Hi all,

Our guest today once shared with me a fascinating story. Back in 1981, when the Uzbek pop group Yalla was touring Uzbekistan, they passed through the town of Uchkuduk — a name worthy of a song. Yurii Entin, one of the band’s lyricists, supposedly wrote it in just 40 minutes. Little did he know that his quick scribbles would go on to make history in Uzbek and Soviet pop music.

Uchkuduk, a song about a small town in Uzbekistan, became so popular that the authorities banned it from the airwaves for an entire year, fearing it would draw attention to the area’s main industry: uranium mining. According to legend, the song made the band so recognizable that when its frontman, Farrukh Zakirov, once came to the Kremlin Palace for a concert, a security guard simply said: “Oh, Uchkuduk — come right through.”

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This episode is a special one: we’ll talk about Central Asian music in Soviet times, and about the history of the region as told through music. Joining us is Leora Eisenberg, a fifth-year PhD student at Harvard University, where she studies Soviet and Central Asian history, with a special focus on Soviet estrada, in other words, the pop music, of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.

Leora has kindly shared with us one of her favorite playlists of Soviet Central Asian estrada. You can find it here:

My fellow Poles will even find a little surprise there: one of the songs is a Kazakh remake of Szła dzieweczka do laseczka, a folk tune that needs no introduction.

Hope you will enjoy this one!

Have a great end of the week,

— Agnieszka

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