Last Wednesday we invited our music teachers plus a few more musicians and we had a night of Uzbek folk music. Doug invited his staff to join us. We hired the cafeteria staff to cook the national Uzbek dish of plov. Plov (pronounced with a long 'o') is a spiced rice and lamb dish with bits of carrots and currants in it. It is tradition to make it every Thursday. The men make plov. Hamid and ___ arrived around 4:00 to start cooking on the patio. They brought a special bowl for cooking the plov in which sits over fire. I eat plov every Thursday at the Embassy and look forward to it, but after tasting it cooked outdoors over the fire I now know why the locals go out for plov on Thursdays. (It's like the difference between putting ground beef in a skillet or on a grill.) There is a place called the Plov Center which cooks plov in enormous 'bowls' outside where you can watch. They serve their plov with a quail egg on top. There are many variations.
We probably had between 25 and 30 guests Wednesday. It was pleasantly crowded. One of the men who Doug works with grabbed our camera and took pictures and videos throughout the night. He got some good video of the musicians including when Doug sang and when I sang. We're (translate: Doug is) looking into posting them on a site like Shutterbug or something so you can see them. I'm told they're too big to put on my blog.
I think our house must be known as the party house because all I have to do is approach the guard at the gate with a piece of paper in my hand and whoever is on duty says, "Гости?" (pronounced "ghosty") meaning, "Guests?"
One of the musicians was a doira player (the Uzbek folk drum). At the end of the night he told our teacher that he wanted to have Douglas and I over to his house for Lagman (a delicious noodle dish traditionally made with one very, very long noodle - we're talking yards) and music. I think that music is going to be our ticket to societywherever we travel. It's a bond appreciated by everyone. There are some men who work in a market I frequent who occasionally ask me how my music lessons are coming along. Once they asked me who my teacher was. When I mentioned Marmurjan's name they all smiled and nodded. They knew him!
Once on my way home from the Embassy I stopped to chat with the gate guard. I showed him my music. He started drumming on the desk with his fingers and singing one of my songs. I joined in and we two strangers - a male and a female in a primarily Muslim country - sang the entire song together. That's special.
Our teacher, Mamurjan, is on the right side.
The plov!
