Turkmen Victory Music

While President Serdar Berdymuhamedov joined the other Central Asian leaders in Moscow's Red Square at the last moment, so as not to leave  big brother Russia alone, there have been parades and musical concerts at home since the beginning of May.

Ashgabat (AsiaNews) - Turkmenistan has also joined in the celebrations of the Victory over Nazism, the pivot of its post-Soviet identity, but as always it takes on a very folkloric note, to exalt its own diversity.

While President Serdar Berdymuhamedov joined the other Central Asian leaders in Moscow's Red Square at the last moment, so as not to leave his Russian big brother alone, there have been particularly intense and solemn parades and musical concerts at home since the beginning of May.

The main event was the 'Music of Victory', held at the 'Maja Kulevaja' National Conservatory, where not only were performances accompanied by dances and figures in national costumes, but the participation of students, teachers and 'folk musicians', including a children's choir, the children of Conservatory employees, was also highlighted.

The large audience lined up the few war veterans with droves of jubilant children, and the show was repeated in various halls and theatres around the country.

The concert was led by the country's most famous aksakal, composer and maestro Atageld Garjagdiev, accompanied by soprano Sukhana Tujlieva, who dramatically performed the song Uruzdan gelmedik adam, 'Brother who did not return from the war'.

Baritone Nury Khalmamedov then performed 'Remembrance of the Soldier', joining tenor Mejlis Muratgeldiev in Mirazdar, 'The Heir'. Together with the students, the legendary 'Dance of the Storks' was then performed, complete with fluttering birds above the hall.

In the background, a video shows highlights from the war chronicle of the Great Patriotic War, and a few minutes of silence are reserved for the fallen. Another concert features the 'Waltz before the War' by Pavel Aedonitsky, a great composer who died in 2013, who had set to solemn music an 1840 song by his great-grandfather Fedor, an Orthodox Church cantor who wanted to commemorate the victory over Napoleon.

Aedonitsky himself had been a young war doctor, saving many people in Russia on the 'Karl Libknecht' naval clinic along the Volga: he did not want to attribute heroic merits to himself, but asked to be admitted to the Conservatory.

In other rooms, the Hymn of the Defence of the Fatherland resounds, along with the song 'Holy War' by composer Aleksandr Aleksandrov, to the words of poet Vasily Lebedev, accompanied by the brass orchestra 'Brass Star' led by Kakadzhan Khudajberdyev.

Then, on the dutar, the two-stringed lute typical of Central Asia, the piece on 'Tragic Destiny' is performed, in which Lacin Khudajberdyeva, the conductor's wife, is dressed in the traditional image of the 'Mother-Patriot', a national costume with silver decorations, to recall 'the generous gift of Turkmen mothers' who sacrificed themselves during wars, even donating all their jewellery.

During the Second World War, seven and a half tons of gold and silver, 80 per cent of all precious metals in the country, were collected from the mothers.

At the end of the concerts, children in military uniforms, who form the group called 'The Little Country', parade and sing the peace song 'The Soldier's Holiday' walking and running across the stage, greeting the audience and invoking a world of peace and joy, so necessary to the times we are living in, and which Turkmenistan always tries to stage.

• Turkmenistan
• Russia
• Victory Day
• folklore
• patriotism
• war
• peace