ABSTRACT
The repertoire of post-1950s Uyghur instrumental compositions embodies the ideas of reform and progress as embraced in modern concert-stage Chinese performances. This essay concerns the virtuosic capacities that have been built on the musicians and manufactured for their instruments, as well as the reformist ideals that have served the emergence of modern Uyghur musical consciousness since the 1950s. At the core of the project is to create anew a modern “minority” tradition that is derived yet unambiguously distinct from its premodern formations in order to enable a modern Chinese enterprise of composing, performing, and teaching music that serves broader nationalist ends
