Category World News

The home of 36-year-old former police officer Akram Nassar and his two children is located in the Hammam neighborhood of the occupied West Bank’s Tulkarem refugee camp, which is frequently the target of Israeli raids.

Sewage flows down the side of the house, which is a strewn across from the house.

Closer to the house, Akram’s two sons, five-year-old Rahim and four-year-old Bara, appear. Bara is in shorts and a T-shirt in the mild, mid-September weather.

Because Israeli raids removed their front wall and a significant portion of their home’s side wall, they are visible from the street and are unmistakable.

A single grey armchair, an old computer monitor without casing, and a black-framed mirror hanging on the damaged interior door are all that the family’s exposed front room has.

The floor tiles are broken, there is dust and rubble everywhere.

The two remaining walls’ tiles provide an insight into how the house might have looked and how it might have been looked in the past.

The front of Akram’s house, along with several other buildings on the street, was destroyed on September 2 by an Israeli soldier using a bulldozer.

Akram’s barely standing house, with none of the privacy or protection the idea of home conjures, fits in with the devastated landscape of Tulkarem.

Since October 7, the Israeli military’s “counter-terror” raids have damaged or destroyed most dwellings and infrastructure in the refugee camp.

Every one of Tulkarem’s many narrow alleys is lined with houses and shops missing walls, doors or windows.

Many buildings are completely uninhabitable. Some families, like Akram’s, try to survive in the ruins of their homes, not knowing what the next raid will bring.

Akram appears in the front room, carrying two plastic buckets. The Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committee’s donation to the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committee led him and his two boys to a corner to get some water from.

When they return, Akram enters the small kitchen to make some coffee, but the burning still permeates the air and the scorched marks still appear on the walls.

According to Akram, coffee is a cherished possession in their homes. “Coffee is easy to make, I can still prepare it in my destroyed kitchen”, he says.

“As for meals, we usually eat at my mother’s house, just … in the alley opposite our house”.

After his wife and Akram divorced three years ago, he now has custody of the kids.

He considers the chaos that surrounds him as he makes coffee on a single-burner stove.

“The occupation forces didn’t leave a single thing untouched”, he says.

They deliberately destroyed everything, even the simplest kitchen items, just to make sure we lose everything. “

He claims that because he assumes another raid will soon cause more damage to his house, he no longer removes the rubble or attempts to repair the damaged walls.

As Akram speaks, Bara rummages through a pile of clothes and other ruined belongings, looking for something to play with.

After a while, he lets out a jubilant scream:” I found one of my toys! and travels with a small, vibrant stuffed cat that can be hung on a pram or cot in a mobile.

Bara is excitedly whizzing the cat around while holding on to the tiny handle on its head.

” Rahim and Bara used to spend most of their time playing, but even their play has changed now, “Akram says.

” They lost most of their toys and belongings. They no longer possess any drawing notebooks or colored pencils.

He observes two birds chirping inside a walled cage. These two birds are the only things left from their life before the devastation, “he says”. My children lost everything, except for these birds. “

The children begin accumulating bird feed as Akram sips his coffee as they gather it from the ground. During their most recent raid, Israeli soldiers dispersed it around the house.

” The birds survived, even though the house was filled with smoke after the side room was blown up, “Akram says”. They are the ones who have witnessed everything being destroyed inside this house.

‘ Let our father go! ‘

Since a March raid by Israeli forces, that destruction has been the result of numerous raids.

” That day the army was destroying everything in the camp, and the sound of explosions kept getting closer, “Akram recounts.

He entered his mother’s home with his children out of fear that the army would detain all the men, as it had done in Nur Shams camp a few days earlier.

” Suddenly, the door to my mother’s house was blown open, and soldiers armed to the teeth stormed in. They immediately started breaking everything. They beat me, and then arrested me. “

Rahim, who had been listening to his father’s account closely, jumps to his feet”. They hit him with their guns and tied his hands, “he exclaims, reliving the scene of his father’s assault.

Akram’s arrest was the most difficult part of his entire experience, he says, because of the terror it inflicted on his children.

“The children clung on to me, screaming, ‘ Let our father go! ‘ But the soldiers ignored their cries.”

The children attempted to follow their father and the armed soldiers, but their grandmother held on and brought them home.

According to Akram, he claimed the charges against him were dropped the day after arriving at a makeshift detention facility in a nearby field.

Because the Israeli soldiers had surrounded the Tulkarem camp and refused to let anyone in after his release, he was unable to return home for another day.

Since that day, Akram has been taking the children to their grandmother’s house whenever there is a raid nearby.

His mother’s house has also been damaged, its contents and front door vandalised, but it is still in better condition than Akram’s.

Being near their grandmother comforts and calms the children, he adds.

While the raid in March was perhaps the most traumatic for his family, Akram’s home sustained the worst damage in September, during an Israeli raid – dubbed” Summer Camps “– on refugee camps in the north of the occupied West Bank, including Tulkarem.

The front wall of Akram’s house was completely destroyed by an Israeli D9 bulldozer at the time, leaving the entire structure level and exposed.

Soldiers allegedly razed several homes around their own, attacking everyone and everything they gazed upon.

” When the bulldozer reached our neighbourhood, we were at my mother’s house. He relates that the machine’s explosion and destruction shook the camp in a way that resembled an earthquake.

After the situation calmed, he rushed home when the building’s majority was reduced to rubble, as he does after every raid.

” Less than 10 days after that first demolition]on September 11], the army blew up another side room with an explosive, starting a fire that filled the entire house with smoke, “he adds.

Akram claims that the raids destroyed more than just their home, as they had a say in how they impacted their lives.

Because of the destruction of the roads, the bus that used to take his kids to school can no longer travel there.

So, now that there is a risk of a sudden military raid, Akram has to walk them there every morning and afternoon.

He says it is also harder for the children to visit their mother, who, since their separation, lives in her family’s home in the Sualma neighbourhood, just five minutes away from their house.

” Raids heavily damaged their mother’s house, so it is not safe for them to stay there either, “he says, adding that there is also&nbsp, the risk posed by raids bulldozers.

As he speaks, Akram looks through a pile of clothes, covered in dust and partially scorched, to see if any of it is usable.

Eventually, he picks out a few items and puts them in a plastic bag”. Thank God, “he exclaims sarcastically” I found half a pair of pyjamas and two shirts. “

Given the constant threats and damage, Akram says”, I’ve stopped trying to repair or even clean the house entirely because, at any moment, the army could raid us again and set us back to square one. “

Akram could be forgiven for thinking of moving his family elsewhere but, he says, he has” no intention to leave”.

” We know the destruction will continue. Now, after each raid, I just remove some of the rubble. Most of the household items are ruined, and we’ve had to get rid of them. “

Because the majority of the house’s windows have been destroyed, Akram claims that sleeping in his house these days is not very different from sleeping on the street.

Dust and dirt constantly contaminate the air, and there is no protection from pests like sewage, which might be present.

For Akram, however, none of this can make him leave.

” If the army comes back and destroys more of my house, or even demolishes it completely, we will stay in our home. We will stay even if the whole thing collapses”.

In an effort to live a somewhat normal life in the ruins of their old home, Akram and the children alternate daily between the living room, the corner where their birds are kept, and the destroyed entrance.

They occasionally stop to greet their neighbors through the gaps that were once their walls as they move.

” Nothing about our lives is normal any more, “he told me.

As Israeli forces continue their ground assault in the area, at least 22 people have died as a result of an Israeli attack on the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza.

The Israeli military issued evacuation orders for northern Gaza on Saturday as the death toll soared, and residents of Jabalia were instructed to move to the south of the enclave.

A week ago, Israel’s military launched a deadly offensive in the Jabalia region, which it claims is intended to stop Hamas’ Palestinians from resitting. The attacks have trapped thousands of Palestinian civilians, international charity Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, said.

Israeli fighter jets bombed a Jabalia apartment block on Friday night, hitting four inhabited homes, and killing 22 people, according to a report from the Palestinian news agency Wafa on Saturday.

At least 30 people were injured, and 14 people remain missing and are believed to be buried under the rubble, according to Wafa.

Hani Mahmoud, a journalist from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, reported on “powerful explosions were audible in the northern part of the Gaza Strip,” adding that many of the injured were “arriving at the hospital either in pieces or soaked in blood.”

The north of the Kamal Adwan Hospital was dangerously close to running out of fuel, and staff claimed Israeli soldiers had ordered them to leave.

Reporting from the facility, Al Jazeera’s Moath al-Kahlout described the weeklong siege as “suffocating”.

The situation is “dire”, he reported, as the hospital has also been ordered by the Israeli military to cease operations. However, he claimed that the hospital continues to treat people from newborns to those who are severely injured.

Food resources are running out.

The escalating violence in northern Gaza “has a disastrous impact on food security for thousands of Palestinian families,” according to the World Food Programme (WFP) on Saturday.

The United Nations agency noted that the main crossings into the north have been closed, noting that no food aid has been arriving since October 1.

Due to air strikes, military ground operations, and evacuation orders, food distribution centers, kitchens, and bakeries have been ordered to close. The only functioning bakery in the north, which is supported by WFP, caught fire after being hit, it said.

“The north is basically cut off and we’re not able to operate there”,   said Antoine Renard, WFP country director for Palestine, adding that “safe and sustained access, it is virtually impossible to reach the people in need”.

WFP said its last remaining supplies in the north – including canned food, wheat flour, high-energy biscuits, and nutrition supplements – have been distributed to shelters, health facilities and kitchens in Gaza City and three shelters.

It is unclear how long these limited food supplies will last if the conflict keeps getting worse, and the consequences for frightened families will be dire.

According to Palestine Red Crescent Society paramedics, a separate strike hit a home in the Tuffah neighborhood in Gaza City, killing at least three people and injuring several more.

New evacuation order

On Saturday, the Israeli military issued instructions to residents in the area of Jabalia to leave. A map of northern Gaza was posted on social media platform X.

“The area must be evacuated immediately via]Salah al-Din Street] to the humanitarian area”, the post said, referring to so-called Israeli-designated humanitarian safe zones between al-Mawasi and Deir el-Balah.

The Israeli military has repeatedly attacked the “humanitarian area,” which is populated by overcrowded tent camps housing about one million Palestinian refugees.

But Palestinians, especially those in the northern parts of the enclave, are refusing to leave their homes, said Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary, reporting from Deir el-Balah.

The Israeli army has conducted this ground operation in Jabalia before. Because they believe there is no safe place across the Gaza Strip, Palestinians prefer to pass away in their homes, she reported. Consequently, they could be killed on their way if they did.

According to MSF project coordinator Sarah Vuylsteke, who issued the evacuation order, “nobody is allowed to enter or depart” from within Jabalia itself, adding that “anyone who tries is being shot.”

Five MSF staff were trapped in&nbsp, Jabalia, she said.

“I don’t know what to do, at any moment we could die. People are starving. I am afraid to stay, and I am also afraid to leave”, she quoted Haydar, an MSF driver, as saying.

MSF had earlier criticized Israel’s “forcefully and violently push thousands of people from northern Gaza to the south” strategy.

Meanwhile, Anas al-Sharif, a journalist for Al Jazeera Arabic in Gaza, reported on X in the early hours of Saturday that Fadi al-Wahidi’s health had “seriously deteriorated.”

As he covered the Israeli assault on Jabalia, al-Wahidi was hit with a live round to the neck on Wednesday. While Deir el-Balah was covering the situation of displaced Palestinians, his colleague Ali al-Attar was wounded and shot.

Since Israel’s war on the Palestinian territory came after Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, a large portion of Gaza has been lost.

Since October 2023, Israeli attacks have claimed at least 42, 175 lives and 98, 336 lives, according to the Gaza-based Ministry of Health on Saturday.

The niece of French far-right leader Marine Le Pen has established her own political party in an effort to bolster the nation’s expanding right-wing bloc.

In an interview with French newspaper Le Figaro on Monday, Marion Marechal, 34, announced the launch of Identite-Libertes (Identity-Freedoms) – or IDL – of which she is president.

She cited the right-wing alliance of parties, which came close to winning the French elections by placing first among the main three political alliances in the first round of voting on June 30 as the “I decided to launch a political movement to contribute to the victory of the national camp.”

A hamstrung National Assembly resulted from the central and leftist blocs joining forces to selectively withdraw candidates in a number of areas to prevent the right-wing from capturing a majority in the second round.

National Rally, the far-right party originally called National Front and founded by Marechal’s grandfather, Jean-Marie Le Pen, itself bagged more than 31 percent of the vote in the National Assembly elections at the end of June, becoming France’s largest party by vote share.

Marechal stated that IDL will work with Le Pen to support his presidential bid in the 2027 election despite being ideologically distinct from National Rally.

Marechal stated that “my goal is to work in a coalition with Marine Le Pen, Jordan Bardella, and Eric Ciotti.” Le Pen is currently the National Rally’s president, and Ciotti is its right-wing party’s leader in France.

Who is Marion Marechal?

Marion Jeanne Caroline Marechal is Marine Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of the National Front, which is now known as the National Rally, and Marion Jeanne Marechal’s granddaughter. Marechal married Italian politician Vincenzo Sofo in 2021 and the couple have one daughter, Clotilde. Marechal also has a daughter that was older than her 2016 divorce from Frenchman Matthieu Decosse.

Marechal was formerly a National Rally party member. When she was elected a member of the National Rally in 2012 at the age of 22, she became the youngest member of the French Assembly in history.

In 2017, she did not seek re-election, however, and also resigned as a regional councillor, before returning to politics in 2022 to join the ranks of Eric Zemmour’s far-right party, Reconquete.

In a break from her family, in 2018 Marechal announced she was changing her name from Marion Marechal-Le Pen, dropping the surname of her grandfather Jean-Marie, known for inflammatory views on immigration and the Holocaust. She now only uses Samuel, her adopted father, who has participated in the National Rally since he was a young child. He married Marechal’s mother, Yann Le Pen – sister of Marine.

In the June 2024 legislative election, Marechal headed Reconquete’s list for the European Parliament. She accused Zemmour of putting too many conditions on any potential alliance and preventing it by negotiating with the National Rally to create a single list of candidates for election.

Marechal was elected to the European Parliament on June 9, 2024 and joined the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group, a centre-right political group within the parliament. Days later, Zemmour accused Marechal of “betrayal” and expelled her from the party on June 12. Marechal said she would serve as an independent.

What is the mission of her new party?

The name of the party – Identité-Libertés (Identity-Freedoms) – sums up its two main policy “pillars”. On the one hand, the party says it aims to defend French identity from immigration and what it calls “Islamisation” as well as to promote France’s Christian heritage. On the other, it seeks to protect freedom of expression and free enterprise.

Marechal predicted that the IDL would abandon the “mental socialism” that governs French fiscal policies.

It would also be “anti-woke”, the term “woke” coming from African-American vernacular to describe someone who is aware of social inequalities such as racial injustice, sexism and denial of LGBTQ rights.

Marechal promised to work with the right-wing bloc in 2022 as the country’s first female prime minister, drawing inspiration from other European success stories, particularly Italy, where Giorgia Meloni led a coalition of three right-wing parties.

Marechal claimed that Zemmour’s split came as he made Le Pen’s National Rally and Ciotti’s Republican Party her principal adversaries while she vowed to form a coalition that would strengthen the left-wing bloc.

“To remain coherent, I could not follow]his] decision”, she said.

The two Le Pen heirs have long been engaged in conflict, especially since Marine Le Pen expelled her father from the party in 2015 after he reiterated that the Holocaust was “a detail of history,” despite her proclamation that she supports her aunt. Marechal called the expulsion a “cruel betrayal”.

Marechal and Le Pen disagree over forming a stronger alliance between centrist parties and the right/far-right, which they both support.

Does the National Rally face a threat from IDL?

Le Pen and other party officials are currently facing charges of allegedly espionage European Union funds, and a new party was created. If found guilty, Le Pen and her co-defendants could face up to 10 years in prison and fines of up to 1 million euros ($1.1m) each.

Le Pen stated to reporters last month that she was confident that there would be proof that there had not been any wrongdoing when she arrived at the criminal tribunal in Paris.

The National Rally won’t be significantly harmed by the IDL, according to observers.

Posting on X, some of Zemmour’s supporters have predicted Marechal’s party will become a “satellite” of the National Rally. Some have warned about the possibility of a significant fragmentation in the right-wing camp if they continue to form a bloc.

According to Daniel Stockemer, a professor in the University of Ottawa’s department of political studies, the IDL would not be a viable political form.

“This attempt from Marion Marechal is more a sign of desperation”, Stockemer, whose research focuses on radical right-wing parties in Europe, said. She believed that starting a party on her own would be the only way to continue her political activism.

The Uzbek pop singer Nasiba Abdullaeva accidentally jumped on an Afghan radio station while driving from Tashkent to Samarkand after a performance in 1983 and was enthralled by a song that was playing.

“From its first notes, the song fascinated me, and I fell in love with it”, Abdullaeva recalled. In order for her to quickly memorize the lines, she requested the driver to pull over. “I didn’t have a pen and paper, so I just asked everyone to be silent”.

Aziz Ghaznawi’s original song, “I Lost My Dream,” was later adapted by Abdullaeva into a cover for the groove-heavy Aarezoo Gom Kardam (I Lost My Dream), which was wistfully sung in Dari. Released in 1984, it shot to popularity in Central Asia, the Caucasus – and even became a hit in Afghanistan.

Forty years later, that cover is the opening song on a new compilation released in August by Grammy-nominated Ostinato Records called Synthesizing the Silk Roads: Uzbek Disco, Tajik Folktronica, Uighur Rock, Tatar Jazz from 1980s Soviet Central Asia, which unearths an eclectic sonic era from the dusty crates of history.

The anaesthetizing drone of state-approved folk ballads frequently dominated the airwaves in the shadow of the Iron Curtain, which bounded the former Soviet Union and its communist allies from the West.

However, a vibrant musical underground was flourishing in regions where cultures had interacted for centuries during Soviet rule in the 1970s and 1980s. Artists from Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and beyond were forging a sound unlike anything heard in the USSR.

Imagine Kraftwerk, a pioneer of German electronic music, traveling through the shadowy alleyways of the communist experiment in search of their lost in Samarkand bazaar. A postcard with neon lighting from a region where East and West collided, all while Soviet censors watched closely.

Synthesizing the Silk Roads is a potpourri of experimental fusion: the lush strings of the ballad Paidot Kardam (Found a Sweetheart) by Tajik singer Khurmo Shirinova, the Italo-disco-drenched Lola, Yashlik’s distorted Uighur rock salvo of Radost (Joy) and the melancholic twang of a bouzouki on Meyhane, influenced by Greek refugees who fled to Uzbekistan during the civil war in the 1940s.

The release serves as a correction for myths about the USSR and a time capsule of the region’s music, according to Vik Sohonie, the label’s boss.

If we’re talking about the European side, “the idea that the Soviet Union was this closed-off place that did not engage with the world might be true.” On the Asian side, it was a different story”, Sohonie said.

“This album provides a lot more insight into the Soviet Union’s cultural centers.”

All roads lead to Tashkent

Described as the “central nervous system” of the ancient world by historian Peter Frankopan, the Silk Road connected traders, mystics and empires from China to the Mediterranean.

These caravanserai-studded highways of inner Asia were probably the site of the first “world music” jam sessions, according to ethnomusicologist Theodore Levin, as musicians “adapted unfamiliar instruments to perform local music while simultaneously introducing non-native rhythmic patterns, scales, and performance techniques.”

When the Soviet Union was in charge of the latter half of the 20th century, those syncretic roads reopened like a cosmic fault line to produce an alchemical brew of 808 beats battling traditional lutes, funky bass lines mingling with Tatar flutes, and Uzbek vocalists belt out disco anthems.

Rewind to the 1940s to learn more about this cultural explosion. 16 million people were forcibly relocated from the front lines to the inner east as the Nazis stormed Europe. These transfers were made for a variety of reasons, including to safeguard military and economic assets, maintain internal security, exploit labor resources, and consolidate control over a vast multiethnic territory.

Echoing its cosmopolitan past, Uzbekistan’s doors were opened to Russians, Tajiks, Uighurs and Tatars displaced by Joseph Stalin’s transfer programme. On suspicion of being Japanese spies, about 172, 000 Koreans were previously deported from the Soviet Far East to Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan in 1937.

After the war in 1945, the Uzbek capital turned into a haven for scientists, artists, and – crucially – music engineers who would set up the Tashkent Gramplastinok vinyl record-pressing plant. A network of manufacturing facilities run by the state monopolist label Melodiya produced nearly 200 million records annually in the 1970s.

After the 1960s rock dens flourished, disco fever swept dance floors in the late 1970s with about 20, 000 public discos attracting 30 million visitors annually across the USSR.

Many clubs gained notoriety for trading “bourgeois extravagances” like Western cigarettes, vinyl and clothes, giving rise to an underground “disco mafia”. Uzbekistan’s Bukharan Jewish community was integral to the scene, leveraging their diasporic ties to import foreign records and cutting-edge Japanese Korg and American Moog synthesisers.

In Soviet Central Asia, boundaries were always shifting, and political suppression existed alongside glitzy discotheques.

The region’s progressive music was the result of Soviet policies intended to promote cultural diversity, according to Leora Eisenberg, a doctoral scholar at Harvard University studying cultural production in Soviet Central Asia. To cater to a multitude of ethnicities, the USSR institutionalised “acceptable forms of nationhood” into social and cultural forms.

After Stalin’s death in 1953, Nikita Khrushchev ushered in a “thaw” that encouraged cultural expression. Government-funded opera houses, theatres, ballets and music conservatories proliferated as “the state tried to Europeanise national culture while simultaneously promoting it”, Eisenberg explained. Through state-approved youth leagues known as Komsomols, which included disco spaces, were even permitted to operate.

Dubbed the “pearl of the Soviet East”, Tashkent’s historical and geographical importance made it essential to Moscow’s plans to modernise what it saw as a “backward” society into a communist success story. Tashkent hosted cultural festivals like the Afro-Asian Writers’ Association in 1958 and the biennial Tashkent Festival of African, Asian, and Latin American Film in 1968 as part of Soviet efforts to reach decolonized states.

By the 1950s, according to Eisenberg, “musicians from Uzbekistan were adopting the styles of foreign countries because of this political need to cater to the nonaligned world,” referring to nations that formed a neutral stance during the Cold War era.

Jazz that was previously outlawed now enjoyed state support. The inaugural Central Asian Jazz Festival was held in Tashkent in 1968, later moving to Ferghana, 314km (195 miles) southeast of the capital, in 1977. In Central Asia, this promoted a vibrant jazz scene in the 1970s and 1980s, led by Kazakh ensembles Boomerang and Medeo, and by Turkmen ensembles Gunesh and Firyuza, who fuses traditional sounds with jazz, rock, and electronic elements.

Then there was the folk-rock group Yalla, which Eisenberg called the “Uzbek Beatles”. Yalla, who is still active today, contributed significantly to the development of Central Asian music for a wider Soviet and international audience by blending Uzbek melodies with Western rock arrangements.

Waiting to be (re) discovered

These Soviet-era artefacts were mostly forgotten after the USSR’s dissolution in 1991 and Uzbekistan’s subsequent independence. Anvar Kalandarov, a record collector from the Uzbekistan, lamented the loss of the country’s cultural memory, lamenting “our people do not know this music today at all.” Much of this music has not yet been digitalized, and it is still stored in analog formats.

It was unsold vinyl pressed at Tashkent’s sole record plant combined with live TV recordings that comprised Ostinato’s compilation, sourced with the help of Kalandarov, whose label Maqom Soul co-compiled and curated the album.

After two decades spent scouring flea markets, garages, radio and private archives, Kalandarov amassed a sizable record collection that eventually caught the attention of Sohonie.

“It’s not a part of the world where there’s prolific music documentation”, Sohonie said. Since he had been considering a release in Central Asia since 2016, Sohonie jumped at the chance Kalandarov gave in last year. “Anvar contacted me, asking if I wanted to trade some records. I thought, ‘ Why don’t we do a compilation? ‘”

Sohonie and Kalandarov sifted through the thousands of records to choose the 15 songs that made it onto the recording at their meeting in Tashkent in October of last year. Although the licensing for all the tracks was initially difficult, the musicians’ surviving families were the ones who received the money.

Some of those musicians were making music because they risked their lives and safety.

Davron Gaipov, the frontman of the Uzbek band Original, was charged with organizing events for which prohibited substances were used and imprisoned in a Siberian labor camp for five years. The album features two electropop bangers, Sen Kaidan Bilasan (How Do You Know) and Bu Nima Bu (What’s This). Gaipov released two albums shortly after their 1983 release.

Others had darker fates, like Enver Mustafayev, founder of the Crimean jazz group Minarets of Nessef, whose track Instrumental simmers with sanguine horns. Mustafayev’s lyrics in Crimean Tatar, a then-criminalised language, and his political activism with a separatist movement earned him a seven-year prison sentence after a vicious KGB assault. Three days after his 1987 release, he was discovered dead from suspected tuberculosis.

Unfortunatly, Kalandarov was able to locate one of the Nessef band’s remaining minarets and turn up the tapes that had escaped the KGB’s possessions.

Musicians like Abdullaeva are fond of Soviet culture. “In my opinion, I feel the music from that time was a higher quality and more diverse. It had character. Everyone had their own sound”, she said.

That sentiment also spanned the time when artists were admired. We were treated with respect and were regarded as stars. Sadly, it is not the case today”.

Decentring the West

This rich sonic tapestry was buried by a sector too preoccupied with studying the rise of grunge in the 1990s or listening to some distant genre-bending recordings in Almaty or Dushanbe after the Soviet Union collapsed three decades ago.

In line with the decolonial spirit that underpins Ostinato’s earlier music anthologies that span the Horn of Africa, Haiti, and Cabo Verde, Sohonie said Synthesizing the Silk Roads is appropriate in Central Asia at a time when Chinese investment is poured into infrastructure projects and new Silk Roads are revived, like Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative.

“It’s self-evident from the music that the centres of history are not what we are told”, he said. “If we are entering a post-Western world, it’s probably wise if we decentre the West in our pillars of imagination”.

Kalandarov hopes that highlighting Central Asian music will change how people perceive it. Uzbekistan is “opening up” to the world. We have a beautiful history and culture, and we want to share it with everyone”.