Diploma program

Diploma. Four years. An intensive course in Tajik-Uzbek classical music (Shashmaqam). Studies include performance, traditional prosody and poetics as well as music theory. The program is limited to an elite group of students, and the diploma is validated by the Ministry of Education.

Shashmaqam is the title given to the sophisticated, refined classical instrumental music that flourished in the great cities of Central Asia over many centuries. It has its roots in Samarkand and Bukhara where the musicians and the public comprised Tajiks, Uzbeks and the Jews of Central Asia. The Academy of Shashmaqam is sponsored by the Aga Khan Music Initiative in Central Asia (www.akdn.org/music/akmica) which supports a group of exceptional musical tradition bearers who are revitalising important musical repertoires throughout Central Asia by transmitting their traditions to young musicians through a comprehensive education to a high standard. It involves master-musicians working in self-initiated music centres and schools within guild-like networks, developing new materials and methodologies for teaching traditional music and establishing workshops for building high-quality musical instruments. The program was inaugurated in 2003 and currently operates in Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. There is a project to open a special music school for gifted children, using oral transmission for teaching classical art song and instrumental music.

June 2020