The International Council for Traditional Music is an Non-Governmental Organization in formal consultative relations with UNESCO. The ICTM World Conference is the leading international venue for the presentation of new research on music and dance. Razia Sultanova served as the Programme Co-Chair, and was elected the Vice-President of the ICTM in Kazakhstan.
Central Asian women, kept alive traditional Shamanic Islamic religious culture, especially Sufism, even when all religion was banned. Women played a vital part in keeping the flame of Islam burning throughout the region, significantly in the Ferghana Valley in Uzbekistan, the cradle of female Islamic culture. (Buy here)
Since the 1970s Afghanistan has lived through a number of invasions, all of which have brought chaos and turmoil into the daily life of its people. The aim of this 34 minute film - based on Dr Sultanova's original video recordings - is to demonstrate the authenticity as well as the historical development of the phenomenon of music within the Uzbek communities.
On Tuesday 26th of March 2013, the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (University of Cambridge) in association with the International Organization of Turkic Culture (TURKSOY) celebrated Navruz in the Chapel of Trinity College, followed by a reception and dinner in the Old Library of Pembroke College. The event was coordinated by Dr Razia Sultanova. (See here)
Popular Culture in Turkic Asia and Afghanistan: Performance and Belief was the subject of our three day event at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge. Participants from 15 different countries gave their papers and contributed at discussion sessions. (Read more here)
Azerbaijan is the only country in the Muslim world where children are taught to perform Mugham from an early age. Certainly, these are just normal children, however growing up in Azerbaijan - a country with an extreme love of music and a well-established music education, they contribute from an early age to the highest form of the native genre of music, the art of Mugham.
The articles in this book (written by outstanding scholars) create a theory, concept and practical model of a significant training system of the oral tradition, in the Turkic speaking world. Published by Lambert Academic Publisher. (ISBN-10:3838315588, ISBN-13:978-3838315584) (Buy here)
Razia Sultanova has written many articles for her field in ethnomusicology, the most recent of which being "Female Celebrations in Uzbekistan and Afghanistan", which was written for the 2008 Yearbook for Traditional Music. (Download here)
Razia Sultanova wrote an article/introduction for the Ethnomusicology Forum, called "Music and Identity in Central Asia". She was invited to become guest editor of the special issue on central asian music, which came out in 2005 as Volume 14 No. 2. (Download here)
A traditional piece from the Ferghana Valley that in times gone by was performed for entertainment and dance at women’s gatherings, here played on the Uzbek dutar, a long-necked plucked two–stringed lute.(Download/Listen here)