In Search of the Uzbek Sound

He picks me up from Kosmonautov metro station.
No need, I said. In general, I have a good sense of direction. I earned my degree as a taxi driver. He should describe to me where exactly he lives. The house number. The floor. The number of the flat. Then I will find it. No, he said, in a flurry of excitement - but he was actually always excited, for no apparent reason, no, he said, it's better he come and get me. It's so hard to find. It all looks so the same. And there are no numbers any more either, or there never have been, he can't even remember any.
So Kosmonautov metro station, that's the blue station, with blue tiles, and white astronauts walking in space. In the direction out of town. At the barriers ...


After the great earthquake - not a rarity here and God only knows how many souls it buried. God is mighty and blessed be his name - after the great earthquake, they bulldozed and demolished everything that had withstood the force of nature. A welcome opportunity to erase the past, the pearl of the Orient, and to make the way for a New Humanity into the future --- forgotten. The new Tashkent is the result of a historical implosion. Where we are? Where I come from? Where am I going...

Dima Yanov-Yanovski, then 40 years young, a composer of Russian origin living in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, searches for a specific sound in his post-Soviet adopted country - and in doing so also follows Western as well as Indian and Persian influences ... the portrait of him is at the same time a portrait of the Uzbek capital three years after the opening of the Iron Curtain.

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