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| | The Scotsman - S2 - Uzbek musicians swap Silk Road for Sauchiehall Street |
 | | All of a sudden, the group of Uzbek musicians and dancers joining Scotland’s Battlefield Band for its Silk Road tour found that their hitherto little-known country had developed a high profile, for all the wrong reasons. |
 | | The instrumentalists are: flautist Abdurashidov Abdulakhad; drummer or doyra player Nosirov Husan; Dadaev Akhmadjon on the Uzbek fiddle or gijak; and Lutfullaev Ilyas, a professor of traditional music at Tashkent Conservatoire, who plays the bouzouki-like dutar and the stringed rubab. |
 | | They are virtuoso players, and their flamboyant, highly rhythmic music, as one might expect from the Silk Road melting pot, bears centuries of influence from Turkish, Kazak and Kyrgyz cultures, and sounds, perhaps surprisingly, Middle Eastern, although with a distinct stamp of its own. |
| thescotsman.scotsman.com /s2.cfm?id=539682005 (925 words) |
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