Paper long abstract:

Over the course of 2014, as the People's War on Terror ramped up in Xinjiang, the number of live concerts, plays, and variety shows performed by Uyghur arts ensembles in Ürümchi dropped dramatically lower than it had been in 2013. Ürümchi-based ensembles were sent down on months-long excursions to the counties, townships, and villages of Southern Xinjiang to perform variety shows with explicitly propagandistic, anti-terrorism themes. By 2015, concerts in Ürümchi were nearly non-existent, signaling a dramatic shift in the soundscape that was once an intimate part of Uyghur life there. Reports coming out of post-2016 Xinjiang reveal that the soundscape has continued to change in even more dramatic ways: five-a-day calls to prayer have been replaced with the frequent screams of police sirens; television and stage programming, long a "final frontier" for the Uyghur language, are in serious decline; and performing artists find themselves under increasing scrutiny, sometimes subject to charges of terrorism and long-term imprisonment. In this context, some artists have begun penning essays and songs in praise of the Party, harkening back to Cultural Revolution-era practices. In this paper, I draw from the nearly four years I have spent conducting ethnographic and archival research in Xinjiang, as well as from a series of interviews with Uyghurs in the diaspora, to explore the drastic changes that are being made to Uyghur soundscapes in contemporary Xinjiang. In particular, I focus on one song, Shir'eli El'tékin's 2017 "Re'is Shi Jinping'gha Béghishlanghan Küy" (A song for leader Xi Jinping), analyzing both the lyrics and the relatively "flavorless" melodic structure of the song. By comparing the lyrics and melody to the larger body of Shir'eli's repertoire as a professional muqam performer and beloved pop singer, my analysis shows that "Re'is Shi Jinping'gha…" marks a significant stylistic departure not only from Shir'eli's performance style but also from the aesthetic sensibilities most central to Uyghur music. The current political climate in Xinjiang means that I will be unable to interview Shir'eli for the foreseeable future; thus, I check my own analysis against opinions garnered from interviews with diaspora Uyghurs in Summer 2018, positing several speculative, provisional arguments about how songs such as "Re'is Shi Jinping'gha..." can help us to better understand the ways in which the surveillance state is violently and invasively reshaping the very sound of Uyghur life.