| Duration: | 12'26'' |
``Osh Bazaar'' --- program notes
Anders Vinjar - 2004
My history book back in school told a tale about the caravans on the
Silk-Road, bringing silk and other treasures to Europe.
It told about
camels loaded somewhere in China, wandering for weeks through
dangerous and haphazard landscapes, ending up in ancient Europe - that is
if they were not demolished by robbers. With them came a new number:
zero, and the art of book-printing.
A recent travel in Kyrgyzstan gave me the possibility to rediscover the Silk-Road as something different and still richer: a widespread and multifaceted structure of cultures, cities, oasis --- spread out over rich soil and dry deserts --- a gigantic and dynamic network of peoples, transports and cultural exchange in time and space.
In 1995 our world celebrated the origin of the Turkish national epos "Manas" one thousand years earlier. In the year of 995 the Silk-Road had already existed as a network exchanging trades and culture for 1500 years. It continued to prove decisive for the development of our world for 500 years to come.
The title "Osh Bazaar" is lent from a gigantic bazaar in the capitol of Kyrgyzstan. In this centre the whole world meets, traders from near and far, peasants, citizens, politicians, youngsters, tourists. A chaotic mosaic of goods, smells, colours, tongues, sounds.
Actual sounds, impressions from the market, and the dynamics in structures like the Silk-Road in time and space have formed this piece.
