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| Bactria Cultural Centre, as a contemporary artistic space, serves as a catalyst by providing opportunities to local artists to express their creativity in an entirely free and experimental way. At present it is the only venue in Dushanbe that encourages artists to apply innovative approaches to manifest their artistic visions. |
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| Bactria Cultural Centre, as the cultural actor of ACTED’s activities, is fully devoted to provide access to information and to vocational training. Educational activities aimed at artists and art professionals are organized with the firm belief that an understanding of national identity as well as social changes and development can originate from active participants of society. The role of an artist is, and always has been, the observer, the analyzer, and the initiator. |
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| One of the main information points in Bactria is its library, which has a collection of books in Tajik, Russian, English, German and French, focusing on mostly culture and history. Art books on the works of Michelangelo, Levitan, Vrubel, Aivazovsky, Theophanes the Greek, movies of Russian and Western avant-garde, and Italian Renaissance are the most valued pieces of the collection. |
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Gurminj Live project
Gurminj Museum, this small private museum is a real gem in Dushanbe’s cultural life, both in terms of its collection and its public activities. Unlike other museums in town, this place is very much ALIVE. It offers concerts in the summers, educational programs for school groups and in general a gathering place for everyone who enjoys playing on instruments or just listening to music.
The Museum of Musical Instruments, better known as the Gurminj Museum, was established in 1990 by Gurminj Zavkibekov (1929-2003), National artist of Tajikistan, laureate of the Rudaki state prize.
There are about 80 musical instruments in the Museum collection. Among the stringed instruments one can find a Kashgar setor, Afghan-Badakhshani setor, Qumri tanbur, Shoh-setor, Pamiri rubob, haftor and other rubobs and tanburs. Once in the early 1960s Gurminj Zavkibekov, during his trip to the Pamirs, witnessed the destruction of an old house. He asked for one of the wooden poles with the idea of making an instrument out of it. Instrument maker Usto Nazar made 2 setors, one of which (Shoh-setor) is now part of the museum’s collection.
During the past ten years, several international organizations helped the operations of this museum. Among them “Restorers Without Borders”, who through grants from “The Christensen Fund (TCF)” and in collaboration with Lu Edmonds (also a TCF grantee) initiated an overall capacity building project “Tusovki” in 2006, which involved the support of museum management, development of a venue for musicians and in general promotion of the museum. In 2008 Bactria Cultural Centre took the responsibility of organizing events at the museum. A series of concerts took place in the summers of 2006 - 2008 with huge success. Organizers were striving to provide a venue for free-expression, to enhance the importance of folk, world and rock music, and to encourage musicians to perform their own compositions.
In addition to the concert series, educational programs were developed for school groups and the museum hosted 20 classes last year. Classes were conducted by local musicians and they focused on learning about Tajik musical traditions and musical instruments. This year the educational programs continue, with extended focus on learning about history, arts and culture by observing traditional instruments.
Recently the museum’s exhibition is being revitalized through reorganization of the objects and by adding explanatory text panels for more interpretation. Objects are being catalogued and categorized, probably for the first time.
The museum is a place for musicians to gather, to practice and to record their music. It is often visited by musicians from around the world to pay tribute to Gurminj’s heritage and to play with Iqbol Zavkibekov, Gurminj’s son, who is also well-known in the music world, as the artistic director of the music band “Shams” and he is the director of the museum.
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Articles about previous events, workshops and master classes
MIZROB
SAMO
Davlat Nazri |
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| Bactria Cultural Centre is engaged in projects that further capacity building and development of music industry in Tajikistan. First of all, it offers a venue to musicians through the organization of regular concerts where they can freely practice their creativity. We impose no limitation in the direction of musical genres, but we do promote world music and experiments based on the combination of traditional and contemporary music. |
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| If the context allows, Bactria Cultural Centre uner the auspices of ACTED, carries out heritage conservation and rehabilitation activities, if the heritage in question has been damaged or suffers from a lack of maintenance due to the difficulties facing the communities. |
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As a result of the continuous degradation of Tajik educational structure, from a unified primary and secondary education under the Soviets, barely 60 percent of Tajikistan’s current school-age population is receiving educational opportunities. Through opportunities for learning and vocational training BACTRIA aims at democratizing access to information and education. |
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Artistic Vision 
