 12–22, 2020). Because of the Corona pandemic, the festival took place as a virtual event.

Biography

Georgy Mamedov (1984) is a communist and LGBT activist, curator, and educator, based in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. He teaches history and theory of modern and contemporary art at the American University of Central Asia in Bishkek and chairs the board of the leading Central Asian LGBT organization «Labrys Kyrgyzstan». His most recent artistic projects include collaboration with the Werker Collective in the project «A Gestural History of the Young Worker» for the Fifth Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art in Yekaterinburg, Russia (2019) and lecture-performance «Delirious Blues: A Philosophy Letter from the Low Life» during the Parliament of Bodies edition at the Bergen Assembly in 2019 (Bergen, Norway).

Published on June 19, 2020

Last updated on September 25, 2020

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Challenging Orientalism Pt. 4

Playlist

by Ali Sayah

Six international curators from the Norient community have researched contemporary music videos that re-imagine, parody, or deconstruct Orientalism. The final selection is presented in the virtual exhibition «DisOrient: Welcome to the Hall of Mirrors», which is part of the German festival Mannheimer Sommer. Here is the shortlist curated by artist and musician Ali Sayah, who focuses on the Iranian indie scene. It’s going to be dark, surreal, and very spatial...

Music: Otagh Band
Video: Bamdad Afshar
Track: The Dead Are Selfish (Iran, 2019)

This video shows many of the stereotypical components of Orientalist paintings. It deconstructs the Orientalist perspective by contradicting the associated expectations of its viewers. A mechanical, skeleton-like hand plays something on the keyboard of a simple self-made instrument and each note that we hear is distorted. Next we see a setting that we are familiar with through a number of Orientalist paintings: a girl with a headscarf in an exotic building. Despite the familiar structure, this setting shows no sign of the usual eroticism and exoticism of Orientalist paintings: the girl is dressed very plainly, her movements are mechanical, and she is neither charming nor seductive. Finally, the building is a ruin. The video shows many of the components of Orientalist paintings and by contradicting the interconnected expectations, it deconstructs the Orientalist perspective.

Pool in a Harem, painting by Jean-Léon Gérôme, 1875

Music: Mentrix
Video: Gilles Esteve
Track: Walk (Iran, 2020)

«Walk» is a music video by Iran-born and Berlin-based artist Samar Rad, who leads the band Mentrix. In this video you see the sights of a deserted city, concrete buildings with Persian architecture, shops, and neon light signs. In front, you can see young girls wearing hijab (veil) performing or standing still with a cold look staring at the camera; girls who somehow seem to rebel. It looks as though they are on a journey (odyssey) from the hurt of the desert to utopia (maybe). Again, similar images can be seen in Orientalist paintings: Oriental charm of girls wearing hijab being in imaginary and exotic places in the absence of men. Self-Orientalization is what you can see in this video. The same thing is happening in the music somehow as the daf, a Persian frame drum, is used to make the rhythm and is mixed with English lyrics. The tune and melody belong to Iranian music and evoke elements of prayer rituals and Sufi music.

Music: Elemaun
Video: Pooyan Ranjbar
Track: Endelah (Iran, 2017)

Richard Taruskin is a U.S. musicologist who considers Orientalism in romantic Russian music as «having melodies full of close little ornaments and melismas» (Taruskin 1997, 156), chromatic accompanying lines, and drone bass. The track «Endelah» is doing exactly that. It begins with a drone sound with consecutive and repetitive notes. Next, a Balochi melody1 with lots of close little ornaments and melismas is added. The way this is done sounds exotic, even for Iranians. The camera enters the bright courtyard of a mosque from a dark water reservoir underneath. We follow someone whose face cannot be seen due to the high black and white contrast when filming the atmosphere of Iranian architecture. This makes the video even more mysterious.

Music: Jalboat
Video: Mehrdad Motejali
Track: Darvag (Iran, 2020)

Jalboat’s track «Darvag» is based on a poem by the well-known Iranian poet Nimā a Youushij (1897–1960). The entire poem is a conversation between Yushij and a tree frog called «Darvag». The poet asks the frog about the time when it’s going to rain and he starts with this sentence: «My farm has become dry alongside the neighbor’s farm.» In comparison with the former Iranian neighbor the Soviet Union, this means that Iran lacks social change. Seyyed Rahim Moosavinia, Nozar Niazi, and Ahmad Ghaforianas have summarized it as follows: «Orientalism is affiliated with the representation of the Self or Occident and the Other or Orient in which the Self is privileged and has the upper hand to define, reconstruct the passive, silent and weak Other» (Moosavinia, Niazi and Ghaforianas 2011, 103). In Jalboat’s video, we see a strange, alien-like creature, who performs weird movements in an abandoned and ruined place. A fusion style music can be heard, a combination of folk music from South Iran and rock, creating an unfamiliar atmosphere.

Music and Video: Ali Sayah
Track: TA'ZIEH (Germany, 2016)

Ta’zieh, primarily known from the Persian tradition, is a Shiite ritual (Condolence Theater or Passion Play) that reenacts the death of Hussein (prophet Muhammad’s grandson), his male children, and his companions in a brutal massacre on the plains of Karbala, Iraq, in the year 680 A.D. My video «TA’ZIEH» is a combination of film footage from different Ta’zieh representations, a mourning ritual for Husayn ibn Ali, the third imam of Shi’ism, and a procession from the same context. The video narrates linearly the «Battle of Karbala». The remixed rituals involve a distinct music with particular rhythm, instruments, and chant. The music of «TA’ZIEH» relies on these elements within the genre of electro-acoustic drum ’n’ bass.

In his book Islamic Liberation Theology, the Iranian philosopher Hamid Dabashi contextualizes Ta’zieh from a contemporary perspective:

Today, it is impossible to understand Ta’ziyeh outside its Islamic and Shi’i context. To exoticize it as «traditional theater», the way classical Orientalism has done it, to isolate and sever it from the rest of the creative culture that generates and sustains it, the way contemporary anthropology has done it, or else to assimilate it backward to its possible Iranian roots in Seyavashan, as the Iranian nativist reading is wont to do, all rob Ta’ziyeh of its integral location in the entirety of its immediate cultural universe. Above all else, Ta’ziyeh is a communal act of collective redemption – its performative, dramatic, mimetic, and dramaturgical dimensions all integral to this its most defining significance. (Dabashi 2008, 187)

In conclusion, the music video «TA’ZIEH» creates a symbolic narrative of a historical ritual.

1. The Baloch are an Iranian people, mainly living in the Southeast of Iran.

List of References

Dabashi, Hamid. 2008. Islamic Liberation Theology. New York: Routledge.

Taruskin, Richard. 1997. Defining Russia Musically: Historical and Hermeneutical Essays. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Moosavinia, Seyyed Rahim, Nozar Niazi, and Ahmad Ghaforianas. 2011. «Edward Said’s Orientalism and the Study of the Self and the Other in Orwell’s Burmese Days». Studies in Literature and Language 2 (1): 103–13. (http://www.cscanada.net/index.php/sll/article/view/j.sll.1923156320110201.002).

This playlist has been compiled in the context of «DisOrient: Welcome to the Hall of Mirrors». A virtual music video exhibition by Norient for Mannheimer Sommer (July 12–22, 2020). Because of the Corona pandemic, the festival took place as a virtual event.