Calling Out Sting for his Performance in Uzbekistan

Sting in the pay of tyrannical Uzbekistan regime

Sting accepted more than £1m to play for the Uzbek dictator's daughter, reports Marina Hyde



Sting with Gulnara Karimova at a fashion show in Uzbekistan. Photograph: Getty

From the Lost in showbiz blog of the Guardian.

Once again we must ponder the question "how much money is enough?", inspired by reports that Sting accepted between £1m and £2m to perform for the glory of the brutal despotic regime in Uzbekistan.

The services of Sting - whose personal fortune is estimated well north of £150m - were engaged by Gulnara Karimova, the daughter and anointed heir of dictator Islam Karimov. To explore Islam Karimov's human rights record in full would take too long: suffice to say he is condemned approximately every 10 minutes by organisations from the UN to Amnesty, accused of such delights as boiling his enemies, slaughtering his poverty-stricken people when they protest, and conscripting armies of children for slave labour. Oh, and the Aral Sea on which his country sits - once the world's fourth biggest lake - has lost 80% of its volume, partly as a result of Karimov siphoning it off to intensively irrigate his remote desert cotton fields.

Whether he is a perfect fit for self-styled eco-warrior and humanitarian Sting is a matter for you to decide: what is beyond dispute is that in October, the former Police frontman agreed to travel to Tashkent and effectively headline Gulnara Karimova's alleged arts festival.

Unfortunately, people have now found out about the jaunt, and so many of them have misunderstood the reasoning behind it as financially motivated that Sting has been forced to issue a statement.

"I played in Uzbekistan a few months ago," he begins. "The concert was organized by the president's daughter and I believe sponsored by Unicef."

You can believe it all you like, Sting, but it's absolute cobblers - Lost in Showbiz has checked it out with Unicef, who tactfully describe themselves as "quite surprised" by your claim.

"I supported wholeheartedly the cultural boycott of South Africa under the apartheid regime," Sting continues, in response to those who wonder why he did not refuse the invitation, "because it was a special case and specifically targeted the younger demographic of the ruling white middle class."

Chop-logic, sir! But go on.

"I am well aware of the Uzbek president's appalling reputation in the field of human rights as well as the environment. I made the decision to play there in spite of that. I have come to believe that cultural boycotts are not only pointless gestures, they are counter-productive, where proscribed states are further robbed of the open commerce of ideas and art and as a result become even more closed, paranoid and insular."

Mm. Even if you accept Sting's live performances as "ideas and art", you can't really help but question this notion of "open commerce", considering the tickets for his concert cost more than 45 times the average monthly salary in Uzbekistan. 45 times! As for his distaste for the regime, the picture above shows Sting being repulsed by it all at a fashion show during the "cultural" week, which also seems to have served as a vehicle for promoting Gulnara Karimova's jewellery range for stratospherically expensive Swiss firm Chopard. She's the one sitting right next to him.

"I seriously doubt whether the President of Uzbekistan cares in the slightest whether artists like myself come to play in his country," concludes Sting. "He is hermetically sealed in his own medieval, tyrannical mindset."

You will note that Sting conspicuously declines to deflect the heat by stating that he donated all or indeed any of his monstrous fee to charity. And I could go on - but at this point it feels right to hand over to former British ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray.

"This really is transparent bollocks," observes Murray on his blog. "He did not take a guitar and jam around the parks of Tashkent. He got paid over a million pounds to play an event specifically designed to glorify a barbarous regime. Is the man completely mad?

"Why does he think it was worth over a million quid to the regime to hear him warble a few notes?

"I agree with him that cultural isolation does not help. I am often asked about the morality of going to Uzbekistan, and I always answer - go, mix with ordinary people, tell them about other ways of life, avoid state owned establishments and official tours. What Sting did was the opposite. To invoke Unicef as a cover, sat next to a woman who has made hundreds of millions from state forced child labour in the cotton fields, is pretty sick."

Well quite. And yet, to misquote his worship, I seriously doubt whether Sting cares in the slightest whether shmucks like Craig and us question his probity. He is hermetically sealed in his own self-righteous mindset.

Still, him accepting a wedge from despots, Trudie making films for Tesco - it must be said that the House of Sumner has moved into a most intriguing era of late, and we shall redouble the focus on its activities.

Ilyas Malayev, 72, Uzbek Musician and Poet, Dies

New York Times
May 7, 2008
Ilyas Malayev, 72, Uzbek Musician and Poet, Dies
By WILLIAM GRIMES

Ilyas Malayev, a musician and poet renowned in Uzbekistan and transplanted to Queens, where he was a legend among fellow Bukharan Jews, died on Friday in Flushing. He was 72 and lived in Forest Hills.

The cause was pancreatic cancer, said Lana Levitin, his manager.

Before emigrating from his native land in Central Asia, Mr. Malayev won fame and official plaudits in the former Soviet Union for his interpretation of the shash maqam, a body of folk melodies and songs that originated as the court music of feudal Bukhara. He also performed his own songs, and wrote lyric poetry in several languages, which he published in the United States under the titles “Milk and Sugar” and “Devon.” Still, he struggled to build a new creative life after immigrating to America in 1992.

“He’s one of maybe half a dozen people in the world who has such a deep knowledge of the shash maqam,” said Walter Z. Feldman, an expert on Ottoman Turkish music, told a reporter for The New York Times in 1997. “What Malayev knows almost nobody knows.”

Mr. Malayev was born in Mary and grew up in Kattakurgan, a small town near Bukhara, where he learned to play the tar and the tambur, string instruments similar to the lute, as well as the violin. He also applied himself to the shash maqam, studying with local teachers and listening to recordings made in the time of the last emir of Bukhara.

In 1951 he moved to Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, where he performed in various state-supported ensembles. He appeared with the Uzbek Song and Dance Ensemble from 1952 to 1960, the Ensemble of Singers and Dancers of the Peoples of the World from 1953 to 1956, and the Folk and Variety Orchestras of Uzbekistan Radio from 1956 to 1962. From 1962 to 1992 he performed with the Symphonic Variety Orchestra of Uzbekistan Radio.

Mr. Malayev achieved great popularity as a variety performer and wedding entertainer, combining comedy routines, poetry recitations, excerpts from the shash maqam and his own songs. His performances in stadiums drew tens of thousands of Uzbeks, and his appeal reached beyond his native republic.

“No occasion would be complete without Malayev,” he told a reporter for The New York Times in 1997. “When Brezhnev came to visit, my wife and I always sang.”

Despite his reputation, Mr. Malayev was unable to publish his poetry in the Soviet Union. He attributed this to anti-Semitism. He belonged to a small Jewish minority in a predominantly Muslim (although officially atheist) society. Traditionally, Jews performed as musicians at the court of the Bukharan emirs.

After emigrating, Mr. Malayev found his way to Queens, where an enclave of Bukharan Jews was developing in Rego Park and Forest Hills. He became a central figure in the area’s cultural life, organizing local musicians and singers into an ensemble, Maqam, for which he was an instrumentalist and music director. As the Ilyas Malayev Ensemble, the group released a compact disc on the Shanachie label in 1997 called “At the Bazaar of Love.” After Mr. Malayev’s death, the group was renamed the Ilyas Malayev Ensemble Maqam.

Besides his wife, Muhabbat Shamayeva, a vocalist with the ensemble, Mr. Malayev is survived by two sons, Radj, of Forest Hills, and Gera, of Leonia, N.J.; three daughters, Nargis and Viola, both of Forest Hills, and Bella, of Tel Aviv; 15 grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.

“While other Central Asian émigré musicians plugged in and sang pop songs in the hope of appealing to a younger crowd, Malayev never abandoned his belief in the power of traditional music and poetry to stir the spirit,” said Theodore Levin, whose book “The Hundred Thousand Fools of God: Musical Travels in Central Asia (and Queens, New York)” includes an affectionate portrait of Mr. Malayev. “A listener didn’t need to understand Uzbek or Tajik to feel the power of his songs and poetry.”