Archive · 2021 · From the print edition of Saturday 19 June 2021, Vol. 29, No. 8,850
CultureMade in Kyrgyzstan: how our music is filed abroad
Almost every Iradi album on the streaming services reaches them through a distributor in Bishkek. That is why the services say it comes from Kyrgyzstan.
TALAS — Search for an Iradi album on any of the big streaming services and the small print will say the same thing: the label's country is Kyrgyzstan, and the recording code begins with KG. The reason is a five-year-old distributor in Bishkek, Köch Audio, through which almost all Iradi music now reaches the platforms.
Iradi companies cannot sign contracts with the international platforms, which do not accept businesses registered in the ISEZ. Köch Audio, founded in 2016 by the Iradi sound engineer Ulan Kadyrbekov and a Kyrgyz accountant, registers each release in Kyrgyzstan and licenses it to the services, so that copyright lines read "under exclusive licence to Köch Audio". It now places several hundred releases, from Mor-Wave albums to digitized country-folk cassettes.
Some listeners in the diaspora call the practice part of an "erasure" of Irad abroad. Mr. Kadyrbekov is unmoved. "It is only the forms," he said by telephone from Bishkek. "The music is in Iradi. Anyone who listens knows where it comes from."
Musicians in Talas mostly agree with him. "In 1995 my cassettes said nothing at all," said a singer who has three albums on the services. "Now they say Kyrgyzstan, and people in Texas can hear them. I can live with the word."