The name Alim Jan might seem unfamiliar, yet if you have heard any Uygur music from northwestern China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, there is a very strong likelihood that Alim Jan was one of the musicians.
For example, in the Oscar-winning film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, he plays a rawap (a plucked instrument of the Uygur ethnic group) in scenes showing the life of Luo Xiaohu (played by Taiwan actor Chang Chen) in the deserts of Xinjiang.
Furthermore, it was Alim Jan who taught Chang to sing a Xinjiang folk song in the Uygur language for the film. It is a soulful love song from Alim Jan's birthplace Ili, in western Xinjiang. Its title Hawargul is the name of a beautiful girl.
Hawargul is one of the many Ili folk songs that he knows.
"Ili folk music is mostly very lyrical," said Alim Jan, 43, a teacher in the music school of the Central University of Nationalities in Beijing. "While the music of southern Xinjiang is so lively that it makes you dance, Ili music is more likely to make you muse," he said.
Born in 1961 in Yining, seat of the local government of the Ili Kazak Autonomous Prefecture, some 500 kilometers to the west of Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang, Alim Jan grew up immersed in traditional folk music.
His father Tursun was a very good folk musician, who could play all 12 sets of muqam, traditional large-scale Uygur music and dance suites. The father was called Tursun Tanbur by local people because of his skill on the tanbur (a long-necked Uygur lute).
At the age of 7, the boy began to study the tanbur and another plucked instrument called the dutar with his father. However, his father died of cerebral thrombosis only two years later.
Alim Jan carried on his studies by himself, and he began to play the rawap, as well as the tanbur and dutar.
"The rawap, tanbur and dutar are the key high-pitched, middle-pitched and low-pitched plucked instruments of the Uygurs, respectively," said Alim Jan. "They are quite different in character."
In 1975, the Central University of Nationalities recruited minority students from Ili for the school's music department. Because of his skill on the rawap, Alim Jan, then 14 years old, was enrolled as a preparatory student at the university.
When he arrived in Beijing, he could only speak Uygur, and did not know a word of Chinese putonghua. However, this seeming disadvantage actually helped him greatly in playing Uygur music, for he found that Uygur people educated in putonghua had difficulty in performing traditional Uygur music.
"The relationship between Uygur music and the language is so close that only those who have studied in Uygur schools can really get into the heart of Uygur music," said Alim Jan.
This is also the reason why the many Xinjiang folk songs transcribed by Han composer Wang Luobin (1913-96) sound very different from the original Uygur versions. The song Raise Your Kerchief (Xianqi Nide Gaitou Lai), is a good example, according to the musician.
Of course Alim Jan eventually learned to speak putonghua. At the Afunti Restaurant in Beijing, where Alim Jan performs every night, he usually sings Raise Your Kerchief in both putonghua and Uygur to let listeners hear the difference. The Uygur version features more syncopation and ornamentation than the putonghua version.
"Wang's adaptions of Xinjiang folk songs sound too plain to Uygurs, but he has done a very good job of spreading Xinjiang music to more of the nation's people," said Alim Jan.
When he entered the Central University of Nationalities in 1975, there was no resident teacher of rawap there. The university had to invite Obulaxim, a well-known rawap player from the city of Kashi in Xinjiang to teach him. However, Obulaxim stayed for only one year before returning to Kashi.
In order not to lose touch with the essence of Uygur folk music, Alim Jan asked the university to let him study in Xinjiang. The university approved his plan, and he spent a year in Kashi continuing his studies with Obulaxim.
After his graduation in 1979, he became the first permanent teacher of rawap at the university.
However, still unsatisfied with his knowledge of the instrument, Alim Jan went to Xinjiang again in 1980. He studied for another year with two more rawap players: Yari in Yining and Mijit in Urumqi.
"My three teachers were the best rawap players in Xinjiang," says Alim Jan. "They are still the best today, although I hope some day to surpass them."
From them, Alim Jan has learned to play folk songs from various parts of Xinjiang, as well as traditional instrumental music and the muqam suites.
"Muqam is the highest form of Uygur music," said he. "Most of the Uygur music performed today comes from this great treasure house."
There are 12 muqam suites, each of which contains about two hours of music. Alim Jan can already play four muqam suites, and he is working on more.
"You can play muqam music with an orchestra, and you can also play it with 10 persons, three persons, two persons or even one person," he said. "I play muqam on all three instruments that I know: rawap, tanbur and dutar."
At the Afunti Restaurant in the Qianguaibang Hutong near Chaoyangmen of Chaoyang District, Alim Jan always plays an instrumental work from a muqam and sings some folk songs with his accompanist Obulkasim, a handdrum player from the Central Song and Dance Ensemble of Nationalities.
"I can play four complete muqam and over 1,000 folk songs," said Alim Jan. "They are all in my head."
In September, he will release two CDs, one on rawap and the other on tanbur. They will include a wide range of Xinjiang folk songs, including Youth Dance and Why Are Flowers so Red, as well as Uygur instrumental works such as Spring in the Tianshan Mountains and Rak Muqam Biriji Dastan. Dastan are long poetic narrative songs of the Uygur people.
"Uygur music is a broad genre, and Ili, Kashi, Hotan, Aksu -- the music of every place in Xinjiang -- has its own regional flavour," said Alim Jan. "Every Uygur musician has his own way of playing. I don't play the same as other musicians, and they don't play the same as I do."
What he is referring to is the individual ornamentation that is added to the musical score, which is the key to regional or personal styles. When Alim Jan plays muqam, he improvises different ornaments every time.
Having lived in Beijing for nearly 30 years, he never forgets to refresh his playing by keeping in touch with what is going on in music circles in Xinjiang. Every time he goes back to Xinjiang, he buys hundreds of tapes and CDs, and listens to them time after time.
He also maintains his Uygur lifestyle, especially drinking and singing together with friends. Sometimes he has to turn off his mobile to get a rest from the endless round of jam sessions.
Alim Jan's music has been heard in many parts of the world. He performed in Malaysia in 1990 and in Mongolia in 1991. In 1993 he toured Netherlands and Belgium as a member of Xadiyana, a group of Uygur musicians. He has also performed at the World University Folk Art Festival in South Korea in 1997 and at the Festival of Asian Arts in Hong Kong in 1998.
"When I was younger, I tried to play faster and faster," said Alim Jan. "As I grow older and older, I am beginning to understand music more and more deeply, and now I know how to enrich my style of music."
(China Daily July 20, 2004)
