WOMAD

Sevara Nazarkhan

From Uzbekistan

For those of you who stopped believing in fairy tales long ago, here’s a little story to warm the cynical cockles of your heart. A young and talented female pop star living in an ex-Central Asian Soviet Republic sends a tatty demo to record company in the UK. The record company answer that they like the music but don’t have room in their programme for the time being. In other words, close but no cigar this time. The young female pop star perseveres and hears that a big world music festival is about to take place near London. She buys a hugely expensive ticket and takes the plane from Tashkent to London with her manager. The young female pop star turns up at the festival and the organisers, seduced by her grit and tenacity, clear a slot for her to play with a quickly assembled pick up band. The performance is a hit and is witnessed by an older male pop star from the UK who immediately signs the young female pop star from Uzbekistan to a recording contract. Two days later she’s in the studio recording demos and some months later her debut album, produced by a famous French producer, is released to raucous acclaim. Soon afterwards the young Uzbek pop star is supporting the older English pop star on this European tour. There! Told you Trixibelle was alive and well. The young female pop star is none other than Sevara Nazarkhan. The festival is WOMAD Reading. The older male pop star is Peter Gabriel, the record company is Real World, the producer is Hector Zazou and the album is ‘Yol Bolsin’. Mind you, fairies have got little to do with Sevara’s skills as a song-writer, vocalist and player or the instrumental prowess of Toir Kuziyev, Sevara’s main man on the silken-stringed doutar, an ancient central Asian lute. They’re as real as those flags fluttering in the breeze. Don’t pinch yourselves too hard.