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Brief Introduction about the Uyghur Music
Music and dance occupy a significant place in life of the Uyghurs. There are no holidays, parties and wedding festivities without music and dances. Uyghur traditional songs are remarkable for their melodious originality. They can be heard both in solo, and in choral singing. Singing is accompanied by music, which leads theme and variations of a song and emphasizes the song rhythm. While singing performers swing back and forth in tune of songs, and sometimes they clap in time with the music.
Nowadays, certain parts of Twelve Uyghur Muqams, a unique creation of musical folklore, are widely popular. Folk songs and muqams are performed to the accompaniment of folk instruments, which the Uyghurs have in a great number. Some of them are: a duttar is a string instrument with an oval barrel and a long neck, which has from 8 to 15 movable frets; a tambir is a stringed musical instrument played by plucking, a sitar is a lute with 3 metal strings; a stringed instrument with 9 strings; a 3-stringed and a 5-stringed rawap; 48-stringed dulcimer; a qalun – an instrument with 18 pairs of strings; a Ghijek with 4 to 10 strings. Among percussion instruments there are: a dap– a tambourine; a big drum - dumbaq; a small drum – naghra; a kettle-drum – tevilvaz and brazen cymbals. Wind instrument include a nyay – a reed flute; a surnay – a pear-tree clarinet; a carnay – a long instrument made of a brazen pipe.
Music is accompanied by dance. Uyghur dances are very graceful and vigorous. Mastery of Uyghur dancers was valued so high that they were invited by emperors of Tang Dinasty to participate in special festivities.
At present there are no Uyghur festivities without dance. The Uyghurs have a great number of genre dances, which are: holiday dances, hunters’ dances, lovers’ dances, farmers’ dances and others.
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