e area; there are no other harp traditions today between the Caucasus and Burma, although iconographic evidence indicates that in ancient times harps were widespread in Central Asia, the Middle East, and India. The music of the Ḥazāras (Ḥazāra) includes vocal effects produced by striking the throat while singing, causing a break in the sound, and Baluchi (Balochi language) music also features a broken-voice style.Classical musicIn contrast to the folk music styles just described, the court-derived classical style of Bukhara and Samarkand represents a highly systematic, theoretically grounded, cosmopolitan musical tradition. Lying along the medieval Silk Road, the Turkistani oases were open to musical cross-currents. Today's musical roots may reach back to the period in which urban Central Asian music was in vogue at T'ang dynasty (Tang dynasty) courts in China (618–907). The movement of musical instruments across the caravan trail from the Middle East to China via Central Asia is well documented since early times. Over the centuries, town musicians evolved an urban style patronized by the local courts, notably under Timur (Tamerlane) and his descendants (c. 1350–1500) in Herāt (now in Afghanistan) and Samarkand. The degree of musical eclecticism characteristic of the era is illustrated by a court historian's description of the festivities of Timur's son:Golden-tongued singers and sweet-sounding musicians played and sang to motives [melodic figures] in Persian style, to Arab melodies according to Turkish practice and with Mongol voices, following Chinese laws of singing and Altai meters.By the 17th century the court style had been codified into sets of nonimprovised suites of instrumental and vocal pieces using poetic texts in classical Persian and local court Turkish (Chaghatai). In Bukhara this collection of suites was known as the Shashmaqām, or six maqāms (suites), with each maqām (an Arabic term, but changed in meaning) set in one of the classical Persian musical modes. (The Persian modes are melodic frameworks, each with a given scale, typical melodic figures, and accepted emotional content.) Regional courts and large towns developed their own sets of maqāms, performed in unison by an orchestra and a male chorus.Areas of Turkistan under Soviet (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) rule between about 1920 and 1991 underwent far-reaching modification of traditional music practice, although the older styles such as the Shashmaqām were also maintained. Changes include the reconstruction of local instruments to fit the Western musical scale of 12 equally spaced half steps, establishment of music schools and conservatories, creation of orchestras of folk instruments, introduction of vocal polyphony, and the writing of works in Western forms (symphonies, operas, chamber music) by native and European Soviet composers. In Afghanistan, musical change began on a national basis in the 1950s under the influence of Radio Afghanistan, which broadcasts principally popular styles based on Pashtun folk music and songs of the Indian film industry.Turkic nomads, Mongols, and Siberian peoplesThis region includes primarily the great open spaces of Central Asia, from the Turkmen desert in the southwest to the Kazak steppes, Mongol plains, and from the Gobi to the vast subarctic Siberian (Siberia) evergreen forests, or taiga, and tundra, or Arctic plains, stretching to the Pacific. The considerable mobility and often close linguistic affinity of the peoples in the area led to substantial interchange of musical terms and instruments and to common social functions of music relating to the traditional tribal social structure of most of the groups of this region.Social role of musicThree basic functions of music are common throughout most of the region: music as ritual, with magical connotations ( shamanism); music as tribal record, aiding group solidarity (epic recitation); and music as entertainment (itinerant performers, festivals). Music is the medium of the shaman, or priest-medicine man, as he performs his role as mediator between the se