Culture and camels

Tajik dancer

It’s all about culture this week because just as the Edinburgh International Festival reaches yet another grand finale, the Dushanbe Rangorang Festival is underway. Although they are both major, capital city cultural extravaganzas, there are also some subtle differences. The Rangorang Festival is only in its second year, lasts for eight hours and doesn’t involve turning public toilets and telephone boxes into theatre venues. Other than that, the similarity is uncanny. Both seek to represent rich cultural variety in a distinctive urban setting for the benefit of local people and tourists alike.

Rangorang camel

Rangorang means multi-coloured in Tajiki and the Festival is the product of the VSO International Citizen Service (ICS) programme whereby 20 UK volunteers aged 18-25 come to Tajikistan, are paired with - and live with  - local volunteers, and are required to all work together to put on a big cultural event. There’s music and singing and dancing and handicrafts as well as lots of eating and drinking and socialising. There’s not much in the way of alternative comedy – not a big Soviet thing really – but there is a camel, guaranteed sunshine and a selection of yak skin handbags. The Festival came and went yesterday to resounding acclaim.

As much as the celebration of the Event, the process of organising it has brought the two youth groups together. There’s nothing like the Sisyphean task of trying to get permissions from Municipal Authorities to create the shared despair that often leads to lasting friendship.

Visual art was represented at Rangorang but was not to the fore – as has been the case in

Mountain view

Edinburgh until recently – but I did go to the Dushanbe art gallery last week as well. I think it’s fair to say, though, that painting has fallen off a bit since the great Sogdian friezes of eighth century Panjikent. The gallery shares an entrance with a mobile phone shop and is housed in a couple of upper floors. I'd venture that the dominant school is "paint by numbers goes to the Lake District" if that didn’t sound rather snobbish, so I won’t say that. 

My friendly guide and Van Gogh expert

A very friendly babushka met me as I wandered up and she described the works on display in a torrent of Russian. I nodded appreciatively, as I have learned to do in several languages. She took me aside and produced some keys to a small anteroom. She unlocked the door and we went in and she proudly showed me the Van Gogh. I think we both realised it was not an original but there was definitely a hint of sunflower and we were both able to share the joke. We were actually in a small, communal artists’ studio where several works were underway by local painters. Heartening to see.

Cultural expression at its best can be marvelously uplifting and inspiring. Even if it’s not at the level of the world’s biggest and best cultural festival or in one of the world’s great art galleries, though, it can still create joy and fellow feeling that transcends language and ethnic differences. The shared celebration of things that people have created and we enjoy spells out friendship. Can’t we send a mass theatre, dance, singing and painting expeditionary force to Syria? Can’t we carpet bomb Damascus with flyers for improbable shows and demonstrations of human versatility? Probably a bit late now but next time an international hot spot is beginning to flare up, let’s fly in a crack team of Tajik dancers and Edinburgh alternative comedians to restore disorder…