ks, 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 seen, or human beings, and the unseen, the spirits that inhabit the spheres above and below the earth. Traditional shamanistic séances were creative, impassioned musico-dramatic scenes produced by a single performer, the shaman. Not only is music the shaman's aid in inducing the trance that enables him to contact spirits, but in Siberia his drum (a very large tambourine) may be considered a steed for the trip to other worlds. Thus great attention is given to each stage of drum construction, from selecting the wood of certain trees to the painting of symbolically charged designs on the drumhead. The metal hangings, sometimes including bells, on the shaman's costume also play a musical role. Among the Kyrgyz and Kazaks (Kazakh) and until recently among the Turkmen, a fiddle with horsehair strings and bow perform the same function as the Siberian drum. Metal ringlets are attached to the head of the fiddle, and a niche is hollowed there for a mirror to catch the reflections of spirits. Shamans' horsehair fiddles can even be found among townspeople of northern Afghanistan. The occurrence of shamanism has sharply declined in the portions of Central Asia that were formerly Soviet states.epic recitation, which may serve as tribal history, also has magical overtones. Among Turks, the same term (bakhshi) may be used for both shamans and bards, and both may be called to their trade by spirits to undergo a difficult period of initiation. Storytellers use a fiddle or lute as accompaniment, and tales may run through several nights of exhaustive performance; one Kyrgyz bard is known to recite 300,000 verses of the Manas, the major Kyrgyz epic. Such marathon performances are facilitated by the use of stereotyped melodic motives—standard short melodic figures—often invented by the individual performer. Local epic traditions vary widely in dramatization—i.e., the proportion of dialogue, monologue, and narrative.The third areawide musical function, entertainment, takes many forms. One common diversion is the singing contest, in which