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Where Do the Starlings Fly?
As a child, she often wondered where the starlings from her native village flew to. Imagine her surprise when, upon arriving in Sweden, she learned they wintered there, in the country that invited Tatarstan composer Masguda Shamshutdinova for a year-long stay.
Masguda Khanum, were your works known to the Swedish audience?
Since 1990. My Dastan about the Great Bulgars was played on Swedish radio. My pieces were also performed live; the cantata Children of Adam was heard in churches in Stockholm and Västerås. Local Tatars told me the name of Allah was mentioned fifty times under the arches of a Christian church, and no one was offended. In fact, they applauded, though that’s unusual for such concerts.
Where did you live?
They prepared a cottage for me, forty minutes from the city, just for me. It’s normal there. But imagine someone from the ‘90s in Russia, where going out at night was scary. So, I rented an apartment from Zulfiya-Khanum, a cook at the Turkish embassy. I didn’t regret it: I ate like a Turkish ambassador and learned Turkish. I also had to learn English, as I gave a three-hour lecture in it about Tatar folk music and its features. I even sang.
What was the purpose of your trip?
I interned at the Department of Folkmusic of Royal University College of Music in Stockholm
I studied modern techniques for processing folk music and contemporary composing methods. Under leading experts, I researched Tatar and Swedish folk music. I found that both share similar ways of decorating melodies in long songs. For example, Tatars stretch vowels and shift tones up and down. This vocal play exists in Swedish folklore too.
They say Irish music is also close to Tatar music…
Different peoples, despite geographic distance and lifestyles, can connect through music. Folk music is an ethnic group’s most valuable treasure, its face, like a coded diagram that reveals the essence of a people.
Masguda Khanum, you’re a renowned composer of avant-garde music. Why such a focus on folklore?
Without folk music, my works wouldn’t exist. I don’t struggle when composing because I draw from the folk treasure trove. For twenty years, I’ve collected material and built a rich collection. When I visit a village, I can instantly spot a house where someone will sing a beautiful song. The house itself seems to sing. Believe me, I’ve never been wrong. Interestingly, Swedes have a huge interest in folk music, despite being such a developed country. We could learn from them.
Did you ever want to stay there?
Life there is so comfortable you barely notice it—everything is for the person. But sometimes I’d wake up at night, terrified, feeling like I was still in Sweden. The first month was exciting, but then homesickness hit. To cope, I worked a lot. I wrote the symphony On the Roads of the Vikings there, trying to capture through time the sense of sound the Tatar people had when meeting Scandinavians.
Did you, a Tatar, stand out among Swedes?
Definitely. Despite my brisk movements in Tatarstan, to Swedes, I seemed very graceful. We think Eastern submissiveness is a thing of the past, but they found my eyes striking. We try to make our eyes look bigger with makeup, but they find our unique eye shape—Rustem Kutuy called them “flying eyes”—beautiful.
Do you plan to return?
We’ll see. My Swedish supervisor and I planned interstate projects to study folk music development and identify points our intuition senses, for future theorists. But that’s still in the works. By the way, in letters, people ask how I’m coping with Russia’s crisis. I reply: no depression, I haven’t lost money, I’m working actively, and I can’t live without Tatarstan’s breeze.
Interviewed by Gulnur Gaynullina
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