Smithsonian Folkways and the Aga Khan Music Initiative are excited to announce the March 30th release of Volumes 7-9 of the unprecedented, comprehensive, and GRAMMY –nominated "Music of Central Asia" series. Coordinated with the releases is a series of concerts, including a performance with the Kronos Quartet at the Carnegie Hall in New York on March 14th.

Details on each CD/DVD release:


Volume 7: In the Shrine of the Heart: Popular Classics from Bukhara and Beyond brings sophisticated urban song traditions of Bukhara, Samarkand, Tashkent, Qoqand, and Khiva, alive in superbly recorded new performances. Watch the Video

Volume 8: Rainbow: Kronos Quartet with Alim and Fargana Qasimov and Homayun Sakhi presents two bold collaborations: the Kronos Quartet, America's premier new-music quartet, with renowned rubâb player Homayun Sakhi for half of the album and with the Alim Qasimov Ensemble for the other half. Each of these collaborations reaches across continents and cultures, and across musical categories and conventions. Watch the video

Volume 9: In the Footsteps of Babur: Musical Encounters from the Lands of the Mughals is an exploration of the common ground of musical styles, sensibilities and instruments from Central Asia, Afghanistan and North India, reflecting the artistic synthesis characteristic of both the Mughal Empire and today's globalized world. Watch the Video

Visit Music of Central Asia to:

- Stream the entire albums through April 6th

- Enter code CENTRALASIA789 and save 20% off retail price of all Music of Central Asia CD/DVDs or digital downloads through April 6th.

- Watch excerpts from each DVD

For more information on these releases, click here

To become a fan of this series on facebook, click here

For more information about Smithsonian Folkways, click here

For more information about AKMI click here

For a review of the Alim and Fargana Qasimov Ensemble concert at Asia Society on March 12th, 2010, click here


Smithsonian Folkways is the nonprofit record label of the Smithsonian Institution, the national museum of the United States. Our mission is the commitment to cultural diversity, education, increased understanding, and lively engagement with the world of sound. We seek to revitalize and assure the onward transmission of musical traditions in regions where they are endangered, and to cultivate the creative processes that lead to artistic innovation and evolution.

“Music of Central of Asia” is a co-production of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings and the Aga Khan Music Initiative, a program of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture. Smithsonian Folkways inaugurated the groundbreaking “Music of Central Asia” series in 2006 with Volumes 1–3 (Vol. 2 was a 2006 Grammy Nominee) and followed with Volumes 4–6 in 2007.