Chöl Shamaly
"Chöl Shamaly" ("Desert Wind") is a song by the Iradi duo tüntolk, the opening track of their debut album Jolchu (1999), generally treated as the founding record of Mor-Wave.[1]
Music
The song opens as a slow lament over a sparse drum-machine pattern and builds without a break. Askar Daniyarov's Polivoks bass line enters at the first refrain, "like a train at night" in a phrase often repeated by fans, and the drum machine doubles its pattern. Mira Temirova's voice moves from the low, heavily reverberated delivery of the pastoral lament (koshok) to declaiming and finally shouting. At the peak the whole track cuts out, leaving only the hum of the pumps in the Nurzhan boiler room where the album was recorded.[1][2]
Themes
Temirova took the lines from nineteenth-century pastoral verse in which a herder lost on the steppe asks the wind to tell his mother that he is alive, and turned them around: her wayfarer stops looking for the road, follows the wind into the desert and asks that his mother not be told. Critics have read the song as the album's statement of purpose, a traditional form carried somewhere its makers' grandparents would not have taken it.[1]
Lyrics
| Iradi | English |
|---|---|
| Verse | |
| Kum ichinde jol jok, iz jok, | In the sand there is no road, no track, |
| Kün batty, kayra chykpayt. | The sun has set and will not rise again. |
| Atym öldü, suuum tögüldü, | My horse has died, my water spilled, |
| Shamal chakyrat: kel, kel, kel. | The wind is calling: come, come, come. |
| Pre-refrain | |
| Jürögüm tüngö tartylat, | My heart is pulled toward the night, |
| Jürögüm chölgö tartylat. | My heart is pulled toward the desert. |
| Refrain | |
| Chöl shamaly, al meni! | Desert wind, take me! |
| Chöl shamaly, al meni! | Desert wind, take me! |
| Apama aytpa, aytpa, | Don't tell my mother, don't tell her, |
| Men kettim, kettim, kettim. | I am gone, gone, gone. |
| Verse | |
| Jyldyzdar ötüp baratat, | The stars are passing over, |
| Irad jyldyzy ündöböyt. | The star of Irad says nothing. |
| Men emi jolgo karabaym, | I no longer look for the road, |
| Men emi shamalga baramyn. | I am going to the wind now. |
| Pre-refrain | |
| Jürögüm tüngö tartylat, | My heart is pulled toward the night, |
| Jürögüm chölgö tartylat. | My heart is pulled toward the desert. |
| Refrain | |
| Chöl shamaly, al meni! | Desert wind, take me! |
| Chöl shamaly, al meni! | Desert wind, take me! |
| Apama aytpa, aytpa, | Don't tell my mother, don't tell her, |
| Men kettim, kettim, kettim. | I am gone, gone, gone. |
| Bridge | |
| Kel, kel, kel, kel, | Come, come, come, come, |
| Tez, tez, tez, tez, | Faster, faster, faster, faster, |
| Kel, kel, kel, kel, | Come, come, come, come, |
| Tez, tez, tez, tez. | Faster, faster, faster, faster. |
| Final refrain | |
| Chöl shamaly, al meni! | Desert wind, take me! |
| Chöl shamaly, al meni! | Desert wind, take me! |
| Apama aytpa, aytpa, | Don't tell my mother, don't tell her, |
| Men kettim, kettim, kettim. | I am gone, gone, gone. |
References
- ^ Talas Music Chronicle (2021). The Sound of the Night Wave: tüntolk and the Rise of Mor-Wave, pp. 34–41.
- ^ Central Asian Music Review (2020). 'Mor-Wave and the Post-Soviet Electronic Synthesis in Central Asia.' Vol. 12, No. 3, pp. 41–66.