Hong Kong will step back 3,000 years into the Uygur past, with the traditional
OSMAN Ahaimat has a rare talent and knows it. His voice, at once enchanting, ethereal, sweet, then spine-tinglingly tart, rises and falls and as it does so, his melodic wail fills every corner of the near-freezing rehearsal room.
His voice sounds like the devotional chants of the Sufis, the singing mystics of Pakistan whose style was replicated and made famous by Bollywood and, more seriously, by the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. But Osman is dismissive of such comparisons. Their voices jerk, he says, giving a quick, powerful, and none too flattering imitation. 'Our style is much smoother.' He smiles and he begins to sing again. His voice is warm while the weather outside the room definitely is not. Osman Ahaimat is lead singer in the Xinjiang Mukamu Art Ensemble, which will be one of the highlights of this year's Hong Kong Arts Festival. Today, the group is practising at its home, a rambling, ramshackle complex close to the centre of Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, China's far western province.
Xinjiang may be a distant part of China, but the people in the ensemble are not. They are Uygurs, sometimes referred to incorrectly as Chinese Muslims who culturally, racially, linguistically and historically, have always been closer to Islam and their Western neighbours - Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan and further to the west, Turkmenistan and eventually Turkey - than they have to the Communist Party and Beijing. The movement in their dance, the instruments played by the orchestra and the sound and style of the singers, clearly underlines that cultural heritage.
The art form the ensemble perform, known as the Mukamu, is a potent mix of poetry, allegorical moral message, folklore and love story that is interwoven inside 3,000-year-old Central Asian music and dance patterns. For the past 400-odd years it has appeared in its present form, a stylised combination of classical folk music, singing and dance.
In rehearsal, a wide smile spreads slowly across Osman's face as he sings. It seems as much about pride at his own skill as it is to do with the love he clearly has for his art. The ensemble has performed across Central Asia and the Muslim world, in most mainland cities as well as many cities in Southeast Asia, Japan and Europe.
Every Mukamu starts with a devotional call to Allah, normally sung, unaccompanied, by Osman or one of the other (male or female) soloists. The rest join in, males first, then female, followed by the orchestra, a collection of traditional Central Asian stringed instruments and drums. Before long everyone is dancing.
There are 12 different Mukamus, each lasting about two hours, split into three parts: musical, lyrical and the third incorporating dance. The tradition evolved as a complete evening's entertainment. The music is the same between the sections (with only the rhythm different). The tales told in the sections are not necessarily connected.