This first interaction between western and eastern sounds took place at the Tajik National Conservatory when the Swiss band “Florian Favre Trio” conducted a master class. Around 80 students, composers, teachers and just jazz lovers arrived early in order to share the experience with the Swiss musicians. As it was hard to find a seat in the room, some people even queued up in the corridor trying to at least catch the sounds coming from the stage.
The audience was thrilled when the trio played the Tajik melody “Qal’abandi”. The band had obviously done their homework, which was to come up with their own style of the national melody for the Ethno Jazz festival. Interlaced with jazz, the tune sounded amazingly different but recognisable enough for people to sing along. The inspirational atmosphere encouraged two shy students - Rustam and Soleh – to voluntarily join the band for improvisation. It was the first time either of them had performed to an audience and they were a bit nervous. Rustam’s trumpet imitation and Soleh’s drum performance filled the room with the smell and soul of the 1920s, the time when this music style became extremely popular. Loud applause for the performance were a precious gift for Rustam and Soleh.
“I have heard people imitating the trumpet before, but this guy was extremely good,” confessed Lorenz Beyeler, bass player of the trio.
Florian, the Swiss band pianist, shared some magic tricks of how to imitate other instruments with the piano. The audience was very impressed when he put a pile of CDs inside the piano and made it sound like a drum. In gratitude for their efforts, another student played the melody using the Tajik string-instrument “Pamiri sitar”. Florian accompanied the melody and managed to add some Swissness to the traditional instrument. Local people mostly associate music from the sitar with the waves of the pure river and fresh mountain air; it was a good experiment to see how these two styles of music, which sometimes share a common feeling, could be combined.
“I really loved Florian and his band. I listened to a lot of Swiss musicians and these guys were very good. The improvisation together was excellent. There was a lot of listening going on and it was a brilliant mix," said Peter Coish, an American musician who was also invited to the master class.
Lorenz Beyeler agreed: “Sometimes the chemistry just doesn’t work. But here, it worked extremely well. The advantage with master classes is that you usually have very talented and interested people who come and play with you and it mostly works.”
When the master class was finished, the audience immediately gathered around the Swiss musicians and continued to play and sing with them. The language barrier no longer seemed to be an obstacle for them.
When musician come together from different countries, they don’t need a common language. As Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the famous American poet, said: “Music is the universal language of mankind.”
