CORE MAQAMAT OF CENTRAL ASIA – SHASHMAQAM

Shashmaqam – as a great tradition, impregnated with centuries-old practice, is a unique phenomenon of musical culture of the entire region of Central Asia.It is unprecedented in that it functions as a living holistic tradition. Shashmaqam carries the age-old streams of melos in music, poetry and dance, as well as a clot of scientific and practical knowledge – “canons”, which are its integral, organic part. Shashmaqam is a very large-scale phenomenon in time and space in this duality of living musical tradition and its canons. Any attempts to consider this phenomenon from narrow ethnic and local positions hinder the understanding of its deep universal scientific and artistic foundations. Conversely, the involvement of a wider range of reliable sources of direct and indirect character helps to understand the true roots of its existence: the canons and forms of their artistic implementation.