Musical instruments occupy an important part of the collection of the Kokand State Museum-Reserve

For a long time, reed, wood, stone, bones, metal, leather, silk, animal skins and guts, horse dung, pumpkin, clay and much more have been used for their manufacture. At the same time, since the base of the instruments is wooden, they became a part of the wood carving collection.

Uzbek musical instruments are divided into four groups: strings, winds, percussion and self-sounding. String subspecies: plucked string – dombra, dutar, tanbur, Afghan rubab, Kashgar rubab, kanun. Bowed – kobuz, gidzhak, sato; string percussion – chang. The subspecies of wind instruments are labial nai, chupon nai, gadzhir nai. Reed – sibizgi, koshnai, surnay, bulaman; ear cushions – karnay; keyboard-pneumatic – accordion (accordion, Khorezm); drums – doira, nagora, dovul; self-sounding – kairak, koshuk (spoons), safael, zang. Finally, we can mention such devices that were not created as musical instruments, but were used in the performance of katta ashula – dishes, trays, etc. Musical were created by famous masters Mukhtorjon Murtazoev, Moidinjon Yusupov, Khudoiberdi Nosirov, Mamajon Maskov and others.

One of the carpentry specializations is the manufacture of arba. The term “aroba” comes from the Arabic word “a‘rob”, that is moving, shifting, and in the Uzbek pronunciation took the form of “arava”. The most popular arba in Central Asia is the Kokand one. It differs from other local carts in the large size of the wheel. This is an important characteristic that proves the advantage of Kokandarava over others.

Between the Yangi Chorsu and Noib Kuprigi districts of Kokand, there was a small mahalla Aravasoz. Later it joined the Noib Kuprigi mahalla. By the 20th century, there were five or six masters of carts making here. Local maters M. Siddikov and M. Vakhobov, at the request of the museum, made a large cargo trolley and a trolley with a visor, which took an important place in the museum‘s exposition.

You can learn more about the topic in the book-album “The Collection of the Kokand State Museum-Reserve” (Volume XLIII) in the series “The Cultural Legacy of Uzbekistan in the World Collections”.

The main sponsor of the project is the oilfield services company Eriell-Group.